"See there, now! Did I not tell thee to keep an exact account? There
is an end of the story. I can go no further."

"How can this be?" said Don Quixote. "Is it so essential to the story
to know the exact number of goats that passed over, that if one error
be made the story can proceed no further?"

"Even so," said Sancho Panza.

8. _The danger of overexplanation_ is fatal to the artistic success of
any story, but it is even more serious in connection with stories told
from an educational point of view, because it hampers the imagination of
the listener, and since the development of that faculty is one of our
chief aims in telling these stories, we must leave free play, we must
not test the effect, as I have said before, by the material method of
asking questions. My own experience is that the fewer explanations you
offer, provided you have been careful with the choice of your material
and artistic in the presentation, the more the child will supplement by
his own thinking power what is necessary for the understanding of the story.

Queyrat says: "A child has no need of seizing on the exact meaning of
words; on the contrary, a certain lack of precision seems to stimulate
his imagination only the more vigorously, since it gives him a broader
liberty and firmer independence."[8]

9. _The danger of lowering the standard_ of the story in order to
appeal to the undeveloped taste of the child is a special one. I
am alluding here only to the story which is presented from the
educational point of view. There are moments of relaxation in a
child's life, as in that of an adult, when a lighter taste can be