other elemental beings. Andrew Lang says: "Without our savage ancestors
we should have had no poetry. Conceive the human race born into the
world in its present advanced condition, weighing, analyzing, examining
everything. Such a race would have been destitute of poetry and
flattened by common-sense. Barbarians did the _dreaming_ of the world."

But it is a question of much debate among educators as to what should
be the period of the child's life in which these stories are to be
presented. I, myself, was formerly of the opinion that they belonged
to the very primitive age of the individual, just as they belong to
the primitive age of the race, but experience in telling stories has
taught me to compromise.

Some people maintain that little children, who take things with brutal
logic, ought not to be allowed the fairy tale in its more limited form
of the supernatural; whereas, if presented to older children, this
material can be criticized, catalogued and (alas!) rejected as
worthless, or retained with flippant toleration.

While realizing a certain value in this point of view, I am bound to
admit that if we regulate our stories entirely on this basis, we lose
the real value of the fairy tale element. It is the one element which
causes little children to _wonder_, simply because no scientific
analysis of the story can be presented to them. It is somewhat
heartrending to feel that "Jack and the Bean Stalk" and stories of
that ilk are to be handed over to the critical youth who will condemn
the quick growth of the tree as being contrary to the order of nature,
and wonder why _Jack_ was not playing football on the school team
instead of climbing trees in search of imaginary adventures.