t characters in history,
we may expect them to be more interested in the study of history at a
later period, because they will frequently meet with these familiar
names. The emphasis at this stage is therefore on biography.

[Footnote A: Raymont: _Principles of Education_]

(_c_) To help the development of the "historical sense." The "historical
sense" includes the notion of time, the notion of a social unit and,
according to some, the notion of cause and effect. The notion of time
implies the power "to represent the past as if it were present"--that
is, the power to enter into the thoughts and feelings of people of the
past as if we were living amongst them. This notion of time comes at
different ages; to some early, to others very late. It came to Professor
Shaler at the age of about eight or nine years, as the direct result of
vivid story-telling:

Of all the folk who were about me, the survivors of the Indian wars
were the most interesting. There were several of these old
clapper-clawed fellows still living, with their more or less
apocryphal tales of adventures they had heard of or shared. There
was current a tradition--I have seen it in print--that there had
been a fight between the Indians and whites where the government
barracks stood, and that two wounded whites had been left upon the
ground, where they were not found by the savages. One of these had
both arms broken, the other was similarly disabled as to his legs.
It was told that they managed to subsist by combining their limited
resources. The man with sound legs drove game up within range of
the other cripple's gun, and as the turkeys or rabbits fell, he
kicked them within reach of his hands, and in like manner provided
him with sticks for their fire. This legend, much elaborated in the
telling, gave me, I believe at about my eighth year, my first sense
of a historic past, and it led to much in the way of fanciful
invention of like tales. (N.F. Shaler: _Autobiography_, Chap. I.)

The best means at the teacher's command to assist its coming is to tell
good stories from history with all the skill he has; the stories need
not be told in chronological order. The notion of time implies also in
the older pupils the power to place events in chronological order.

The notion of a social unit is also of slow growth and must spring from
the child's conception of the social units