ocean by analyzing the single drops of water. But at a reverent
distance one gets a clear impression of the whole, and can afford to
leave the details in the shadow.

In presenting such passages (and it must be done very sparingly),
experience has taught me that we should take the children into our
confidence by telling them frankly that nothing exciting is going to
happen, so that they well be free to listen to the mere words. A very
interesting experiment might occasionally be made by asking the
children some weeks afterwards to tell you in their own words what
pictures were made on their minds. This is a very different thing
from allowing the children to reproduce the passage at once, the
danger of which proceeding I speak of later in detail.[31]

We now come to the question as to what proportion of _dramatic
excitement_ we should present in the stories for a normal group of
children. Personally, I should like, while the child is very young,
I mean in main, not in years, to exclude the element of dramatic
excitement, but though this may be possible for the individual child,
it is quite Utopian to hope that we can keep the average child free
from what is in the atmosphere. Children crave for excitement, and
unless we give it to them in legitimate form, they will take it in any
riotous form it presents itself, and if from our experience we can
control their mental digestion by a moderate supply of what they
demand, we may save them from devouring too eagerly the raw material
they can so easily find for themselves.

There is a humorous passage bearing on this question in the story of
the small Scotch boy, when he asks leave of his parents to present the
pious little book--a gift to himself from an aunt to a little sick