Part 2

And he rushed thump, thump, after Johnny Cake, who never stopped to look behind him. Before long the bear was left far behind, so at last, breathless and panting, he stretched himself out by the roadside to rest.

On ran Johnny Cake. By and by he came to a wolf. “Where are you going, Johnny Cake?” yelped the wolf.

“I’ve outrun an old man, an old woman, a little boy, two well diggers, and a bear, and I can outrun you, too-o-o!”

“You can, can you?” snarled the wolf; “we’ll see about that!”

And he set into a gallop after Johnny Cake, who went on so fast that the wolf saw there was no hope of overtaking him, and he, too, lay down to rest.

On ran Johnny Cake. By and by he came to a fox that lay quietly in a corner of the fence.

“Where are you going, Johnny Cake?” called the fox, in a sharp voice, but without getting up.

“I’ve outrun an old man, an old woman, a little boy, two well diggers, a bear, and a wolf, and I can outrun you, too-o-o!”

“I can’t quite hear you, Johnny Cake; won’t you come a little closer?” said the fox.

Johnny Cake went a little nearer to the fox and called out in a very loud voice:

“I’ve outrun an old man, an old woman, a little boy, two well diggers, a bear, and a wolf, and I can outrun you, too-o-o!”

“Can’t quite hear you; won’t you come a little closer?” said the fox, in a feeble voice, as he put one paw behind his ear.

Johnny Cake came up quite close, and leaning towards the fox, screamed out, “I’ve outrun an old man, an old woman, a little boy, two well diggers, a bear, and a wolf, and I can outrun you, too-o-o!”

“You can, can you?” yelped the fox, and he snapped up Johnny Cake in a twinkling.

In the Bohemian land there lived a woman, who had one daughter named Katinka, and a stepdaughter named Dobrunka. The woman, naturally, loved her own daughter more than she did her stepdaughter, but her own child was not as fair nor had she as pleasing a disposition as had the stepdaughter Dobrunka.

This displeased the woman so that she made Dobrunka, the stepdaughter, do all the housework, the cooking and the churning, whereas, her own daughter, Katinka, she dressed in fine clothes and let her live in idleness. And more than that—she frequently allowed Katinka to order Dobrunka around the house as if she were a servant. Dobrunka was always pleasing in countenance and in spirit, and the work she did made her strong and wholesome, whereas the idleness in which Katinka lived made her very disagreeable.

One day, Katinka came to Dobrunka, and said: “Dobrunka, I want some violets; go out into the fields or the forest and find me some.”

Dobrunka said, “Why Katinka, that is a strange request. This is not the time for violets; it is mid-winter.”

Whereupon Katinka grew very angry and said: “Go, do as I say and bring me some violets, or I shall beat you to a jelly.” With that Katinka pushed her out of the door and with the help of her mother barred the door behind her.

Now, it was mid-winter and snow was upon the ground, and Dobrunka started through the forest not knowing what to do. As she walked along the forest, she saw on a hillside a fire burning. Soon she came to the fire, and there sat twelve old men with long grey beards. Their names were the Twelve Months.

It was mid-winter, and January, of course, was presiding. As Dobrunka came near to the group, not knowing what to do nor where to go, she stopped and began to cry.

January saw her, and said: “Child, why do you stand there shivering and crying, what is the matter?”

Dobrunka said, “My mother and sister have driven me from the house, and they said if I do not bring them some violets they will beat me to a jelly.”

January felt sorry for the girl, and he said: “Violets do not belong to me; perhaps March can help you.”

Near by sat March, and he turned and saw the girl was troubled and he pitied her.

March stood up and waved his wand over the fire. The fire and the circle of old men disappeared. March and the girl were standing in a field and the air was fragrant with the breath of early Spring. March said, “Daughter look down at your feet, and gather as many violets as you wish!”

As Dobrunka looked, all about her the field was purple with violets. She stooped down and gathered a great handful of them.

When she came back to the house and entered the door, Katinka saw her, and said, “Yes, I knew you could bring them, you were just pretending that you could not.” And, the perfume of the violets filled the whole house.

Some days after Katinka came again to Dobrunka, and said:

“Dobrunka, I want some strawberries, red and fresh from the fields.”

Dobrunka said, “Why sister, how strangely you talk. This is not the time for strawberries; it is mid-winter. But Katinka said: “Obey me, you said there were no violets the other day; you brought them,—go, bring me some strawberries or I will beat you to a jelly.”

With that she pushed her out of the door and the stepmother helped her bar the door.

Dobrunka then turned toward the forest again. Snow was still on the ground. She walked along toward the mountain and saw again the fire burning in the distance. Soon she was standing where sat the twelve old men in a circle.

