First of all they ask whether the story is long after they have begun to hope that it is beautiful. They are glad to hear the same story innumerable times; they have an unconscious need for thorough assimilation, just as soon as what is given to them harmonises with their stage of development. This is true of all subjects. I know children who detest the "choice stories" from the Bible, with which their morning prayers are commenced, but who read the New Testament as a story-book. In this respect, all small children are like great ones, the artists. The imagination of children requires full, entire, deep impressions, as material for their energies that are incessantly creating and reconstructing. And if their sound feeling has not been disturbed by a dualism foreign to them it brings them with remarkably sure instinct to choose the sound, pure, and beautiful, and to reject the unsound, hateful, and crude. Finally, we find in story-telling that children much prefer continuity of impressions though they are said to express preference for change. We never hear children say, "Now tell a funny story, the one before was too gloomy." But if we commence telling gloomy stories they want one after another of the same type. If we had begun telling amusing stories, they never tire of laughing. The changeableness of children in playing, reading, and working is not so general a characteristic of childish nature as is believed. It is true only of children whose readings and games are not adapted to their nature and inclinations. Changeableness is, in a certain way, nature's self-defence against what is unconsciously injurious. As to comic narratives, it is found in story-telling that the child has the most keen sense for the humour of a situation. On the other hand they have hardly a trace of feeling for the humour that rests on deep intellectual contrasts, least of all for humour of the ironical type. If a narrative out of their own world is really to make impression on them, it must be like a tale, full of life, with action and surprises, broad and naïve in its style, without any noticeable aim. All the children's books which children through their life recollect and by which they are impressed, are those that at least in one way or another fulfil these conditions. The rest give other impressions, but even so they become no more harmless than arsenic wall-paper covered by fresh undyed layers. As to the humour of children, it can be easily tested. We can tell them the most comic psychological children's stories; ninety-nine out of a hundred they will declare to be terribly stupid, while a simple history presenting a funny situation doubles them up with laughter.