Zyberk0003

398 Ckopter (I ArgnmcnlaikMi and PerwaiM

mny nappen lo sec it. But lo the chHdren rt is just a story—and a good one—that*s all.

And all the old stories are the same! Consider Jack the ii Giant-Killer. What a^conglomcration of vvecpinj£and .wailing, of pcople shut into Iow dungeons, of muroer, ofsuddcn oeatn, of btood, and of horror! Jack, having inveigled an enortnous giant into eating an enormous quantity ofTSbrridge. thcn rips him up the stornach with a huge sword! What a mess!

But it doesn*t dislurb Jack or his young readere oneJotaTln 19 fact. Jack is off again at once with his young readers trailing ea-gerly after him, in order to cut off at one błow the three huge heads of a three-headed giant and make a worse mess still.

From the fairy stories aotljhe giant stories the children 20 presentiy pass on—quite '^nscathcę^ns I see it—to the higher rangę of the blood-and-thunder stories of the pirates and the battles. Here again the reality, for the grown-up mind that can see it, is terrible and^uesom^but nevcr so for the boys and giris who see in it only the pleasąnt adventurc and bright di-versity.

Takc, for instance, this familiar scenę as it appcars and 21 reappears in the history of Jack bare-devil, or Ncd Feur* nothing, or any of lhose noble boys who go lo sea, in books, al the age of fourteen and retire, as admirals, at twenty-two.

"The fire from both ships was now becoming warm. A 22 round shot tearing across the deck swepl off four of our fel-lows. 'Ha! ha!' said Jack, as he tumed towards Ned on the quarterdeck, ‘this bids fair to bccomc livcly. ‘ "

It certainly did. In fact, it wouid be livcly dlready if one n stopped to think of the literał and anatomica! meaning of a round shot—twenty-five pounds of red-hot. iron—tearing through the^fftalsjf four men. But the boy reader never gets it this wayrWKat is said is, that four of our fcllowś werc “swept ofT‘—just that; merely "gwept* off" and thafs the way the child reader takes it. And when the pirates “lenp on deck," Jack himsclf "cuts down" four 6f them and Ned "cuts down" three. Thafs all they do—‘‘they cut them down,” they just "shorten them" so lo speak.

Very similar in scope and method was the good old u

SnflraMf ihc Sum fo» CkóMrc* Słrpkn teacocfc    399

"half-dune novel." wriiien of the days of iht "pnurie," and ihe mountain trail. Ihe Fcaihcred Indian and the Lcathered Scout. In these. unsuspecting strangers gol scalped in what is now the main Street of Denver—wheTe they get skin ned.

These stories used to open with a rush and kcpt in rapid » oscillation uli the limę. In fact they began with the concussłon of firearms.

“'Bang! Bang! Bang!* Three shots rang out tftrcr the n prairie and three feathered Inciians bil the dust.*'

It seemed always to be a tavourite pastime of the Indi- n ans—"biling dusi.'*

In grim rcality—lo the grown-up mind—these were sto- a ries of terror—of midnight altach, of steaithy murder with a kmfe from without the folds of the tent. of sudden death in dark cavems. of prtiless cne mi es. and of crueł torturę.

But not so to the youthful mind. He followed it all » through ąuite gayly. sharing the high courage of his Hero— Dick Danger the Dauntless. *'I must say," whitpered Dick to Ned (this was when Ihe fndiuns hud them lied lo a tree and were piling giass und sticks round it so as to bum them alive).

“I must say, old man, things bogiń to look crilical. Unless we cun think of some way out of this fis, we are lost."

Notice, please. this word “lost": in reality they would a be worse than lott. They'd be cottked. But in this ciast of lit-eraturc the word “lost" is used to cover up a multitude of things. And. of coursc. Dick does think of a way out. It occurs lo him that by moving his hands he can slip ofT the thongs that bind him. set Ned free. letip from the tree to the bock of a horse. of two horses. and then by jumping over the edge of a chasm into Ihe forest a thousand feet below, they can find them$elves in what is called ^Mcomparalive sufety." After which the story goes calmly on. oblivious of the horrible scene that ncarly brought ił lo an cnU.

But at the modem parem and the modem leacher buve ji giown alarmed. the art of story-telling for children has gol to be softrned down. There musi be no morę horror and blood and viołent death. Away with Ihe giants and the ogres! Lei us h»ve mstead the stories of ihe animal kingdom in which Wee-