January heard her footfall on the snow. Dobrunka stopped and began crying. January said to her, “Child, why did you come back, we gave you violets and still you are back again?”

Dobrunka said, “My mother and sister have driven me from my home, and they say if I do not bring some strawberries they will beat me to a jelly.”

January said: “I am sorry, but I cannot help you. Strawberries do not belong to me; perhaps May can help you.”

May was sitting across the circle. He looked at the girl standing there in trouble and he felt sorry for her. He stood up and waved his wand across the fire. The old men disappeared and the fire. Dobrunka found herself standing in a field. It was a perfect day in May. Above her head the sky was soft and blue; in every treetop sang the birds. May, the old man, stood by her and said:

“Look child at the earth and see what you will find.”

Dobrunka looked, and all about in great bunches grew strawberries, peeping like jewels from the green leaves.

May said to her, “Help yourself.” And stooping down she gathered her hands full and then ran back to the house.

When she entered the door, her sister seized the berries and ate them all up.

A few days after that, Katinka came again to Dobrunka and said: “Dobrunka, I want some apples, fresh and ripe; go to the forest and find me some.”

Dobrunka said, “Why sister how strangely you talk,—this is not the time for apples; it is mid-winter.”

Katinka said, “Lazy girl, you said you could not find the violets, but you did. You said there were no strawberries, but you brought them; go, and get me some apples or I will beat you to a jelly.”

Whereupon she pushed her from the door and the stepmother helped her to bar the door behind her.

Dobrunka turned again to the forest. She remembered where the old men lived on the mountainside and was soon standing near the circle. She crept along very quietly. She did not wish to ask the old men to help her again because they already had been so kind to her, but January saw her standing with bowed head and shivering in the cold.

He said, “Child, child, why did you come back here? We sent you away the other day with your wants supplied.”

Then Dobrunka said: “My mother and sister have driven me from the house, they say if I do not bring them some apples they will beat me to a jelly.”

January said, “Apples do not belong to me; perhaps September can help you.”

On the opposite side of the circle sat September, and he saw the girl standing there, helpless. He felt sorry for her and standing up, he waved his wand over the fire. The circle and the old men disappeared. They were standing in a gently rolling field. The air was soft; the crickets were chirping in the grass and there was in the sky a haze. All around here stood great apple trees, loaded with fruit, red and yellow.

September said to the girl, “Help yourself.”

Dobrunka picked up two of the largest apples, and then fled back to the house. When her sister saw her, she seized the apples, ate one and gave the other to her mother. As soon as the apples were eaten,—she came to Dobronka, and said, “Why did you not bring more apples?”

Then Dobrunka told her about the old men and how they had helped her each time.

“Then,” said Katinka, “I know why you did not bring more, you ate them up on the way. Go back, and bring me more or I will beat you.”

Dobrunka said, “Please do not send me again in the cold,” and she begged that she might stay in the house.

Then Katinka said, “I will go myself; if you could get them I can get them from the old men.”

She left the house and walked through the forest, and soon came in sight of the fire where sat the twelve old men. When she came near to them, she said, “Hello there, old grey beards, I want some apples and want them quick!”

January was not accustomed to such words. He stood up and waved his wand over the fire and the fire and the circle were gone.

Katinka found herself in a great forest. The wind was wailing through the treetops, the snow was falling and it was bitter cold. Katinka did not come back to the house. Her mother waited for her and by and by she started out in search of her, but she, too, was lost in the storm that raged, and never came back.

Dobrunka waited in the house. The night passed, and the next day and many days. By and by the snow melted. The birds and flowers of Spring came, but still the lost ones did not come back. Dobrunka had the house all alone. One day, the handsomest youth in all the world came by and met Dobrunka. They became friends, and afterwards they were married and lived happily forever thereafter.

* * * * *

The Storytellers’ League, of the State Normal School, of Dillon, Montana, have decided for the present year to devote their attention to a line of work, which so far as we know, has not yet been attempted by any other League. They will investigate the part that the supernatural, especially witchcraft, plays in literature, and will follow it not only through folk literature, but the following units: Goethe’s Faust, Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Konigs-kinder and Hansel and Gretel. The general theme will be broken from time to time by the introduction of stories suitable for a special session. At the last meeting in December the program will be given over to Christmas stories, tales and legends. Miss Florence Mayer is President of the League.

STORY TELLING AND EDUCATION

_BY GEORGE EVERETT PARTRIDGE, Ph.D._

The recent revival of story telling raises many interesting questions, both practical and theoretical. Considered as a part of a larger movement,—an effort to control and utilize the powers concealed within the instincts and unconscious forces of the mind—story telling takes a place in a problem which we can hardly be mistaken in calling one of the most important of our day. We have tended to value, in education, only that which we can see and fully understand; but now, as we begin seriously to employ _arts_ in the school, and in the arts to subordinate knowledge to feeling, to use methods that yield no immediate or practical return, we demand an increasing faith in the powers of receptivity and inner response of the child, and we must learn more and more to detect, and to be satisfied with, unseen and remote effects.

