for their preference.

The great difference, including lesser ones, between telling and reading
is that the teller is free; the reader is bound. The book in hand, or the
wording of it in mind, binds the reader. The story-teller is bound by
nothing; he stands or sits, free to watch his audience, free to follow or
lead every changing mood, free to use body, eyes, voice, as aids in
expression. Even his mind is unbound, because he lets the story come in
the words of the moment, being so full of what he has to say. For this
reason, a story told is more spontaneous than one read, however well read.
And, consequently, the connection with the audience is closer, more
electric, than is possible when the book or its wording intervenes.

Beyond this advantage, is the added charm of the personal element in
story-telling. When you make a story your own and tell it, the listener
gets the story, _plus your appreciation of it_. It comes to him filtered
through your own enjoyment. That is what makes the funny story thrice
funnier on the lips of a jolly raconteur than in the pages of a memoir. It
is the filter of personality. Everybody has something of the curiosity of
the primitive man concerning his neighbour; what another has in his own
person felt and done has an especial hold on each one of us. The most
cultured of audiences will listen to the personal reminiscences of an
explorer with a different tingle of interest from that which it feels for
a scientific lecture on the results of the exploration. The longing for
the personal in experience is a very human longing. And this instinct or
longing is especially strong in children. It finds expression in their
delight in tales of what father or mother did when they were little, of
what happened to grandmother when she went on a journey, and so on, but it
also extends to stories which are not in themselves personal: which take
their personal savour merely from the fact that they flow from the lips in
spontaneous, homely phrases, with an appreciative gusto which suggests
participation.

The greater ease in holding the attention of children is, for teachers, a
sufficient practical reason for telling stories rather than reading them.
It is incomparably easier to make the necessary exertion of "magnetism,"
or whatever it may be called, when nothing else distracts the attention.
One's eyes meet the children's gaze naturally and constantly; one's
expression responds to and initiates theirs wi