g so stimulated the appreciation of the humorous climax, it is
important to give your hearers time for the full savor of the jest to
permeate their consciousness. It is really robbing an audience of its
rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must
lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in
a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory
pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual
time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this.
It cannot be funny without it.

Every one who is familiar with the theatre must have noticed how
careful all comedians are to give this pause for appreciation and
laughter. Often the opportunity is crudely given, or too liberally
offered; and that offends. But in a reasonable degree the practice is
undoubtedly necessary to any form of humorous expression.

A remarkably good example of the type of humorous story to which these
principles of method apply, is the story of "Epaminondas." It will be
plain to any reader that all the several funny crises are of the
perfectly unmistakable sort children like, and that, moreover, these
funny spots are not only easy to see; they are easy to foresee. The
teller can hardly help sharing the joke in advance, and the tale is an
excellent one with which to practice for power in the points mentioned.

Epaminondas is a valuable little rascal from other points of view, and
I mean to return to him, to point a moral. But just here I want space
for a word or two about the matter of variety of subject and style in
school stories.

There are two wholly different kinds of story which are equally
necessary for children, I believe, and which ought to be given in about
the proportion of one to three, in favor of the second kind; I make the
ratio uneven because the first kind is more dominating in its effect.

The first kind is represented by such stories as the "Pig Brother,"
which has now grown so familiar to teachers that it will serve for
illustration without repetition here. It is the type of story which
specifically teaches a certain ethical or conduct lesson, in the form
of a fable or an allegory,--it passes on to the child the conclusions
as to conduct and character, to which the race has, in general,
attained through centuries of experience and moralizing. The story
becomes a part of the outfit of received ideas on manners and morals
which