MRS. DEARMER'S STORIES FOR CHILDREN. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR."] SIR —I have looked through Mrs. Dearmer's "Book of Penny Toys," and the simple answer to her defence of the use of " tragedy " so-called in such books seems to me to lie in this: we cannot all be Hans Andersens or Lewis Carrolls ; we cannot all venture to play with edged tools, and it takes a good bit of genius to follow the masters of story-telling, even at a distance. I agree with the authoress that children love a heart-rending story, and I think the charm they find in Andersen's "Tin Soldier" has nothing whatever to do with the love-story romance in it. They love it because the toy is made to live and breathe, and so his adventures become abso- lutely thrilling. I know we loved tragedy, for looking back into the childhood of myself and my brother, the one tale we would ask for again and again was the story of the Green Serpent. It is almost forgotten now, but it must have been tragic, for we always used to say " The poor Green Serpent." I think it turned upon this, that when the faithless Princess had gone and broken his serpent heart, she and her lover came to the midnight river, and there was no boat to take them across to the enchanted cave. So the Green Serpent, sparkling all over with rubies and emeralds, arched himself over from shore to shore, and the two passed safely across without taking the least notice. And their chivalrous bridge sank away and was washed down to the sea in a great storm. As for the pictures in " Penny Toys," it appears to me a mistake to think that children are best pleased with plain, coloured plates. These soon pall upon the eye and the mind, and a great weariness succeeds the first transitory enjoyment. The obvious reason is, there is no room left for exercise of the imagination, as in black-and-white drawings. Imagina- tion is the wonderful sixth sense of childhood, and upon it turns in large measure the joys and sorrows of their life.—I
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