As a rule, the children's standard is correct enough, and approval or condemnation is justly bestowed, provided that the story has been chosen to suit the child's stage of development. One little girl objected strongly to Macaulay's ideal Roman, who "in Rome's quarrel, spared neither land nor gold, nor son nor wife." "That wasn't right," she said stoutly, "he ought to think of his own wife and children first." She was satisfied, however, when it was explained to her that Horatius might be able to save many fathers to many wives and children. In my earliest teaching days, having found certain history stories successful with children of seven, I tried the same with children of six, but only once. Edmund of East Anglia dying for his faith fell very flat. "What was the good of that?" said one little fellow, "'cause if you're dead you can't do anything! But if you're alive, you can get more soldiers and win a victory." The majority of the class, however, seemed to feel with another who asked, "Why didn't he promise while the Danes were there? He needn't have kept it when they went away." Another way of stating our aim in telling stories to children is that a story presents morality in the concrete. Virtues and vices _per se_ neither attract nor repel, they simply mean nothing to a child, until they are presented as the deeds of man or woman, boy or girl, living and acting in a world recognised as real. One telling story is that of the boy who got hold of Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's Assistant_ and who said to his mother, "Mother, I've been reading 'The Little Merchants' and I know now how horrid it is to cheat and tell lies." "I have been telling you that ever since you could speak," said his mother, to which the boy answered, "Yes, I know, but that didn't interest me." Our children had been told the story of how the Countess of Buchan crowned the Bruce, a duty which should have been performed by her brother the Earl of Fife, who, however, was too much afraid of the wrath of English Edward. A few days after, an argument arose and one little girl was heard to say, "I don't want to be brave," and a boy rejoined, "Girls don't need to be brave." I said, "Which would you rather be, the Countess who put the crown on the King's head, or the brother who ran away?" And quickly came the answer, "Oh! the brave Countess," from the very child who didn't want to be brave! Froebel sums up the teacher's aim in the words: "The telling of stories is a truly strengthening spirit-bath, it gives opportunity for the exercise of all mental powers, opportunity for testing individual judgement and individual feelings."