Perhaps this is the place to insert a caution against the practice of extracting a "deeper meaning" out of a child when he does not easily see it, or of so instructing him that he comes to regard every story that he reads as a sort of picture puzzle in which he is to find a "concealed robber" in the shape of a moral or a general lesson. It is a trivial habit of mind, a pernicious critical obsession, of which many over-earnest adult readers are victims--that of wringing from every and any bit of writing an abstract or moralistic meaning. Another practical caution may be needed as to these interpretations: Do not leave the discussion until the class has worked out from the fable a moral or application that practically the whole class accepts and the teacher indorses. Do not accept numerous guesswork explanations and let them pass. Even the little children, if they are allowed to interpret at all, should be pushed on and guided to a sound and essential exegesis--to use a term more formidable than the thing it names. Do not let them linger even tentatively in that lamentable state of making their explanation rest upon some minor detail, some feature on the outskirts of the story. Help them always to go to the center, and to make the essential interpretation. Make a point of this whenever they have a story that calls for interpretation at all. To the end that they may be sincere and thorough, choose those things whose secondary meanings they may as children feel and understand. The sixth-grade children could, in most schools, interpret _The Ugly Ducking_. They may easily be led into the inner significance of _The Bee-Man of Orn_ or _Old Pipes and the Dryad_. They may go on in seventh grade to certain of Hawthorne's--perhaps "The Great Stone Face" and others of the _Twice Told Tales_; though Hawthorne is so sombre and so moralistic that it is not good for some children to read his tales, still less to linger over them and interpret them. A mature and experienced eighth grade could study "The Snow Image"; but it is too delicate and remote for all eighth-grade classes. "The Minister's Black Veil" is an example of the peculiar Hawthornesque gloom, which the children would not understand or by ill luck would understand, and suffer the consequent dangerous depression. Addison's "The Vision of Mirza" is an example of a standard little allegory, simple and easy, and at the same time full of meaning and fruitful of reflection for the children. The parables of the gospels are quite unique in their beauty and ethical significance, and afford an opportunity for a most valuable kind of training in literary exegesis. Certain tales from the _Gesta Romanorum_ might be read in these older grades, adding the interpretations of the ecclesiastics for the gaiety of the class, and as a terrible warning against wresting an allegory out of a story by sheer violence.