real interest deep down, but no power, or perhaps no wish, to display
that interest, which is deliberately concealed at times so as to
protect oneself from questions which may be put.

6. _The danger of overillustration_. After long experience, and
after considering the effect produced on children when pictures are
shown to them during the narration, I have come to the conclusion that
the appeal to the eye and the ear at the same time is of doubtful
value, and has, generally speaking, a distracting effect: the
concentration on one channel of communication attracts and holds the
attention more completely. I was confirmed in this theory when I
addressed an audience of blind people[4] for the first time, and
noticed how closely they attended, and how much easier it seemed to
them because they were so completely "undistracted by the sights
around them."

I have often suggested to young teachers two experiments in support
of this theory. They are not practical experiments, nor could they
be repeated often with the same audience, but they are intensely
interesting, and they serve to show the _actual_ effect of appealing to
one sense at a time. The first of these experiments is to take a small
group of children and suggest that they should close their eyes while
you tell them a story. You will then notice how much more attention is
given to the intonation and inflection of the voice. The reason is
obvious. With nothing to distract the attention, it is concentrated on
the only thing offered the listeners, that is, sound, to enable them to
seize the dramatic interest of the story.

We find an example of the dramatic power of the voice in its appeal to
the imagination in one of the tributes brought by an old pupil to