Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/78

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54
A STUDY OF FAIRY TALES

to clear, definite thinking because the experience of the tale is ordered from a beginning, through a development, to a climax, and to a conclusion. It assists him to form conclusions because it presents results of circumstances and consequences of conduct. Continued attention to the facts, knowledge, and truth presented in the tales, helps the child to grow a sincerity of spirit. This leads to that love of actual truth, which is one of the armors of middle life, against which false opinion falls harmless.

(4) A form, more or less perfect. Form is the union of all the means which the writer employs to convey his thought and emotion to the reader. Flaubert has said, "Among all the expressions of the world there is but one, one form, one mode, to express what I want to say."—"Say what you have to say, what you have a will to say, in the simplest, the most direct and exact manner possible, with no surplusage," Walter Pater has spoken. Then the form and the matter will fit each other so perfectly there will be no unnecessary adornment.

In regard to form it is to be remembered that feeling is best awakened incidentally by suggestion. Words are the instruments, the medium of the writer. Words have two powers: the power to name what they mean, or denotation; and the power to suggest what they imply, or connotation. Words have the power of connotation in two ways: They may mean more than they say or they may produce emotional effect not