I say "never" interrupt your story; perhaps it is only fair to amend that,
after the fashion of dear little Marjorie Fleming, and say "never--if you
can help it." For, of course, there are exceptional occasions, and
exceptional children; some latitude must be left for the decisions of
good common sense acting on the issue of the moment.
The children ready, your own mood must be ready. It is desirable that the
spirit of the story should be imposed upon the room from the beginning,
and this result hangs on the clearness and intensity of the teller's
initiatory mood. An act of memory and of will is the requisite. The
story-teller must call up--it comes with the swiftness of thought--the
essential emotion of the story as he felt it first. A single volition puts
him in touch with the characters and the movement of the tale. This is
scarcely more than a brief and condensed reminiscence; it is the stepping
back into a mood once experienced.
Let us say, for example, that the story to be told is the immortal fable
of _The Ugly Duckling_. Before you open your lips the whole pathetic
series of the little swan's mishaps should flash across your mind,--not
accurately and in detail, but blended to a composite of undeserved
ignominy, of baffled innocent wonderment, and of delicious underlying
satire on average views.
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