icult to change it for special occasions. Our stories should not
only prepare for literature, they should be literature, and those who
realise what the story may do for children will not grudge time spent in
preparation. If the story is to present an ideal, let us see that we
present a worthy one; if it is to lead the children to judge of right
and wrong, let us see that we give them time and opportunity to judge
and that we do not force their judgement.

Lastly, if the story is to make the children feel, let us see that the
feeling is on the right side, that they shrink from all that is mean,
selfish, cruel and cowardly, and sympathise with whatsoever things are
true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report.

CHAPTER IX

IN GRASSY PLACES

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky,
So was it when my life began
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die.

What is the real aim of what we call Nature-lessons, Nature-teaching,
Nature-work? It is surely to foster delight in beauty, so that our
hearts shall leap up at sight of the rainbow until we die. For, indeed,
if we lose that uplift of the heart, some part of us has died already.
Yet even Wordsworth mourns that nothing can bring back the hour of
splendour in the grass and glory in the flower!

In its answer to the question "What is the chief end of man?" the old
Shorter Catechism has a grand beginning: "Man's chief end is to glorify
God and to enjoy Him for ever." Do we lose the vision because we are not
bold enough to take that enjoyment as our chief end? To enjoy good is to
enjoy God.

Our ends or aims are our desires, and Mr. Clutton Brock, in his
_Ultimate Belief_, urges teachers to recognise that the spirit of man
has three desires, three ends, and that it cannot be satisfied till it
attains all three. Man desires to do right, so far as he sees it, for
the sake of doing right; he desires to gain knowledge or to know for the
sake of knowing, for the sake of truth; and he desires beauty.

"We do not value that which we call beautiful because it is true, or
because it is good, but because it is beautiful. There is a glory of the
universe which we call truth which we discover and apprehend, and a
glory of the universe which we call beauty and which we discover or
apprehend."

Froebel begins his _Education of Man_ by an inquiry into the reason for
our existence and his answer is t