Read Ebook: The deformities of the fingers and toes by Anderson William

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DAVID AND GOLIATH 227

THE SHEPHERD'S SONG 233

THE HIDDEN SERVANTS 236

LITTLE GOTTLIEB 243

HOW THE FIR TREE BECAME THE CHRISTMAS TREE 246

THE DIAMOND AND THE DEWDROP 248

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STORY-TELLER

Concerning the fundamental points of method in telling a story, I have little to add to the principles which I have already stated as necessary, in my opinion, in the book of which this is, in a way, the continuation. But in the two years which have passed since that book was written, I have had the happiness of working on stories and the telling of them, among teachers and students in many parts, and in that experience certain secondary points of method have come to seem more important, or at least more in need of emphasis, than they did before. As so often happens, I had assumed that "those things are taken for granted"; whereas, to the beginner or the teacher not naturally a story-teller, the secondary or implied technique is often of greater difficulty than the mastery of underlying principles. The few suggestions which follow are of this practical, obvious kind.

Take your story seriously. No matter how riotously absurd it is, or how full of inane repetition, remember, if it is good enough to tell, it is a real story, and must be treated with respect. If you cannot feel so toward it, do not tell it. Have faith in the story, and in the attitude of the children toward it and you. If you fail in this, the immediate result will be a touch of shamefacedness, affecting your manner unfavourably, and, probably, influencing your accuracy and imaginative vividness.

Perhaps I can make the point clearer by telling you about one of the girls in a class which was studying stories last winter; I feel sure if she or any of her fellow-students recognises the incident, she will not resent being made to serve the good cause, even in the unattractive guise of a warning example.

When she came to the rhyme,--

"O man of the sea, come, listen to me, For Alice, my wife, the plague of my life, Has sent me to beg a boon of thee,"

she said it rather rapidly. At the first repetition she said it still more rapidly; the next time she came to the jingle she said it so fast and so low that it was unintelligible; and the next recurrence was too much for her. With a blush and a hesitating smile she said, "And he said that same thing, you know!" Of course everybody laughed, and of course the thread of interest and illusion was hopelessly broken for everybody.

Let me urge, then, take your story seriously.

Next, "take your time." This suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. It does not mean license to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in a speaker than too great deliberateness or than hesitation of speech. But it means a quiet realisation of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, there is time enough for every point and shade of meaning, and no one will think the story too long. This mental attitude must underlie proper control of speed. Never hurry. A business-like leisure is the true attitude of the story-teller.

Plainly, there can be lapses of memory so complete, so all-embracing, that frank failure is the only outcome; but these are so few as not to need consideration, when dealing with so simple material as that of children's stories. There are times, too, before an adult audience, when a speaker can afford to let his hearers be amused with him over a chance mistake. But with children it is most unwise to break the spell of the entertainment in that way. Consider, in the matter of a detail of action or description, how absolutely unimportant the mere accuracy is, compared with the effect of smoothness and the enjoyment of the hearers. They will not remember the detail, for good or evil, half so long as they will remember the fact that you did not know it. So, for their sakes, as well as for the success of your story, cover your slips of memory, and let them be as if they were not.

And now I come to two points in method which have to do especially with humorous stories. The first is the power of initiating the appreciation of the joke. Every natural humorist does this by instinct, and the value of the power to a story-teller can hardly be overestimated. To initiate appreciation does not mean that one necessarily gives way to mirth, though even that is sometimes natural and effective; one merely feels the approach of the humorous climax, and subtly suggests to the hearers that it will soon be "time to laugh." The suggestion usually comes in the form of facial expression, and in the tone. And children are so much simpler, and so much more accustomeseries of cases corres's lead than their elders, that the expression can be much more outright and unguarded than would be permissible with a mature audience.

Children like to feel the joke coming, in this way; they love the anticipation of a laugh, and they will begin to dimple, often, at your first unconscious suggestion of humour. If it is lacking, they are sometimes afraid to follow their own instincts. Especially when you are facing an audience of grown people and children together, you will find that the latter are very hesitant about initiating their own expression of humour. It is more difficult to make them forget their surroundings then, and more desirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you will see some small listener in an agony of endeavour to cloak the mirth which he--poor mite--fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is "the thing" to laugh, and that everybody is going to.

