What every story-teller finds as specially attractive to children, is the epic smoothness, the clear comprehensiveness of the tale, its consistent objectivity. Every narrative which will win the attention of the child, whether it be from Scandinavian, classical, or biblical history, must have these characteristics of the tale. There are hardly any story-tellers who so completely absorb children as old nurses. They never forget any picturesque trait in the tale, they always give the same broad, full narrative. They tell their stories without explanations and without applications, with the real direct feeling of the child for grasping the subject. Everything which disturbs the smooth flow of the narrative, above all, when the narrator puts himself outside of it by indulging in a joke, strikes the child as a profound incongruity. Children are always more or less artistic in their nature, in the sense that they desire to receive an impression in its purity, not as a means to something else. They wish through the story to go through a real experience; at the same time they will say "No," if they are asked whether they would prefer to hear a real history to a story. This apparent contradiction can be explained in this way: the tale presents reality, as reality is conceived of by the naïve fancy of early ages, and is in just the form in which the imagination of the child can receive it. In telling stories, we find, besides, that what attracts children is the narrative of actions; in this roundabout way they get hold of emotions and sentiments. The development of the child--this is a truth which has to be worked out before it can really be taken in--answers in miniature to the development of mankind as a whole. And it follows from this that children combine idealism and realism, as epic national poetry does. Great, good, heroic, supernatural traits affect them most; but only in a concrete shape sensibly perceived, with the richness of the power which comes from life, without any adaptation to our present conceptions. We can test this by telling a real folk-lore tale, and Anderson's version of it. With a few exceptions children are unanimous in calling the first type the most beautiful. Besides what is attractive for lively children, with sound appetites, is quantity, but in no way multiplicity.