"Do you know that last night I had a very strange dream, which I am going to tell you before I begin the stories? I dreamed that I was walking along the streets of---[here would follow the town in which I happened to be speaking], with a large bundle on my shoulders, and this bundle was full of stories which I had been collecting all over the world in different countries; and I was shouting at the top of my voice: 'Stories! Stories! Stories! Who will listen to my stories?' And the children came flocking round me in my dream, saying: 'Tell _us_ your stories. _We_ will listen to your stories.' So I pulled out a story from my big bundle and I began in a most excited way, "Once upon a time there lived a King and a Queen who had no children, and they---' Here a little boy, _very_ much like that little boy I see sitting in the front row, stopped me, saying: 'Oh, I know _that_ old story: it's Sleeping Beauty.' "So I pulled out a second story, and began: 'Once upon a time there was a little girl who was sent by her mother to visit her grandmother ---' Then a little girl, _so_ much like the one sitting at the end of the second row, said: 'Oh! everybody knows that story! It's---'" Here I would like to make a judicious pause, and then the children in the audience would shout in chorus, with joyful superiority: "Little Red Riding-Hood!" before I had time to explain that the children in my dream had done the same. This method I repeated two or three times, being careful to choose very well-known stories. By this time the children were all encouraged and stimulated. I usually finished with congratulations on the number of stories they knew, expressing a hope that some of those I was going to tell that afternoon would be new to them. I have rarely found this plan to fail to establish a friendly relation between oneself and the juvenile audience. It is often a matter of great difficulty, not to _win_ the attention of an audience but to _keep_ it, and one of the most subtle artifices is to let the audience down (without their perceiving it) after a dramatic situation, so that the reaction may prepare them for the interest of the next situation. An excellent instance of this is to be found in Rudyard Kipling's story of "The Cat That Walked . . ." where the repetition of words acts as a sort of sedative until one realizes the beginning of a fresh situation. The great point is never to let the audience quite down, that is, in stories which depend on dramatic situations. It is just a question of shade and color in the language. If you are telling a story in sections, and one spread over two or three occasions, you should always stop at an exciting moment. It encourages speculation in the children's minds, which increases their interest when the story is taken up again.