Having so stimulated the appreciation of the humorous climax, it is important to give your hearers time for the full savour of the jest to permeate their consciousness. It is really robbing an audience of its rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this. It cannot be funny without it.

Everyone who is familiar with the theatre must have noticed how careful all comedians are to give this pause for appreciation and laughter. Often the opportunity is crudely given, or too liberally offered; and that offends. But in a reasonable degree the practice is undoubtedly necessary to any form of humorous expression.

Epaminondas is a valuable little rascal from other points of view, and I mean to return to him, to point a moral. But at the moment I want space for a word or two about the matter of variety of subject and style in school stories.

There are two wholly different kinds of story which are equally necessary for children, I believe, and which ought to be given in about the proportion of one to three, in favour of the second kind; I make the ratio uneven because the first kind is more dominating in its effect.

Children do not object to these stories in the least, if the stories are good ones. They accept them with the relish which nature seems ever to have for all truly nourishing material. And the little tales are one of the media through which we elders may transmit some very slight share of the benefit received by us, in turn, from actual or transmitted experience.

The second kind has no preconceived moral to offer, makes no attempt to affect judgment or to pass on a standard. It simply presents a picture of life, usually in fable or poetic image, and says to the hearer, "These things are." The hearer, then, consciously or otherwise, passes judgment on the facts. His mind says, "These things are good"; or, "This was good, and that, bad"; or, "This thing is desirable," or the contrary.

The folk tale so made, and of such character, comes to the child somewhat as an unprejudiced newspaper account of to-day's happenings comes to us. It pleads no cause, except through its contents; it exercises no intentioned influence on our moral judgment; it is there, as life is there, to be seen and judged. And only through such seeing and judging can the individual perception attain to anything of power or originality. Just as a certain amount of received ideas is necessary to sane development, so is a definite opportunity for first-hand judgments essential to power.

In this epoch of well-trained minds we run some risk of an inundation of accepted ethics. The mind which can make independent judgments, can look at new facts with fresh vision, and reach conclusions with simplicity, is the perennial power in the world. And this is the mind we are not noticeably successful in developing, in our system of schooling. Let us at least have its needs before our consciousness, in our attempts to supplement the regular studies of school by such side-activities as story-telling. Let us give the children a fair proportion of stories which stimulate independent moral and practical decisions.

Evidently, such stories have served a purpose in the education of the race. While the exaggeration of familiar attributes easily awakens mirth in a simple mind, it does more: it teaches practical lessons of wisdom and discretion. And possibly the lesson was the original cause of the story.

It was sufficient. The child took the cue instantly. He looked hastily at his work, broke into an irrepressible giggle, rubbed the figures out, without a word, and began again. And the whole class entered into the joke with the gusto of fellow-fools, for once wise.

I wish there were more of such funny little tales in the world's literature, all ready, as this one is, for telling to the youngest of our listeners. But masterpieces are few in any line, and stories for telling are no exception; it took generations, probably, to make this one. The demand for new sources of supply comes steadily from teachers and mothers, and is the more insistent because so often met by the disappointing recommendations of books which prove to be for reading only, rather than for telling.

For the benefit of suggestion to teachers in schools where story-telling is newly or not yet introduced in systematic form, I am glad to append the following list of additional stories which will be found to be equally tellable and likeable. The list is not mine, although it embodies some of my suggestions. I offer it merely as a practical result of the effort to equalise and extend the story-hour throughout the schools. The list is roughly graded in four groups. Stories in the present volume have been excluded.

