Test your story by telling it to a child or a group of children. Tell the same story not once but many times. _Choice._ Do not pad. Avoid diffuseness. Put in only those details that are salient--that leap out at you--that are necessary to the picture and the meaning. Any one can put in everything. It is only the born story-teller, or the one who will sit down by the side of a child and patiently observe the points that the child sees and likes to hear, that can be trusted to put in and to leave out just the right points. Try writing out the story of Jonah, without the book. Compare your work with the original. How might you have been less diffuse? What necessary points did you omit? Did you use more or fewer general terms than the original? Were your words and expressions so picturesque as those in the text? _Examples._ By way of illustrating the meaning of the foregoing points, it may be interesting to note the difference in concreteness, _i.e._, in the _picture_, to be found in the following paragraphs, all of which are intended to mean practically the same thing. (_a_) One bidden to obey and refusing, but afterward obeying, is a better example of obedience than one who obeys in word but not in deed. (_b_) Some one who was requested to do something refused in word, but obeyed in deed; another complied, but only in word. Which was the better example of obedience? (_c_) If some one in authority should tell some one to do something and he should refuse but afterward comply, and should tell another to do something and he should say that he would without doing so, which of these really would perform the will of the one who gave the command? (_d_) A certain man had some children. One day he told one of them to go and do some work that he wanted him to do. But the child said that he wouldn't, etc. (_e_) Compare with these the same thought clothed in the concrete and picturesque words of our Lord himself: "But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. "He answered and said, I will not: but afterwards he repented, and went. "And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. "Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" It would be equally possible to take the same clear-cut, dramatic picture and load it down--smother it--with words. But this kind of picture-work it is unnecessary to illustrate. _Expression._ Read each of the parables of Jesus, picturing in your mind everything that can be seen, heard, or felt. "Put yourself in his place" regarding every one spoken of. When you have thus pictured the story, and while you are picturing it, read aloud, or tell the story. The expression will take care of itself--_if only you see and hear_. In this simple principle is contained the whole art of expression, _i.e._, of giving forth something which is within.