We all know the two paths, one of which is likely to be followed by such a child. Either he drifts on, indulging his dreams, inventing unguided fancies, following new vagaries, and later reading those loose, wild, and sentimental things into which his own taste guides him, till all his mental processes become untrustworthy; or he is taken in hand, given fact-studies exclusively, becomes ashamed of his fancies, or loses interest in them because they bear no relation to anything in the actual world as he is learning to know it, and finally loses completely his artistic imaginative power. As an aid toward averting either of these disasters, the imaginative child--who is the average child--as well as the over-fanciful one, needs to have developed in him some ability to select among his fancies, so as to cling to the beautiful and useful, and discard the idle ones. To do this, he must get the ability to put them together in some plan or system that satisfies both his taste and his judgment. They are permanently serviceable either for work or for play only when they attach one to another and cohere into a somewhat orderly whole. One is tempted to think that to put the children into possession of such a faculty or such an accomplishment is the most important step in elementary training, because, as a matter of course, it at once radiates from the handling of their invented or fanciful material into the ordering of that which they gather from deliberate observation; and, as most often happens, the artistic imagination lends a helping hand to the scientific imagination. Undoubtedly the pleasantest way and the way that lies most readily open in helping the children to acquire and develop this faculty, is the way of literature. Here it is that they see most easily and learn to know most thoroughly those complete and orderly wholes made up from beautiful or significant details, with nothing left fragmentary or unattached. Of course the teacher must choose his bit of literature with a view to this effect--a lyric, a ballad, a story, that actually does show economy of material, reasonable and effective arrangement of details, and a satisfying issue. Not all the literature available for children does display these qualities. Compare, for example, Perrault's _Cinderella_ with Grimm's version of the same tale. The former, whatever the faults of style in the English version we all know, is so far as structure goes, a little classic, having plenty of fancy, to be sure, but exhibiting also perfect economy of incident, certainty and delicacy in the selection and arrangement of details, restraint and truthfulness in the outcome; while the Grimm story shows the chaotic, unguided, wasteful choice and arrangement of the mind which remains the victim of its own fancies. The one is mere art-stuff, the other is art.