STORIES FOR REPRODUCTION

FIRST GROUP

The Lion and the Mouse, AEsop The Fox and the Crow, AEsop The Hare and the Tortoise, AEsop The Wolf and the Kid, AEsop The Crow and the Pitcher, AEsop The Fox and the Grapes, AEsop The Dog and his Shadow, AEsop The Hare and the Hound, AEsop The Wolf and the Crane, AEsop The Elf and the Dormouse The Three Little Pigs Henny Penny The Three Bears Why the Woodpecker's Head is Red Little Red Riding-Hood The Cat and The Mouse, Grimm Snow White and Rose Red, Grimm

SECOND GROUP

The Boasting Traveller, AEsop The Wolf and the Fox, AEsop The Boy and the Filberts, AEsop Hercules and the Wagoner, AEsop The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, AEsop The Star Dollars The Pied Piper King Midas Raggylug Peter Rabbit, B. Potter The Tar-Baby, Joel Chandler Harris The Tailor and the Elephant The Blind Men and the Elephant The Valiant Blackbird, Wm. Canton The Wolf and the Goslings, Grimm The Ugly Duckling, Andersen The Old Woman and Her Pig The Cat and the Parrot

THIRD GROUP

Little Black Sambo Why the Bear has a Short Tail Why the Fox has a White Tip to his Tail Why the Wren flies low Jack and the Beanstalk The Golden Fleece The Pig Brother The Ugly Duckling, Andersen How the Mole became Blind How Fire was brought to the Indians Echo Why the Morning Glory Climbs The Bay of Winds Pandora's Box The Little Match Girl, Andersen The Story of Wylie

FOURTH GROUP

Arachne The N?rnberg Stove Clytie Latona and the Frogs Dick Whittington and his Cat Proserpine The Bell of Atri The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Edgar The Guardians of the Door, Wm. Canton The Little Lame Prince, Mrs Craik Narcissus The Little Hero of Haarlem The Bar of Gold The Golden Fish Saint Christopher The Four Seasons

FOOTNOTES:

STORY-TELLING IN TEACHING ENGLISH

I have to speak now of a phase of elementary education which lies very close to my warmest interest, which, indeed, could easily become an active hobby if other interests did not beneficently tug at my skirts when I am minded to mount and ride too wildly. It is the hobby of many of you who are teachers, also, and I know you want to hear it discussed. I mean the growing effort to teach English and English literature to children in the natural way: by speaking and hearing,--orally.

The fact is that speech is a method of carrying ideas from one human soul to another, by way of the ear. And these ideas are very complex. They are not unmixed emanations of pure intellect, transmitted to pure intellect: they are compounded of emotions, thoughts, fancies, and are enhanced or impeded in transmission by the use of word-symbols which have acquired, by association, infinite complexities in themselves. The mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of thought, the desire of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with you,--these seek far more subtle means than the mere rendering of certain vocal signs; they demand such variations and delicate adjustments of sound as will inevitably affect the listening mind with the response desired.

There is no "what" without the "how" in speech. The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful scepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what." Just as true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment, spoken by a Lord Rosebery and by a man from White chapel or an uneducated ploughman, is not the same to the listener. In one case the sentiment comes to the mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing qualities of sound which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words themselves retain all their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's just and clear enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from the associations of fine habit betrayed in the voice and manner of speech. And, further, the immense personal equation shows itself in the beauty and power of the vocal expressiveness, which carries shades of meaning, unguessed delicacies of emotion, intimations of beauty, to every ear. In the other case, the thought is clouded by unavoidable suggestions of ignorance and ugliness, brought by the pronunciation and voice, even to an unanalytical ear; the meaning is obscured by inaccurate inflection and uncertain or corrupt enunciation; but, worst of all, the personal atmosphere, the aroma, of the idea has been lost in transmission through a clumsy, ill-fitted medium.

The thing said may look the same on a printed page, but it is not the same when spoken. And it is the spoken sentence which is the original and the usual mode of communication.

The widespread poverty of expression in English, which is thus a matter of "how," and to which we are awakening, must be corrected chiefly, at least at first, by the elementary schools. The home is the ideal place for it, but the average home in many districts is no longer a possible place for it. The child of parents poorly educated and bred in limited circumstances, the child of powerful provincial influences, must all depend on the school for standards of English.

