very keen scientist was deploring to me, on one occasion, the fact
that stories were told so much in the schools, to the detriment of
science, for which he claimed the same indestructible element that I
recognize in the best-told stories. Being very much interested in her
point of view, I asked her to tell me, looking back on her school
days, what she could remember as standing out from other less clear
information. After thinking some little time over the matter, she
said with some embarrassment, but with candor that did her much honor:

"Well, now I come to think of it, it was the story of Cinderella."

Now, I am not holding any brief for this story in particular. I think
the reason it was remembered was because of the dramatic form in which
it was presented to her, which fired her imagination and kept the
memory alight. I quite realize that a scientific fact might also have
been easily remembered if it had been presented in the form of a
successful chemical experiment; but this also has something of the
dramatic appeal and will be remembered on that account.

Sully says: "We cannot understand the fascination of a story for
children save in remembering that for their young minds, quick to
imagine, and unversed in abstract reflection, words are not dead
things but _winged_, as the old Greeks called them."[35]

The _Red Queen_, in "Alice Through the Looking-Glass," was more
psychological than she was aware of when she made the memorable
statement: "When once you've _said_ a thing, that _fixes_ it, and
you must take the consequences."

In Curtin's "Introduction to Myths and Folk Tales of the Russians",