ch as the
ancients wore--these accompanied by intelligent description of the times
and places to which they belonged are all a stimulus to the child's
imagination which should not be overlooked. The very fact that they
suggest other peoples and other modes of living than our own is an
invitation and incentive to the mind to reach out beyond the immediate
and the familiar to the new and the strange.

3. _Pictures can be made a great help to the imagination._ In the better
type of our church schools we are now making free use of pictures as
teaching material. It is not always enough, however, merely to place the
picture before the child. It requires a certain fund of information and
interest in order to see in a picture what it is intended to convey. The
child cannot get from the picture more than he brings to it. The teacher
may therefore need to give the picture its proper setting by describing
the kind of life or the type of action or event with which it deals. He
may need to ask questions, and make suggestions in order to be sure that
the child sees in the picture the interesting and important things, and
that his imagination carries out beyond what is actually presented in
the picture itself to what it suggests. While the first response of the
child to a picture, as to a story, should be that of enjoyment and
interest, this does not mean that the picture, like the story, may not
reach much deeper than the immediate interest and enjoyment. The picture
which has failed to stimulate the child's imagination to see much more
than the picture contains has failed of one of its chief objects.

4. _Stimulate the imagination by use of vivid descriptions and
thought-provoking questions._ Every teacher, whether of young children
or of older ones, should strive to be a good teller of stories and a
good user of illustrations. This requires study and practice, but it is
worth the cost--even outside of the classroom. The good story-teller
must be able to speak freely, easily, and naturally. He must have a
sense of the important and significant in a story or illustration, and
be able to work to a climax. He must know just how much of detail to use
to appeal to the imagination to supply the remainder, and not employ so
great an amount of detail as to leave nothing to the imagination of the
listener. He must himself enter fully into the spirit and enthusiasm of
the story, and must have his own imagination filled with the pictures he
w