flare off into nothingness.

Social experience in all sorts of human natures, disposition, and environing circumstance is immediately valuable to the teacher.

Close acquaintance with children, with their early feelings and experiences, with their timidity or boldness, with their whims or conceits, their dislikes and preferences, their enthusiasms and interests, with their peculiar home and neighborhood experiences and surroundings, with their games and entertainments, with the books and papers they read, with their dolls and playthings, their vacations and outings, with their pets and playhouses, with their tools and mechanical contrivances—all these and other like realities of child life put the teacher on a footing of possible appreciation and sympathy with children. These are the materials and facts which a good teacher knows how to work up in oral recitations.

Of course the kindly, sympathetic social mood which is not fretted by others' frailties and perversities, but, like Irving or Addison, exhibits a liberal charity or humorous affection for all things human, is a fortunate possession or acquisition for the teacher.

2. It may be said also, without fear of violent contradiction, that a teacher needs to be a master of the story he is about to tell. It may be well to spread out to view the important things necessary to such a mastery. The reading over of the story till its facts and episodes have become familiar and can be reproduced in easy narrative is at least a minimum requirement. Even this moderate demand is much more serious than the old text-book routine in history or reading, where the teacher, with one eye on the book, the other on the class, and his finger at the place, managed to get the questions before the class in a fixed order.

Let us look a little beneath the surface of the story. What is its central idea, the author's aim or motive in producing it? Not a little effort and reflection may be necessary to get at the bottom of this question. Some of the most famous stories, like "Aladdin," "Gulliver's Travels," and the "City Musicians," may be so wild and wayward as to elude or blunt the point of this question. The story may have a hard shell, but the sharp teeth of reflection will get at the sweet kernel within, else the story is not worth while. In some of the stories, like "Baucis and Philemon," "The Great Stone Face," "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "The Discontented Pine Tree," and "Hiawatha's Fasting," the main truth is easily reflected from the story and caught up even by the children.

This need for getting at the heart of the story is clearly seen in all the subsequent work. It is the exercise of such a critical judgment which qualifies the teacher to discriminate between good and poor stories. In the treatment of the story the essential topics are laid out upon the basis of this controlling idea or motive. The leading aims and carefully worded questions point toward this central truth. The side lights and attendant episodes are arranged with reference to it like the scenes in a drama. The effort to get at the central truth and the related ideas is a sifting-out process, a mode of assimilating and mastering the story more thorough-going than the mere memorizing of the facts and words for the purpose of narration. The thought-getting self-activity and common-sense logic which are involved in this mode of assimilating a story are good for both pupils and teacher.

The mastery of a story needed by an oral teacher implies abundance of resource in illustrative device and explanation. When children fail to grasp an idea, it is necessary to fall back upon some familiar object or experience not mentioned in the book. Emergencies arise which tax the teacher's ingenuity to the utmost. Even the children will raise queries that baffle his wit. In preparing a story for the classroom it is necessary to see it from many sides, to foresee these problems and difficulties. Oftentimes the collateral knowledge derived from history or geography or from similar episodes in other stories will suggest the solution.

It is a favorite maxim of college teachers and of those who deal mostly with adults or older pupils, that if a person knows a thing he can teach it. Leaving out of account the numerous cases of those who are well posted in their subjects, but cannot teach, it is well to note the scope, variety, and thoroughness of knowledge necessary to a good teacher to handle it skilfully with younger children. Besides the thorough knowledge of the subject which scholars have demanded, it requires an equally clear knowledge of the mental resources of children, the language which they can understand, the things which attract their interest and attention, and the ways of holding the attention of a group of children of different capacities, temper, and disposition. Any dogmatic professor who thinks he can teach the story of "Cinderella" or Andersen's "Five Peas in the Pod," because he has a full knowledge of the facts of the story, should make trial of his skill upon a class of twenty children in the first grade. We suggest, however, that he do it quietly, without inviting in his friends to witness his triumph.

No, the mastery of the subject needed for an effective handling of it in oral work is different and is greater than they have yet dreamed of who think that mere objective knowledge is all that is needed by a teacher. The application of knowledge to life is generally difficult, more taxing by far than the mere acquisition of facts and principles. But the use of one's knowledge in the work of instructing young children, in getting them to acquire and assimilate it, is perhaps the most difficult of all forms of the application of knowledge. It is difficult because it is so complex. To think clearly and accurately on some topic for one's single self is not easy, but to get twenty children of varying capacities and weaknesses, with their stumbling, acquisitive, flaring minds, to keep step along one clear line of thought is a piece of daring enterprise.

The mastery of the story, therefore, for successful oral work, must be detailed, comprehensive, many-sided, and adapted to the fluttering thoughts of childhood.

3. The chief instrument through which the teacher communicates the story is oral speech, and this he needs to wield with discriminating skill and power. Preachers and lecturers, when called upon to talk to children, nearly always talk over their heads, using language not appropriate and comprehensible to children. Those accustomed to deal with little folks are quickly sensitive to this amateur awkwardness. Young teachers just out of the higher schools make the same blunder. They are also inclined to think that fluency and verbosity are a sign of power. But such false tinsel makes no impression upon children except confusion of thought. Children require simple, direct words, clearly defined in thought and grounded upon common experience and conviction. Facts and realities should stand behind the words of a teacher. What he seeks to marshal before children is people and things. Words should serve as photographs of objects; instantaneous views of experiences. In some social and diplomatic circles words are said to conceal thought, but this kind of verbal diplomacy has no place in schools.

It is an interesting question how far the language and style of the authors should be preserved by the narrator. It would be an error to forbid the exact use of the author's words and an equal error to require it. It seems reasonable to say that the teacher should become absorbed in the author's style and mode of presenting the story. This will lead to a close approximation to the author's words, without any slavish imitation. In the midst of