gination to slip back five,
ten, a dozen years to play with these children. But I cannot let you
_play_ with them. We want to meet and know them. The task for your
imagination is not so simple as you think. It is called upon to engage
in character interpretation. You cannot be allowed to merely watch
Maggie and Tom play, or even to play with them. You must use your
imagination to get inside the minds, hearts, souls of this boy and girl
and reveal them to us. You must relive this scene for us, becoming first
Maggie and then Tom. This exercise of your imagination belongs in its
final and complete stage to the next and last of our studies, and to
work on the drama; so we shall not demand too much of you along this
line here, and I shall confine my suggestive analysis of the text to the
following questions:

Define the relation existing between this brother and sister indicated
by this scene.

Is this scene typical of their relation?

Is it a relation likely to obtain throughout their lives? Why?

Define the dispositions of these two children by applying to each three
adjectives.

Will Maggie or Tom make the sacrifices inevitable to such a relation?

Characterize as to inflection and tone-color Maggie's voice and
Tom's. (If your use of this book has been intelligently directed
you have already made a study of these two elements of a vocal
vocabulary--_inflection_ and _tone-color_.)

Answer these questions and re-read the scene.

SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION

The following selections were chosen for this study with a double
concern in the choice,--concern for the development of imaginative vigor
in vocal interpretation; concern for the development of a sense of plot
in narrative composition. The demand upon the interpreter of any of
these poems, for sensitive progressive play of imagination, in carrying
an auditor through a series of events up to a critical issue, cannot
fail to develop, with imaginative vigor, a new sensitiveness of creative
instinct to the third element in narrative,--action.

Your imagination given free play can no more carry the "good news" from
Ghent to Aix on this wild ride, and in the feat fail to outgrow all its
former dimensions, than could the heart of Roland's master remain
untouched in actually performing the feat itself.

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX[9]

[9] The "Good News" is that of the "Pacification de Gant,"
concluded in 1576. It was a t