3. Many good stories have rhythm, recurrence, repetition of the _leit motiv_. "The Three Bears" is a favorite for this reason, among others. The commands of the Lord to Moses were regularly repeated thrice in the Bible story; in the book of Daniel the sonorous catalogue of flute, harp, sackbut, and the rest, comes in none too often for the purposes of the story-teller. 4. All good stories have unity; parts well subordinated; the main lesson unmistakably clear; the point, whether tactfully hidden or brought out by skilful questions, never missed. This use of stories by exactly reproducing them is naturally the teacher's first method. There follow naturally the _adaptation_ of stories and the making of _original_ stories. The latter way must be dismissed with a single word of caution. Beware of a certain fatal facility in reeling off "made-up" stories. Have you not heard such teachers and such stories? The latter at least are not true, or healthy, or wholesome. They are about unreal people who do unnatural things. They are a poor, ragged device for covering the nakedness of barefaced moralizing. No one who has tried to tell Bible stories to children, whether young or old, can fail to appreciate the need of adaptation: of enrichment and expansion on the one hand, of condensation on the other. Suppose the story to be told is the parable of the Good Samaritan. There must first be preliminary work. The minds of the children must be made ready, not merely for the lesson, as, for example, by a talk on the meaning of "neighbor," but also for the story. This latter kind of preparation for three reasons: 1. To give your hearers something of the same knowledge about the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the relations of Jews and Samaritans, the standing and dignity of high priests and Levites possessed by those who heard the parable from the lips of Jesus. 2. To give the setting of the story--time, place, people, customs, atmosphere. 3. To make the language, the steps, the moral, as intelligible to your hearers as they were to the young lawyer to whom the story was first told. The need of the first way of filling in the picture is brought out by Mrs. Gaskoin in the "Children's Treasury of Bible Stories," Part III.: