The value of this particular passage is the mystery pervading the whole picture, which forms so beautiful an antidote to the eternal explaining of things. I think it of the highest importance for the children to realize that the best and most beautiful things cannot be expressed in everyday language and that they must content themselves with a flash here and there of the beauty which may come later. One does not enhance the beauty of the mountain by pulling to pieces some of the earthy clogs; one does not increase the impression of a vast ocean by analyzing the single drops of water. But at a reverent distance one gets a clear impression of the whole, and can afford to leave the details in the shadow. In presenting such passages (and it must be done very sparingly), experience has taught me that we should take the children into our confidence by telling them frankly that nothing exciting is going to happen, so that they well be free to listen to the mere words. A very interesting experiment might occasionally be made by asking the children some weeks afterwards to tell you in their own words what pictures were made on their minds. This is a very different thing from allowing the children to reproduce the passage at once, the danger of which proceeding I speak of later in detail.[31] We now come to the question as to what proportion of _dramatic excitement_ we should present in the stories for a normal group of children. Personally, I should like, while the child is very young, I mean in main, not in years, to exclude the element of dramatic excitement, but though this may be possible for the individual child, it is quite Utopian to hope that we can keep the average child free from what is in the atmosphere. Children crave for excitement, and unless we give it to them in legitimate form, they will take it in any riotous form it presents itself, and if from our experience we can control their mental digestion by a moderate supply of what they demand, we may save them from devouring too eagerly the raw material they can so easily find for themselves. There is a humorous passage bearing on this question in the story of the small Scotch boy, when he asks leave of his parents to present the pious little book--a gift to himself from an aunt to a little sick friend, hoping probably that the friend's chastened condition will make him more lenient towards this mawkish form of literature. The parents expostulate, pointing out to their son how ungrateful he is, and how ungracious it would be to part with his aunt's gift. Then the boy can contain himself no longer. He bursts out, unconsciously expressing the normal attitude of children at a certain stage of development: "It's a _daft_ book ony way: there's naebody gets kilt ent. I like stories about folk gettin' their heids cut off, or there's nae wile beasts. I I like stories about black men gettin' ate up, an' white men killin' lions and tigers an' bears an'---"