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Book
Excerpts:
If
you have never seen an indifferent
child aroused or a hostile
child
conquered to affection by a beguiling tale, you can hardly appreciate
the truth of the first statement; but nothing is more familiar in the
story-teller's experience. An amusing, but--to me--touching experience
recently reaffirmed in my mind this power of the story to
establish friendly relations.
My
three-year-old niece, who had not seen me since her babyhood, being
told that Aunt Sara was coming to visit her, somehow confused the
expected
guest with a more familiar aunt, my sister. At sight
of me, her rush of welcome relapsed into a puzzled and hurt withdrawal,
which yielded to no explanations or proffers of affection.
All the first day she followed me about at a
wistful
distance, watching me as if I might at any moment turn into the
well-known and beloved relative I ought to have been. Even by
undressing time I had not progressed far enough to be allowed intimate
approach to small sacred nightgowns and diminutive shirts.
The next morning, when I opened the door of the
nursery where
her maid was brushing her hair, the same dignity radiated from the
little round figure perched
on its high chair, the same
almost hostile shyness gazed at me from the great expressive eyes.
Obviously, it was time for something to be done.
Disregarding my lack of invitation, I drew up a stool, and seating
myself
opposite the small unbending person, began in a
conversational murmur: "M--m, I guess those are tingly-tanglies up
there in that curl Lottie's combing; did you ever hear about the
tingly-tanglies?
They live in little
girls' hair, and they aren't any bigger than that, and when anybody
tries to comb the hair they curl both weeny legs round, so, and hold on
tight with both weeny hands, so, and won't let go!" As I paused, my
niece made a queer little sound indicative of query battling with
reserve.
I pursued the subject: "They like best
to live right over a little girl's ear, or down in her neck, because it
is easier to hang on, there; tingly-tanglies are very smart, indeed."
"What's ti-ly-ta-lies?" asked a curious, guttural little
voice.
I explained the nature and genesis of
tingly-tanglies, as revealed to me some decades before by my inventive
mother, and proceeded to develop their
simple adventures.
When next I paused the small guttural voice demanded,
"Say
more," and I joyously obeyed.
When the curls were
all curled and the last little button buttoned, my baby niece climbed
hastily down from her chair, and deliberately up into my lap. With a
caress rare to her habit she spoke my name, slowly and tentatively,
"An-ty Sai-ry?" Then, in an assured tone, "Anty Sairy, I love you so
much I don't know what to do!" And, presently, tucking a confiding hand
in mine to lead me to breakfast, she explained sweetly, "I didn' know
you when you comed las' night, but now I know you all th' time!"
"Oh, blessed tale," thought I, "so easy a passport to a
confidence so desired, so complete!" Never had the witchery of the
story to the ear of a child come more closely home to me. But the fact
of the witchery was no new experience. The surrender of the
natural child to the story-teller is as absolute and
invariable as that
of a devotee to the priest of his own sect.
This power is especially valuable in the case of
children
whose natural shyness has been augmented by rough
environment or by the
strangeness of foreign habit. And with such children even
more than with others it is also true that the story is a simple and
effective means of forming the habit of concentration, of fixed
attention; any teacher who deals with this class of
children knows the
difficulty of doing this fundamental and indispensable thing, and the
value of any practical aid in doing it.
More than
one instance of the power
of story-telling to develop attentiveness
comes to my mind, but the most prominent in memory is a
rather recent incident, in which the actors were boys and girls far
past the child-stage of docility.
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