There is little danger of making poetry that is good enough to be given as poetry, do the work of information-teaching. It seems easy to see in the case of the poem, with its more imaginative method and its more artificial form, that you spoil it as art when you teach it as science. This fact is equally true of a good literary story. CHAPTER XI SYMBOLISTIC STORIES, FABLES, AND OTHER APOLOGUES It is not possible, in the plan adopted for this little book, to keep the topics always strictly apart. It is not possible, for example, to relegate to one section all one has to say about folk- and fairy-stories, and to another all about fables, because each type has so many aspects and radiations. Fables are stories; most of them are animal-stories; they are symbolistic or figurative or allegorical--so that one must approach them from many points of view, and take them into consideration in many connections. There need be, therefore, no apology for taking up in this new section topics partially discussed elsewhere. It seems quite consonant with our best conclusions about younger children to say that, on the whole, in the earlier years of their school life their literature should be of that objective kind where no more is meant than meets the eye. They may have tales of adventure, of plain experience, of highly imaginative experience, of animal life, of fairyland; but as far as possible let them be such as contain no occult and secondary meanings. There are many things desirable for all children, and under certain school conditions compulsory or indispensable for some children, which do have this secondary meaning. Such, if one uses them, are the stories from the great myths; such are practically all of Andersen's _Märchen_; such are the legendary stories of the Hebrew patriarchs. Of course, the parent or teacher who presents these things to his children may say that the children never perceive or even suspect an inner meaning. And it is true that, with great care and skill, the objective upper surface may be kept before some children. But, on the whole, it is good morality and good pedagogy to give to the children nothing that you are not willing, even desirous, that they should probe to the bottom. It is always a misfortune when one must say to a child, "I can't explain that to you now;" "You can't understand that yet;" so much a misfortune that no teacher should ever invite it. If you have ever looked into the faces of the fifth grade when they were searching you with questions to get at the meaning of Andersen's pessimistic story of _The Little White Hen_; if you have seen the sixth grade grow melancholy, with a vague augury of trouble they could not fathom, when you have read to them the brilliant but tragic little apologue of _Mr. Seguin's Goat_; if you have been obliged to explain to some puzzled and suspicious eight-year-old the _raison d'être_ of the clock-ticking alligator in _Peter Pan_, you have resolved hereafter to