Children -- Books and reading; Children's literature -- Bibliography; Children's stories -- Bibliography; Storytelling
They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead,
And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head.
Then spoke the French lieutenant:
"'Twas the fire that won, not we.
You never struck your flag to _us_; You'll go to England free."[41]
'Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine,
A year when nations ventured against us to combine,
_Quebec_ was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not;
But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot.
And you, if you've got to fight the French, my youngster, bear in
mind
Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind;
Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest,
And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.
But in all our stories, in order to produce desired effects we must
refrain from holding, as Burroughs says, "a brief for either side,"
and we must let the people in the story be judged by their deeds and
leave the decision of the children free in this matter.[42]
In a review of Ladd's "Psychology" in the _Academy_, we find a
passage which refers as much to the story as to the novel:
"The psychological novelist girds up his loins and sets himself to
write little essays on each of his characters. If he have the gift of
the thing he may analyze motives with a subtlety which is more than
their desert, and exhibit simple folk passing through the most
dazzling rotations. If he be a novice, he is reduced to mere crude
invention--the result in both cases is quite beyond the true purpose
of Art. Art--when all is said and done--a suggestion, and it
refuses to be explained. Make it obvious, unfold it in detail, and
you reduce it to a dead letter."
Again, there is a sentence by Schopenhauer applied to novels which
would apply equally well to stories:
"Skill consists in setting the inner life in motion with the smallest
possible array of circumstances, for it is this inner life that
excites our interest."
In order to produce an encouraging and lasting effect by means of our
stories, we should be careful to introduce a certain number from
fiction where virtue is rewarded and vice punished, because to
appreciate the fact that "virtue is its own reward" it takes a
developed and philosophic mind, or a born saint, of whom there will
not, I think, be many among normal children: a comforting fact, on the
whole, as the normal teacher is apt to confuse them with prigs.
A grande dame visiting an elementary school listened to the telling of
an exciting story from fiction, and was impressed by the thrill of
delight which passed through the children. But when the story was
finished, she said: "But _oh!_ what a pity the story was not
taken from actual history!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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