The drolls, when one chooses well among them, are precisely adapted to add the element of fun that should never be long absent from the children's literature. There are, of course, numberless comic folk-tales too coarse and too brutal to be used in our day, except by the scientific student of culture. The fun of the drolls is, as a matter of fact, not on a high level--practical jokes, perfectly obvious _contretemps_, the adventures and achievements of noodles, are their typical material. But this is the comic level of the average child for whom we choose them. It is the first step above physical fun, and from this step we can undertake to start him on his delightful journey up the ever-refining path of literary comedy. From tricks and horse-play he may pass rapidly to humor and nonsense. But at six-seven, having had the _Little Guinea Pig_ and _Simple Simon_ as an undergraduate kinder, he is ready for _Hans in Luck_ and _Mr. Miacca_. Like the Olympians themselves, he will roar at Hephaestus' limp, and with the council of Homeric heroes he will laugh at the physical chastisement of Thersites, and enjoy the none-too-penetrating trick that Odysseus played upon the blundering Polyphemus. There is no danger that the children will not outgrow this stage of comic appreciation--the danger is that they will outgrow it instead of adding to it all the other stages. There is something wrong with the artistic culture of the man who cannot at forty smile at the follies of the Peterkin family, at the same time that he completely savors the comedy of _The Egoist_. The accumulative tales have their service to render. Perhaps their characteristic moment comes a little earlier than even the first year of school. Before he is six the little citizen of the world will have been building up his vision of the interdependence and interaction of men and things. To this vision the accumulative tales bring the contribution of art. Many of them, being the simplest adjustment of incident to incident, such as _The Old Woman Who Found the Sixpence_ and _The Little Red Hen_, are ideal for the nursery and kindergarten child. Others still, built upon the accumulative principle, but more complex or more artistic in form, will charm and instruct the first-year scholars--_Henny-Penny_, for example, and _Hans in Luck_, and _The Three Billy Goats Gruff_. From the point of view of composition, they may well be studied by the older children, because they permit the examination of the separate incidents, and exhibit in most cases the very simplest principles of structure.