r; and the filling of that hour with the stories, read or told, that
in earlier times children never so much as heard mentioned at school by
their teachers. It is indeed a pleasant thought that in school-rooms
throughout the land boys and girls are hearing about the Argonauts, and
the Knights of the Round Table, and the Crusaders; to say nothing of
such famous personages in the story world as Cinderella, and the
Sleeping Beauty, and Hop-O'-My-Thumb. The home story hour is no less
dear because there is a school story hour too.

The other afternoon I stopped in during the story hour to visit a room
in the school of my neighborhood. The teacher told the story of Pandora
and the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur. A small friend of mine is a
member of the "grade" which occupies that room. At the end of the
session she walked home with me.

"Tell me a story?" she asked, when, sitting cozily by the fire, we were
having tea.

"What one should you like?" I inquired. "The story of Clytie, perhaps,
or--"

"I'd like to hear the one about Pandora--"

"But you have just heard it at school!" I exclaimed.

"I know," she said; "but I'd like to hear you tell it."

When I had told it, she begged me to tell another. Again I suggested
various tales in my repertory. But she refused them all. "Tell about the
man, and the dragon, and the ball of string, and the lady--" she began.

And once more when I interposed, reminding her that she had just heard
it, she once more said, "Yes; but I'd like to hear it again."

Some of the children whom I have in mind as I write go to private
schools and some of them go to public schools. It has not seemed to me
that the results obtained by the one type of school are discernibly
different from those produced by the other. In the private school there
are fewer pupils than in the public school; and they are more nearly
alike from the point of view of their parents' material wealth than are
the pupils in a public school. They are also "Americans," and not
"foreigners," as are so many of the children in city public schools, and
even in the public schools of many suburbs and villages. Possibly owing
to their smaller numbers, they receive more individual attention than
the pupils of the public school; but, so far as my rather extensive and
intimate acquaintance with children qualifies me to judge, they learn
the same lessons, and learn them with equal thoroughness. We hear a
great deal about the difference