In the art-invasion of the school, which is one aspect of this movement toward a wider education, it is difficult to see how, in the near future, we can be carried too far. We have been in the habit of emphasizing so much the learning process, that we are in danger of preventing the free and experimental attitude toward these new interests that seems needed at the present time. We are likely to have too little, rather than too much, faith in the play motives, the æsthetic moods, and the subconscious powers. We shall still want the child to _express_, to dramatize, to be examined upon, everything he receives: to externalize every response, even in the most intimate regions of feeling.

In calling the influx of artistic elements and methods into the school one phase of the education of the _unconscious and deeper powers_, we have a significant practical view-point, and are at the same time in touch with new results in science. As a practical ideal, we must aim to educate _all_ the individual, not merely thought and voluntary movement. We wish to reach the inherited mechanisms of the organism; we wish to play upon all the potentialities of feeling and volition, and to utilize powers latent in the deposits of experience that the child has brought with him to the world.

These new results in science give to the well-worn principle that we must educate _all_ the powers of the child a new meaning, and at least three important advances in psychology, in recent years, combine to put solid ground under our feet for a practical æsthetics, and give us principles by which we can coördinate the artistic elements and methods of the school.

The first of these advances is the genetic psychology that has arisen and flourished on the basis of Darwinian principles in biology, and which has shown the fundamental place of the feelings in education. The second is the new psycho-analysis, which, by showing the laws of the symbolic expression of hidden desires and feelings, has given us a new conception of the relation of art to life. The third new result is in the psychology of _valuation_, which has traced out, at least roughly, the course of development of the æsthetic and ethical states of consciousness.

New and incomplete and lacking in coördination as these principles are, they already yield us practical insights such as we have never been able to obtain from the older philosophies. We may confidently expect to see in time a solid science of the feelings, which will give us a “union of art and life” in a sound æstheticism in education: an æstheticism that will help to organize and control the fundamental feelings, and will overcome the superficial aloofness of our prevailing too formal and too detached art. This will be based upon the discovery that art, and the need of art, extend throughout all phases of human life; and that all true art must _work_ in intimate union with practical affairs.

Considerations, such as these, seem essential for any study of the place of story telling, or any other _art_, in education.

II

The story telling “situation” is an artistic situation. It falls under the category of the _beautiful_, and is subject to all the general principles of æsthetics. Thus it stands in striking contrast with all formal methods of instruction, and all routine and unemotional learning. In such artistic situations the child is _more fully present_ than in the formal school work, for he brings with him his deeper, _unconscious_ nature.

The nature of the story as an educational art is best shown by its place in primitive life. Here the function of the story is clearly practical. By it religion, and all beliefs, morals, customs, and traditions are conveyed to the child. The folk-tales, the legends, the fairy-tales, the epics, and the myths of the world are not _merely_ fanciful inventions of man; in a far more profound way than we yet fully understand, they express man’s most urgent needs and desires. Primitive man began early to express, in his stories, by means of a varied symbolism, his own hopes and wishes,—sometimes, thereby, keeping them alive through hard conditions, and passing them on to new generations; sometimes obtaining for them a vicarious satisfaction. These racial stories affect our feelings deeply, simply because there is _continuity in evolution_: because the past still lives in the present: because these stories are the products of universal needs, and symbolize or represent them. The story is thus a _language of the feelings_; it is a means of communication between the past and the unconscious and undeveloped potentialities of the present. The story is a _symbolic_ language: its scenes and words are often trivial, but underneath them runs a deeper meaning. Everyone who has told stories must have felt this. We all know that when we tell a good story to a child, the child is receiving from us indescribable meanings, which the story itself conveys, but does not really contain or express,—and this sense of free-masonry of emotional meaning is the greatest charm of the story. One who feels this does not need to point a moral to a tale; and one who feels the need of the moral does not really tell his story.

Without knowing something about the nature of the æsthetic feelings and moods it is impossible to understand the scope of such an art as story telling. We are likely to think of æsthetic feeling as passive, or as merely “refining” in its effects: or, if inspiring, as mainly affecting the creative, artistic imagination. But this is not the case. All æsthetic feelings are intensely active. Because the responses are internal,—a play of forces within the organism—we are likely to overlook them altogether. In every æsthetic state, we have good reason to believe, there is a play of volitions, an active choosing, a drama of aroused and satisfied desire—definite, specific desire, which, though it may often be unconscious, if none the less real. And it is because of this drama of desire that æsthetic situations have meaning and value—educational value.