And it is the elementary school which must meet the need, if it is to be met at all. For the conception of English expression which I am talking of can find no mode of instruction adequate to its meaning, save in constant appeal to the ear, at an age so early that unconscious habit is formed. No rules, no analytical instruction in later development, can accomplish what is needed. Hearing and speaking; imitating, unwittingly and wittingly, a good model; it is to this method we must look for redemption from present conditionh soon breaks up into two lateral bands that embrace the sides of the metacarpo-phalangeal joint to blend with its ligaments and the periosteum of the first phalanx, and running on become similarly connected with the first inter-phalangeal joint and middle phalanx. Where the four digital bands diverge they are joined together by deep transverse fibres which pass from the inner to the outer border of the hand, blending in these situations with the muscular aponeurosis.

If we examine a case of Dupuytren's contraction in the light of our anatomical knowledge, we shall be struck by the circumstance that the morbid structure which causes the permanent flexion of the fingers bears no resemblance in position or character to the normal fibrous tissues of the part, although it is apparently continuous in the proximal direction with the digital bands of the radiating fascia. The band is best developed beyond the point where the radiating fascia normally ceases, and maintains its longitudinal fibrillation while crossing the vaginal fascia and the transverse fibres of Gerdy. The varieties and modes of branching already described are only to a limited extent related to the anatomical arrangements--that is, where the morbid tissue spreads proximally over the radiating fascia, and sends lateral branches along the course of Gerdy's fibres; but it is certain that the tendon-like cords are of entirely new formation, and that they exist at the expense of the normal structures. The well-known preparation in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which has been figured by Mr. Adams, affords a demonstration of this, as the band, instead of following the direction of the radiating fascia, runs towards the inter-digital cleft and there bifurcates, sending branches to the adjacent sides of two fingers. In a specimen of my own the band runs axially to the little finger and spreads out in front of the first phalanx as a fatless fan-like expansion, that differs altogether in character and arrangement from the normal subcutaneous tissue and becomes closely connected with the skin, the structure of which, however, remains unchanged. The firmest point of integumental adhesion is opposite the distal flexion fold over the head of the fifth metacarpal bone. The first phalanx is flexed to about 90?, and over the metacarpo-phalangeal joint the contracted cord lies in a plane considerably anterior to the tendons, vessels, and nerves, all of which maintain their normal relation to the bones and muscles. There is no tendency on the part of the morbid growth to follow the deep connections of the fascia in the palm.

The radiating fascia, and perhaps even the tendon of the palmaris longus, are made tense and prominent by the shrinking of the new material, but the palmaris longus has no primary share in the production of the deformity, and in fact the disease may be present where the muscle is undeveloped. Repeated experience in operations has proved that the flexor tendons are not affected, and that even in long-standing cases the joints may be fully extended immediately after the division of the morbid fibrous bands. It may be accepted as a principle that the development of a tendon once completed, the tissue has little or no disposition to retrograde changes in the direction of its length. When the most prominent parts of the contracted cords are exposed for excision they bear much resemblance to tendon in contour and striation, but they are less bluish and lustrous in aspect. On dissecting them away from the radiating fascia the transverse fibres interlocking the digital segments of the latter may often be seen unchanged, and in one case in which the disease had attacked the sole the new fibrous tissue could easily be detached from the fascial fibres, which retained all their lustre.

The histological appearances of the new growth are those of fibrous tissue. If the disease is spreading, the fibrous strands are intermingled with nuclear proliferation, which extends especially along the course of the vessels.

As for voice: work in schoolrooms brings two opposing mistakes constantly before me: one is the repressed voice, and the other, the forced. The best way to avoid either extreme, is to keep in mind that the ideal is development of one's own natural voice, along its own natural lines. A "quiet, gentle voice" is conscientiously aimed at by many young teachers, with so great zeal that the tone becomes painfully repressed, "breathy," and timid. This is quite as unpleasant as a loud voice, which is, in turn, a frequent result of early admonitions to "speak up." Neither is natural. It is wise to determine the natural volume and pitch of one's speaking voice by a number of tests, made when one is thoroughly rested, at ease, and alone. Find out where your voice lies when it is left to itself, under favourable conditions, by reading something aloud or by listening to yourself as you talk to an intimate friend. Then practise keeping it in that general range, unless it prove to have a distinct fault, such as a nervous sharpness, or hoarseness. A quiet voice is good; a hushed voice is abnormal. A clear tone is restful, but a loud one is wearying.

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