And so our stories should contain all the essentials for the child's
scrip on the road of life, providing the essentials and holding or
withholding the non-essentials. But, above all, let us fill the scrip
with gifts that the child need never reject, even when he passes
through to "the gate of sleep."



CHAPTER V. HOW TO OBTAIN AND MAINTAIN THE EFFECT OF THE STORY.

We are now come to the most important part of the question of story-
telling, to which all the foregoing remarks have been gradually
leading, and that is the effect of these stories upon the child, quite
apart from the dramatic joy he experiences in listening to them, which
would in itself be quite enough to justify us in the telling. But,
since I have urged the extreme importance of giving so much time to
the manner of telling and of bestowing so much care in the selection
of the material, it is right that we should expect some permanent
results or else those who are not satisfied with the mere enjoyment of
the children will seek other methods of appeal--it is to them that I
most specially dedicate this chapter.

I think we are of the threshold of the re-discovery of an old truth,
that _dramatic presentation_ is the quickest and the surest
method of appeal, because it is the only one with which memory plays
no tricks. If a thing has appeared before us in a vital form nothing
can really destroy it; it is because things are often given in a
blurred, faint light that they gradually fade out of our memory. A