The group of stories brought together in this volume differ from
legends because they have, with one exception, no core of fact at the
centre, from myths because they make no attempt to personify or
explain the forces or processes of nature, from fairy stories because
they do not often bring on to the stage actors of a different nature
from ours. They give full play to the fancy as in "A Child's Dream of
a Star," "The King of the Golden River," "Undine," and "The Snow
Image"; but they are not poetic records of the facts of life, attempts
to shape those facts "to meet the needs of the imagination, the
cravings of the heart." In the Introduction to the book of Fairy Tales
in this series, those familiar and much loved stories which have been
repeated to children for unnumbered generations and will be repeated
to the end of time, are described as "records of the free and joyful
play of the imagination, opening doors through hard conditions to the
spirit, which craves power, freedom, happiness; righting wrongs, and
redressing injuries; defeating base designs; rewarding patience and
virtue; crowning true love with happiness; placing the powers of
darkness under the control of man and making their ministers his
servants." The stories which make up this volume are closer to
experience and come, for the most part, nearer to the every-day
happenings of life.
A generation ago, when the noble activities of science and its
inspiring discoveries were taking possession of the minds of men and
revealing possibilities of power of which they had not dreamed, the
prediction was freely made that poetry and fiction had had their day,
and that henceforth men would be educated upon facts and get their
inspirations from what are called real things. So engrossing and so
marvellous were the results of investigation, the achievements of
experiment, that it seemed to many as if the older literature of
imagination and fancy had served its purpose as completely as alchemy,
astrology, or chain armour.
The prophecies of those fruitful years of research did not tell half
the story of the wonderful things that were to be; the uses of
electricity which are within easy reach for the most homely and
practical purposes are as mysterious and magical as the dreams of the
magicians. We are served by invisible ministers who are more powerful
than the genii and more nimble than Puck. There has been a girdle
around the world for many years; but there is good reason to believe
that the time will come when news will go round the globe on waves of
air. If we were not accustomed to ordering breakfast miles away from
the grocer and the poulterer, we should be overcome with amazement
every time we took up the telephone transmitter. Absolutely pure tones
are now being made by the use of dynamos and will soon be sent into
homes lying miles distant from the power house, so to speak, so that
very sweet music is being played by arc lights.
The anticipations of scientific men, so far as the uses of force are
concerned, have been surpassed by the wonderful discoveries and
applications of the past few years; but poetry and romance are not
dead; on the contrary, they are more alive in the sense of awakening a
wider interest than ever before in the history of writing. During the
years which have been more fruitful in works of mechanical genius or
dynamic energy, novels have been more widely distributed and more
eagerly read than at any previous period. The poetry of the time, in
the degree in which it has been fresh and vital, has been treated by
newspapers as matter of universal interest.
Men are born story-readers; if their interest subsides for the moment,
or is absorbed by other forms of expression, it reasserts itself in
due time and demands the old enchantment that has woven its spell over
every generation since men and women reached an early stage of
development. Barbarians and even savages share with the most highly
civilised peoples this passion for fiction.
Men cannot live on the bare, literal fact any more than they can live
on bread alone; there is something in every man to feed besides his
body. He has been told many times by men of great disinterestedness
and ability that he must believe only that which he clearly knows and
understands, and that he must concern himself with those matters only
which he can thoroughly comprehend. He must live, in other words, by
the rule of common sense; meaning by that oft-used phrase, clear sight
and practical dealing with actual things and conditions. It would
greatly simplify life if this course could be followed, but it would
simplify it by rejecting those things which the finest spirits among
men and women have loved most and believed in with joyful and fruitful
devotion. If we could all become literal, matter of fact and entirely
practical, we should take the best possible care of our bodies and let
our souls starve. This, however, the soul absolutely refuses to do;
when it is ignored it rebels and shivers the apparently solid order of
common-sense living into fragments. It must have air to breathe, room
to move in, a language to speak, work to do, and an open window
through which it can look on the landscape and the sky. It is as idle
to tell a man to live entirely in and by facts that can be known by
the senses as to tell him to work in a field and not see the
landscape of which the field is a part.
The love of the story is one of the expressions of the passion of the
soul for a glimpse of an order of life amid the chaos of happenings;
for a setting of life which symbolises the dignity of the actors in
the play; for room in which to let men work out their instincts and
risk their hearts in the great adventures of affection or action or
exploration. Men and women find in stories the opportunities and
experiences which circumstances have denied them; they insist on the
dramatisation of life because they know that certain results
inevitably follow certain actions, and certain deeply interesting
conflicts and tragedies are bound up with certain temperaments and
types of character.
The fact that many stories are unwholesome, untrue, vulgar or immoral
impeaches the value and dignity of fiction as little as the abuse of
power impeaches the necessity and nobility of government, or the
excess of the glutton the healthfulness and necessity of food. The
imagination must not only be counted as an entirely normal faculty,
but the higher intelligence of the future will recognise its primacy
among the faculties with which men are endowed. Fiction is not only
here to stay, as the phrase runs, but it is one of the great and
enduring forms of literature.
The question is not, therefore, whether or not children shall read
stories; that question was answered when they were sent into the world
in the human form and with the human constitution: the only open
question is "what stories shall they read?" That many children read
too many stories is beyond question; their excessive devotion to
fiction wastes time and seriously impairs vigour of mind. In these
respects they follow the current which carries a multitude of their
elders to mental inefficiency and waste of power. That they read too
many weak, untruthful, characterless stories is also beyond question;
and in this respect also they are like their elders. They need food,
but in no intelligent household do they select and provide it; they
are given what they like if it is wholesome; if not, they are given
something different and better. No sane mother allows her child to
live on the food it likes if that food is unwholesome; but this is
precisely what many mothers and fathers do in the matter of feeding
the imagination. The body is scrupulously cared for and the mind is
left to care for itself!
Children ought to have stories at hand precisely as they ought to have
food, toys, games, playgrounds, because stories meet one of the normal
needs of their natures. But these stories, like the food given to the
body, ought to be intelligently selected, not only for their quality
but for their adaptation. There are many good books which ought not to
be in the hands of children because children have not had the
experience which interprets them; they will either fail to understand,
or if they understand, they will suffer a sudden forcing of growth in
the knowledge of life which is always unwholesome.
Only stories which are sound in the views of life they present ought
to be within the reach of children; these stories ought to be well
constructed and well written; they ought to be largely objective
stories; they ought not to be introspective, morbid or abnormal in any
way. Goody-good and professionally "pious" stories, sentimental or
unreal stories, ought to be rigorously excluded. A great deal of
fiction specially written for children ought to be left severely
alone; it is cheap, shallow and stamped with unreality from cover to
cover. It is as unwise to feed the minds of children exclusively on
books specially prepared for their particular age as to shape the
talk at breakfast or dinner specially for their stage of development;
few opportunities for education are more valuable for a child than
hearing the talk of its elders about the topics of the time. There are
many wholesome and entertaining stories in the vast mass of fiction
addressed to younger readers; but this literature of a period ought
never to exclude the literature of all periods.
The stories collected in this volume have been selected from many
sources, because in the judgment of the editor, they are sound pieces
of writing, wholesome in tone, varied in interest and style, and
interesting. It is his hope that they will not only furnish good
reading, but that they will suggest the kind of reading in this field
that should be within the reach of children.