For the ease of the teacher, then, no less than for the joy
of the children, may the art of story-telling be urged as pre-eminent over
the art of reading.
It is a very old, a very beautiful art. Merely to think of it carries
one's imaginary vision to scenes of glorious and touching antiquity. The
tellers of the stories of which Homer's _Iliad_ was compounded; the
transmitters of the legend and history which make up the _Gesta
Romanorum_; the travelling raconteurs whose brief heroic tales are woven
into our own national epic; the grannies of age-old tradition whose
stories are parts of Celtic folk-lore, of Germanic myth, of Asiatic
wonder-tales,--these are but younger brothers and sisters to the
generations of story-tellers whose inventions are but vaguely outlined in
resultant forms of ancient literatures, and the names of whose tribes are
no longer even guessed. There was a time when story-telling was the
chiefest of the arts of entertainment; kings and warriors could ask for
nothing better; serfs and children were satisfied with nothing less. In
all times there have been occasional revivals of this pastime, and in no
time has the art died out in the simple human realms of which mothers are
queens. But perhaps never, since the really old days, has story-telling so
nearly reached a recognised level of dignity as a legitimate and general
art of entertainment as now.
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