helped the Child in his contest for life with the advice his own common sense would have offered.  As an allegory of Experience The Elephant’s Child does not view life as a whole; it gives but a glimpse of life.  It would say:  Experience teaches us to make the best with what we have.  The way to get experience is to try a new power, just as the Child with his trunk tried to kill the fly and eat grass.  As soon as he had received his new power he tested it on the Hippopotamous.  He won the respect of his kind by beating them at their own game.

The emotional appeal in The Elephant’s Child would repay study.  The dominant emotional tone is that of the adventurous hero with his “’satiable curtiosity.”  There is vividness of emotion, steadiness of emotion, and a rich variety in the contrasts of feeling.  Emotion of a moral quality is characteristic of its implied message of worldly wisdom but it does not leave one exactly satisfied.

The form of the story is a splendid example of a literary classic style.  A pleasing humorous touch is given to the unity of the tale by making the Elephant’s Child pick up with his new trunk, on his way home, the melon-rinds he had scattered on his journey to the Limpopo.  The coherence in the tale is unusually fine and is secured largely by expressions which look backward or forwards; as, “By and by when that was finished,” or “One fine morning,” or “That very next morning.”  Any study will show that the tale possesses the general qualities of form and has its parts controlled by the principles of composition.

OUTLINE

    I. THE WORTH OF FAIRY TALES

       I. Two public tributes 1

II.  The value of fairy tales in education 3

1.  They bring joy into child-life 3

2.  They satisfy the play-spirit of childhood 4

3.  They give a power of accurate observation 6

4.  They strengthen the power of emotion, develop the
power of imagination, train the memory and
exercise the reason 6

5.  They extend and intensify the child’s social
relations 7

6.  In school they unify the child’s work or play 8

7.  In the home they employ leisure time profitably 9

8.  They afford a vital basis for language-training 10

III.  References 12

II.  PRINCIPLES OF SELECTION FOR FAIRY TALES

I. The interests of children 13

1.  Fairy tales must follow the law of composition
and must contain the interests of children 13

a.  A sense of life 14

b.  The familiar 14