There are certain modern symbolistic stories containing elements of the fantastic and supernatural kind that are good and beautiful enough to make a genuinely desirable contribution to the child's experience. It is advisable to reserve these, however, until the children are old enough and experienced enough to understand them as symbols. Such stories are Stockton's _The Bee-Man of Orn_, slightly edited; _The Water Babies_, always expurgated of Kingsley's ponderous fooling; _The Snow Image_, _The Ugly Duckling_. It is not only that the world of imaginary beings and marvelous forces in the folk-tale enchant the child and further his artistic development in the most natural way; the human world of these tales is a delightful and wholesome one for him to know. It is a naïve and simple world, where he may come close to the actual processes of life and see them as picturesque and interesting. Where else in our modern world can a child encounter the shoemaker, the tailor, the miller, the hen-wife, the weaver, the spinner, in their primitive dignity and importance? There are kings, to be sure, and princes, but except in certain of the stories that took permanent literary shape in the seventeenth century, they are, like the kings and princes in the _Odyssey_, plain and democratic monarchs, on terms of beautiful equality with the noble swineherd and the charming tailor. King Arthur in the nursery ballad stole a peck of barley meal to make a bag-pudding, in the homeliest and most democratic way, and the picture of the queen frying the cold pudding for breakfast seems only natural to the little democrats of six and seven in our own day. This world of genuine people and honest occupations is charming and educative in itself, and constitutes the most effective and convincing background for the supernatural and the marvelous when that element is present. When we have said that it is the folk or traditionary tales that we should choose, we do not mean that we should consider the whole realm of folk-lore material, primitive and savage tales--African, Indian, Igorrote; though, as a matter of fact, every teacher of children should be something of a scientific student of folk-stories. It increases his respect and sympathy for the specimens he actually chooses to know where they stand in the large whole--their history and human value. Besides, the experienced teacher will often find in the outlying regions of folk-tales the germ of a story precisely suited to his needs, and he can have the very real pleasure of endowing it with an acceptable form and putting it into educational circulation.