We cannot at present know,—and as practical educators we do not need to know—precisely the mechanism or content of every emotional state; yet we can often see clearly some of the deeper meaning and effect of æsthetic valuations. We can see sometimes, in the child’s interest in fairy-tales, for example, that the child is playing a part; that he is accepting for _himself_ misfortunes for the sake of the good that issues from them; that he is appreciating, in some half-conscious way, the nature of a world in which events are not separate and haphazard, but are connected through far-seeing purposes. The child is not merely pleased at the story; he reacts to it by taking attitudes: by accepting, rejecting, deciding; by desiring, and by receiving satisfaction. In such experiences the child is even acquiring religion, and the standards and moods of later life are made up of just such feelings as are conveyed so effectively through the medium of the artistic story.

The story, then, is an important method in education. It is a very effective and natural devise for conveying the ideals and volitions of one generation to the mind of another, and of coördinating many individuals by means of the common possession of these ideals and purposes. We have yet to learn fully how far we can go by this and other kinds of artistry in teaching; but that the story should have a serious place in education, seems wholly certain. Just how large a place it should occupy is to be determined, in part, by experiment. Good story telling may be utilized in so many subjects of the curriculum, for so many purposes, and in so many departments of education, within and without the school; its artistic possibilities are so great; the present momentum of interest is so strong, and so well justified by science, that we may expect to see a widespread use of the story as a method of education. We shall expect to see story telling become a part of the equipment of all teachers, and the story literature of the world become more and more accessible, and better adapted to the child. And it is likely that the professional story teller will again flourish among us, as in the days before books and schools robbed him of his art.

* * * * *

The Story Tellers’ League, of Nashville, Tenn., issues an attractive Year Book for the current year. Among the topics announced for the year is a Greek pageant, “The Fire Regained,” to be given out of doors at the Parthenon, in Centennial Park. This pageant was written by Mr. Sidney Hirsch, a member of the Story Tellers’ League, and dedicated to the League. A popular subscription of $10,000 has been made by the city for its production. Seats will be arranged for 20,000 people. The Schools will furnish 800 young men and young women for the performance; a herd of sheep and a flock of doves enter into the pageant. It will be given five afternoons early in May.

STORY TELLING IN BOSTON

_BY MARY W. CRONAN_

Official Story Teller for the Boston Public Libraries

I really felt most delighted at the thought of the new magazine and want to send an article, but can’t seem to find time to write it. Perhaps it will answer if I just tell you what is being done in Boston Libraries and Settlements by Mr. Cronan and myself, and let you choose such items as seem of interest.

The Library classes are held in the afternoon. On Saturday from three to four Mr. Cronan and I tell stories in the Central Library. On Monday I go to Brighton; Tuesday to Jamaica Plain; Wednesday to South Boston; Thursday the West End; Friday Shawmut Ave. Branch. All these are Branches of the Central Library. The ages of the children are from ten to fourteen. The attendance from one to two hundred.

The first part of the hour is devoted to telling the story of some book which the children have not read and which would be a valuable book for them to know. As the boys greatly outnumber the girls, the book is chosen which is likely to appeal to them. I have told in “continued story” form each book lasting from four to six periods of story telling the following:

The Talisman Oliver Twist Spenser’s “Faerie Queen” Water Babies Robin Hood King Arthur and His Knights The Rhinegold Siegfried Treasure Island Captains Courageous Peter Pan The Bluebird Jean Valjean The Odyssey Finn and his Mighty Deeds The Christmas Carol Konigs Kinder, etc.

The last twenty minutes of the hour is usually devoted to some story of fun or fancy—a fairy tale—or Brer’ Rabbit’s pranks. In the evening similar work is done in Social Settlements with groups of boys from twelve to fourteen years of age. At Denison House we have ninety-six boys of Syrian and Irish nationality. There are groups in the Ruggles Street Neighborhood House—the “South End Industrial School,” Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House, South End House and Lincoln House.

In the summer story telling groups are held on the roof gardens of the Settlement House or in the yard where we sit on the grass and tell stories in the twilight—often to groups of one hundred and fifty children.

The accompanying newspaper clippings about my work may be of interest:

INTRODUCES THE CHILD TO THE BEST LITERATURE

“I do not tell stories to amuse children, but to instruct them. The purpose is to introduce the child to the best literature and not to entertain him, although he is at the same time entertained.

“Story telling bridges the gap between the child and the library and brings him into literature. It develops the child in every way and teaches him what is really worth his while to read.

“It develops the imagination, trains his mind and he gets many moral lessons, although I never tell stories as a means of preaching to children.

DEVELOPS THE CHILD’S MIND

“Story telling means far more to children than many people realize. The love for stories is born in every child and it takes but a remarkably short time before almost every child becomes a really wonderful listener.