With some children this period ends later than with others, and of
such we are accustomed to say that they are very backward, and that
they have remained children for a long time. People are in the habit
of saying strange things."

Felix Adler says:

"Perhaps the chief attraction of fairy tales is due to their
representing the child as living in brotherly friendship with nature
and all creatures. Trees, flowers, animals, wild and tame, even the
stars are represented as comrades of children. That animals are only
human beings in disguise is an axiom in the fairy tales. Animals
are humanized, that is, the kinship between animal and human life
is still keenly felt, and this reminds us of those early animistic
interpretations of nature which subsequently led to doctrines
of metempsychosis."[30]

I think that beyond question the finest animal stories are to be
found in the Indian collections, of which I furnish a list in the
last chapter.

With regard to the development of the love of Nature through the
telling of stories, we are confronted with a great difficulty in the
elementary schools because so many of the children have never been out
of the towns, have never seen a daisy, a blade of grass and scarcely a
tree, so that in giving, in the form of a story, a beautiful
description of scenery, you can make no appeal to the retrospective
imagination, and only the rarely gifted child well be able to make
pictures while listening to a style which is beyond his everyday use.
Nevertheless, once in a while, when the children are in a quiet mood,