Naturalness, being oneself, is the desideratum. I wonder why we so often
use a preposterous voice,--a super-sweetened whine, in talking to
children? Is it that the effort to realise an ideal of gentleness and
affectionateness overreaches itself in this form of the grotesque? Some
good intention must be the root of it. But the thing is none the less
pernicious. A "cant" voice is as abominable as a cant phraseology. Both
are of the very substance of evil.
"But it is easier to _say,_ 'Be natural' than to _be_ it," said one
teacher to me desperately.
Beyond dispute. To those of us who are cursed with an over-abundant
measure of self-consciousness, nothing is harder than simple naturalness.
The remedy is to lose oneself in one's art. Think of the story so
absorbingly and vividly that you have no room to think of yourself. Live
it. Sink yourself in that mood you have summoned up, and let it carry you.
If you do this, simplicity of matter will come easily. Your choice of
words and images will naturally become simple.
It is, I think, a familiar precept to educators, that children should not
have their literature too much simplified for them. We are told that they
like something beyond them, and that it is good for them to have a sense
of mystery and power beyond the sense they grasp.
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