Stories to Tell Children, Sara Cone Bryant [ebook reader with highlighter txt] 📗

stories. There are times, too, before an adult audience, when a speaker can afford to let his hearers be amused with him over a chance mistake. But with children it is most unwise to break the spell of the entertainment in that way. Consider, in the matter of a detail of action or description, how absolutely unimportant the mere accuracy is, compared with the effect of smoothness and the enjoyment of the hearers. They will not remember the detail, for good or evil, half so long as they will remember the fact that you did not know it. So, for their sakes, as well as for the success of your story, cover your slips of memory, and let them be as if they were not.

And now I come to two points in method which have to do especially with humorous stories. The first is the power of initiating the appreciation of the joke. Every natural humorist does this by instinct, and the value of the power to a story-teller can hardly be overestimated. To initiate appreciation does not mean that one necessarily gives way to mirth, though even that is sometimes natural and effective; one merely feels the approach of the humorous climax, and subtly suggests to the hearers that it will soon be "time to laugh." The suggestion usually comes in the form of facial expression, and in the tone. And children are so much simpler, and so much more accustomed to following another's lead than their elders, that the expression can be much more outright and unguarded than would be permissible with a mature audience.

Children like to feel the joke coming, in this way; they love the anticipation of a laugh, and they will begin to dimple, often, at your first unconscious suggestion of humour. If it is lacking, they are sometimes afraid to follow their own instincts. Especially when you are facing an audience of grown people and children together, you will find that the latter are very hesitant about initiating their own expression of humour. It is more difficult to make them forget their surroundings then, and more desirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you will see some small listener in an agony of endeavour to cloak the mirth which he—poor mite—fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is "the thing" to laugh, and that everybody is going to.

Having so stimulated the appreciation of the humorous climax, it is important to give your hearers time for the full savour of the jest to permeate their consciousness. It is really robbing an audience of its rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this. It cannot be funny without it.

Everyone who is familiar with the theatre must have noticed how careful all comedians are to give this pause for appreciation and laughter. Often the opportunity is crudely given, or too liberally offered; and that offends. But in a reasonable degree the practice is undoubtedly necessary to any form of humorous expression.

A remarkably good example of the type of humorous story to which these principles of method apply, is the story of Epaminondas on page 92. It will be plain to any reader that all the several funny crises are of the perfectly unmistakable sort children like, and that, moreover, these funny spots are not only easy to see; they are easy to foresee. The teller can hardly help sharing the joke in advance, and the tale is an excellent one with which to practise for power in the points mentioned.

Epaminondas is a valuable little rascal from other points of view, and I mean to return to him, to point a moral. But at the moment I want space for a word or two about the matter of variety of subject and style in school stories.

There are two wholly different kinds of story which are equally necessary for children, I believe, and which ought to be given in about the proportion of one to three, in favour of the second kind; I make the ratio uneven because the first kind is more dominating in its effect.

The first kind is represented by such stories as The Pig Brother,[1] which has now grown so familiar to teachers that it will serve for illustration without repetition here. It is the type of story which specifically teaches a certain ethical or conduct lesson, in the form of a fable or an allegory,—it passes on to the child the conclusions as to conduct and character, to which the race has, in general, attained through centuries of experience and moralising. The story becomes an inescapable part of the outfit of received ideas on manners and morals which is a necessary possession of the heir of civilisation.

Children do not object to these stories in the least, if the stories are good ones. They accept them with the relish which nature seems ever to have for all truly nourishing material. And the little tales are one of the media through which we elders may transmit some very slight share of the benefit received by us, in turn, from actual or transmitted experience.

The second kind has no preconceived moral to offer, makes no attempt to affect judgment or to pass on a standard. It simply presents a picture of life, usually in fable or poetic image, and says to the hearer, "These things are." The hearer, then, consciously or otherwise, passes judgment on the facts. His mind says, "These things are good"; or, "This was good, and that, bad"; or, "This thing is desirable," or the contrary.

