entitled, "When can I make my little Ship?"

I'd like to cut, and cut, and cut,
And over the bare floor
To strew my papers all about,
And then to cut some more.

I'd sweep them up so neatly, too,
But mother says, "Oh no!
There is no time, it's seven o'clock;
To bed you quickly go!"

In school, I'd just begun to make
A pretty little ship,
But I was slow, and all the rest
Stood up to dance and skip.

When shall I make my little ship?
At home there is no gloy,
And father builds it by himself
Or goes to buy a toy.

CHAPTER VIII

STORIES

Let me tell the stories and I care not who makes the textbooks.

STANLEY HALL.

"Is it Bible story to-day or any _kind_ of a story?" was the greeting of
an eager child one morning. "Usually they were persuading him to tell
stories," writes Ebers, from his recollections of Froebel as an old man
at Keilhau. "He was never seen crossing the courtyard without a group of
the younger pupils hanging to his coat tails and clasping his arms.
Usually they were persuading him to tell stories, and when he
condescended to do so, the older ones flocked around him, too, and they
were never disappointed. What fire, what animation the old man had
retained!"

So Froebel could write with feeling of "the joyful faces, the sparkling
eyes, the merry shouts that welcome the genuine story-teller"; he had a
right to pronounce that "the child's desire and craving for tales, for
legends, for all kinds of stories, and later on for historical accounts,
is very intense."

Surely there was never a little one who did not crave for stories,
though here and there may be found an older child, who got none at the
right time, and who, therefore, lost that most healthy of appetites.
Most of us will agree that there is something wrong with the child who
does not like stories, but it may be that the something wrong belonged
to the mother. One such said to the Abbe Klein one day, "My children
have never asked for stories." "But, madame," was the reply, "neither
would they ask for cake if they had never eaten it, or even seen it."

It is easy for us to find reasons why we should tell stories. We can
brush aside minor aims such as increasing the child's vocabulary.
Undoubtedly his vocabulary does increase enormously from listening to
stories, but it is difficult to imagine that any one could rise to real
heights in story-telling with this as a