Another very necessary quality in the mere artifice of story-telling
is to watch your audience, so as to be able to know whether its mood
is for action or reaction, and to alter your story accordingly. The
moods of reaction are rarer, and you must use them for presenting a
different kind of material. Here is your opportunity for introducing
a piece of poetic description, given in beautiful language, to which
the children cannot listen when they are eager for action and dramatic
excitement.

Perhaps one of the greatest artifices is to take a quick hold of your
audience by a striking beginning which will enlist their attention
from the start. You can then relax somewhat, but you must be careful
also of the end because that is what remains most vivid to the children.
If you question them as to which story they like best in a program, you
will constantly find it to be the last one you have told, which has for
the moment blurred out the others.

Here are a few specimens of beginnings which seldom fail to arrest the
attention of the child:

"There was once a giant ogre, and he lived in a cave by himself."
From "The Giant and Jack-straws," David Starr Jordan.

"There were once twenty-five tin soldiers, who were all brothers, for
they had been made out of the same old tin spoon." From "The Tin
Soldier," Hans Christian Andersen.

"There was once an Emperor who had a horse shod with gold." From
"The Beetle," Hans Christian Andersen.