The story of The Little Jackal and the Alligator (page 100)is a good illustration of this type. It is a character-story. In the naïve form of a folk tale, it doubtless embodies the observations of a seeing eye, in a country and time when the little jackal and the great alligator were even more vivid images of certain human characters than they now are. Again and again, surely, the author or authors of the tales must have seen the weak, small, clever being triumph over the bulky, well-accoutred, stupid adversary. Again and again they had laughed at the discomfiture of the latter, perhaps rejoicing in it the more because it removed fear from their own houses. And probably never had they concerned themselves particularly with the basic ethics of the struggle. It was simply one of the things they saw. It was life. So they made a picture of it.

The folk tale so made, and of such character, comes to the child somewhat as an unprejudiced newspaper account of to-day's happenings comes to us. It pleads no cause, except through its contents; it exercises no intentioned influence on our moral judgment; it is there, as life is there, to be seen and judged. And only through such seeing and judging can the individual perception attain to anything of power or originality. Just as a certain amount of received ideas is necessary to sane development, so is a definite opportunity for first-hand judgments essential to power.

In this epoch of well-trained minds we run some risk of an inundation of accepted ethics. The mind which can make independent judgments, can look at new facts with fresh vision, and reach conclusions with simplicity, is the perennial power in the world. And this is the mind we are not noticeably successful in developing, in our system of schooling. Let us at least have its needs before our consciousness, in our attempts to supplement the regular studies of school by such side-activities as story-telling. Let us give the children a fair proportion of stories which stimulate independent moral and practical decisions.

And now for a brief return to our little black friend. Epaminondas belongs to a very large, very ancient type of funny story: the tale in which the jest depends wholly on an abnormal degree of stupidity on the part of the hero. Every race which produces stories seems to have found this theme a natural outlet for its childlike laughter. The stupidity of Lazy Jack, of Big Claus, of the Good Man, of Clever Alice, all have their counterparts in the folly of the small Epaminondas.

Evidently, such stories have served a purpose in the education of the race. While the exaggeration of familiar attributes easily awakens mirth in a simple mind, it does more: it teaches practical lessons of wisdom and discretion. And possibly the lesson was the original cause of the story.

Not long ago, I happened upon an instance of the teaching power of these nonsense tales, so amusing and convincing that I cannot forbear to share it. A primary teacher who heard me tell Epaminondas one evening, told it to her pupils the next morning, with great effect. A young teacher who was observing in the room at the time told me what befell. She said the children laughed very heartily over the story, and evidently liked it much. About an hour later, one of them was sent to the board to do a little problem. It happened that the child made an excessively foolish mistake, and did not notice it. As he glanced at the teacher for the familiar smile of encouragement, she simply raised her hands, and ejaculated, "'For the law's sake!'"

It was sufficient. The child took the cue instantly. He looked hastily at his work, broke into an irrepressible giggle, rubbed the figures out, without a word, and began again. And the whole class entered into the joke with the gusto of fellow-fools, for once wise.

It is safe to assume that the child in question will make fewer needless mistakes for a long time because of the wholesome reminder of his likeness with one who "ain't got the sense he was born with." And what occurred so visibly in his case goes on quietly in the hidden recesses of the mind in many cases. One Epaminondas is worth three lectures.

I wish there were more of such funny little tales in the world's literature, all ready, as this one is, for telling to the youngest of our listeners. But masterpieces are few in any line, and stories for telling are no exception; it took generations, probably, to make this one. The demand for new sources of supply comes steadily from teachers and mothers, and is the more insistent because so often met by the disappointing recommendations of books which prove to be for reading only, rather than for telling.

For the benefit of suggestion to teachers in schools where story-telling is newly or not yet introduced in systematic form, I am glad to append the following list of additional stories which will be found to be equally tellable and likeable. The list is not mine, although it embodies some of my suggestions. I offer it merely as a practical result of the effort to equalise and extend the story-hour throughout the schools. The list is roughly graded in four groups. Stories in the present volume have been excluded.

STORIES FOR REPRODUCTION

First Group