see anything but the foibles of those about him, a condition usually
reached by a course of pessimistic experience.

Andersen sums up the unnatural point of view in these words: "When
Kay tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer, he could only remember the
multiplication table." Now, without taking these words in any literal
sense, we can admit that they represent the development of the head at
the expense of the heart.

An example of this kind of story to avoid is Andersen's "Story of the
Butterfly." The bitterness of the Anemones, the sentimentality of the
Violets, the schoolgirlishness of the Snowdrops, the domesticity of
the Sweetpeas--all this tickles the palate of the adult, but does
not belong to the place of the normal child. Again, I repeat, that
the unusual child may take all this in and even preserve his kindly
attitude towards the world, but it is dangerous atmosphere for the
ordinary child.

3. _Stories of a sentimental character_. Strange to say, this
element of sentimentality appeals more to the young teachers than to
the children themselves. It is difficult to define the difference
between real sentiment and sentimentality, but the healthy normal
boy or girl of, let us say, ten or eleven years old, seems to feel
it unconsciously, though the distinction is not so clear a few
years later.

Mrs. Elisabeth McCracken contributed an excellent article some years
ago to the _Outlook_ on the subject of literature for the young,
in which we find a good illustration of this power of discrimination
on the part of a child.