czytanie teksty (6)

398

Cłmptcr M ArgnmoUaiioa and Persuasinn

may happen (o see it. But to thc children it is just a story-a good one—that*s ail.

And all th« old stories are the same! Consider Jack the

and )

u

Giant-Kiiler. What a^nglomg^atign ofweepinjĘand wailrng, Iow dungeons, of miiroer.oTsuddcn death.

of people shut into Iow

of blood, and of horror! Jack, having inveigied an cnormous giant into eating an cnormous quantityof'p5rndge, then rips him lip the stornach with a huge sword! What a mess!

But it docsn‘t dislurb Jack or his young readers one iótą^ln w fiict, Jack is off again at once with his young readers trailiiig ea-gerly after him. in order to cut off at one blow the three huge heads of a thiee-headed giant and make a worsc mess stilt.

From the fairy stories and Jhe giant stories the chikJren 20 pnesently pass on—quitc jmscąthcd^as I see it—to the higher rangę of the blood-and-thunder stories of the pirates and the

battles. Here again the realil^, for thc grown-up mind that can see it, is terrible and g~uesome>but never so for the boys and

girls who see in it only the pleasąnt adventurc and bright di-

versity.

Take, for instance, this familmr scene as it appears and 21 reappears in the history of Jack Dare-devil, or Ned Fear* nothing, or any of those noble boys who go to sea, in books, at the age of fourteen and retire, as admirals, at twenty-two.

"The fire from both ships was now becoming warm. A round shot tearing across thc deck swepl off four of our fel-lows. ‘Ha! ha!‘ said Jack, as he turned towards Ned on the quarterdeck, ‘this bids fair to becomc lively.’ "

U certainty did, In fact, it would bc |ivcly already if one 22 stopped to think of the literał and anatomical meaning of a round shot—twenty-ftve pounds of red-hot. iron—tearing throngh the^ttals>f four men. But the boy reader never gets k this w«iy/“WlT5t is said is, that four of our felkjws were "swept ofF‘—-just that; merely    and that’s the

<_5t>way the chi|d reader takes it. And when the pirates “leap on deck,” Jack himsclf "cuts down" four óf them and Ned ”cuts down” three, ThaFs atl they do—‘‘they cut them down,” ihcy just "shorten them” so to speak.

Very simiiar in scope and method was the good old 24

u

Sillcnmp (hc Stones Jor ChiMien Stephen Lcacock

“half-dimc novel.*‘ wrilten of thc days of the “prairie,“ and the mountain trail, ihc Feathered Indian and the Lenthercd Scout. In the.se. unsuspecling strangers got scalped in what is . ^ now the main Street of Denver—where they get skinned. J These stories used to open with a rush and kept in rapid u oscillation all thc timc. fn fact they begun with (he concussion

of fjrearms.

'“Bang! Bang! Bang!' Three shols rang out dVcr the » prairie and three feathered Indians bit the dust."

It seemed atways to be a favourite pastime of the Indi- n ans—“biling dust.¹*

In grim rcality—lo the grown-up mind—these were sto- » ries of terror—of midnight aitack. of stcalthy murder with a kiiife from without thc folds of the tent. of sudden death in dark cavems, of pitiless enemies, and of cruel torturę.

But not so to the youlhful mind. He followed it all » through quite gayły, sharing the high courage of his hero— Dick Danger the Dauntless. "I must say,** whispered Dick to Ned (this was wben the Indtans had them tied to a tree and were piling grass and slicks round it so as to bum them alive).

“I must say, old man, things begin to look critical. Untcss we can think of some way out of this fu, we are lost."

Notice, please. this word “lost”: in reality they would .w be worse łhan lost They'd be cookcd. But in this class of literaturę Ihe word “lost" is used to cover up a multitude of things. And. of course. Dick does think of a way out. It occurs to him that by moving his hands hc can slip off the thongs that bind him. set Ned free, leap from the tree to the back of a horse. of two horses. and then by jumping over the edge of a chasm into Ihe Foresl a thousand feel betów, they can fmd lhemselves in what is called “comparalive safety.” After which the story gnes calmly on, obhvious of the horrible scene that ncarty brought it to an end.

But as the modem parent and the modern leacher h;ive .u

j

1

i

l

1

i

gjown alarmed. the art of story-łelling for children has got to he softened down. There musi be no morę horror and blood and viołent death. A way with the giants and the ogres! Lei us have mstead ihe stories of the animal ktngdom in which Wcc-

(