This is, of course, a mistake. In an earlier chapter of this series we have sought to explain why fiction, even of the very best type, should not form the staple of reading for anybody. But it will probably always constitute a very large proportion of the mental food of young people, and it is better to look the fact in the face than to bewail it and preach! The first form in which literature appeals, with any charm or interest, to the child is as the story; and children of larger growth love the story still. What would those do, whose lives are dull, sordid, or depressing, without the power to transport themselves into the lives of other people? It is an actual necessity to exchange their own experience, even for a brief time, for the experience of others. The novel, the imaginative work, appeals more perhaps to girls than to any other section of the community. If they are lonely, ill, unhappy from any cause, they find their solace, companion, anodyne, here. If they are happy, they seek the reflection of their own light-heartedness, and greater happiness yet to come, in the story pages. The imagination is a factor too little understood in the training of character. It is of the utmost importance to give this faculty something good wherewith to nourish it, or it will prey upon itself. Silly, vapid, or morbid girls might perchance have been made different if they had been provided with books that were at once strong and artistically beautiful, instead of the sentimental novelette. We hold a high opinion of the value of fairy-tales of the best kind for children, and are always stirred to wrath by the superior infant who says: “There are no such things as fairies.” Fortunately there are not many children who cannot, for instance, enjoy the charm and pathos of such a story as _The Little Sea Maiden_ or _The Snow Queen_, by Hans Christian Andersen, with many others by that great author too numerous to mention. There are also the exquisite creations of the Countess d’Aulnoy and Perrault, not forgetting two French authors who were the delight of our own childhood—Madame la Comtesse de Ségur and Léon de Laujon. Those delicious volumes, the “Blue,” the “Green,” and the “Red” fairy-book, by Andrew Lang, are a real treasure-store of delight. And it must not be forgotten that some of the fairy-legends they contain are of wonderful antiquity, being found, under different forms, in the early literature of many lands.