Shall we sum up by saying that, on the whole, we find the romantic and fanciful stories best suited in form and spirit to the elementary children; since realistic stories that are really good art, are, as a rule, too mature and too difficult for the children, and realistic stories of the juvenile type are not good enough either in form or in content to justify long class study? However, certain distinctive and desirable results may be expected from specimens interwoven here and there of that kind of story which represents real life, which uses events both possible and probable, and which handles its material by the method of realistic detail. In the earliest years these may be secured by the reading of well-chosen little stories of modern children--indeed, of any modern material, provided it be simple enough--and by the teaching of verses which reflect aspects of actual life--human life or nature. In the third or fourth grade _Robinson Crusoe_ forms a desirable basis for the year's work. It should always be accompanied by shorter bits of a more romantic and heroic type. Later in the elementary period--say in the sixth or seventh grade--the reasonable and practical element may be introduced in the form of a story of the detective kind--a story whose plot presents an intellectual problem, whose atmosphere and method make the impression of actual fact. And in the seventh and eighth grade these same purposes--that of exhibiting to the children actual human life as art sees it, that of bringing them into educational contact with the realistic method, that of counteracting any possible mental danger from too much romance and adventure--may be served by essays chosen on principles already many times suggested. CHAPTER X NATURE AND ANIMAL STORIES