But the little boy was safe in the woman’s house, and when the fox untied the bag the house-dog jumped out and ate him all up.
_An old nursery tale of New England. Reprinted by permission of Clifton Johnson._
The point of interest for children in this story lies in their wonder as to what is going to happen next. It begins with a note of the unusual.
“How strange for a fox to put a bumble bee in a bag,” the children say. “Will the next sentence tell us why he did it?”
Then a number of questions present themselves to the child mind.
“Will the person at _this_ house do the same thing?”
“Is it possible that _every_ woman will open the bag?”
Another series of questions confronts the child.
“What manner of beast will the fox take at _this_ house and put in his bag?”
And so the suspense is sustained until the children’s curiosity is satisfied at the end of the story. Not alone has the story been a bit of mental gymnastics for the child, it has given him added mental power in the listening. Above and behind the mental process of waiting to see what unusual and unexpected scene of the story drama will be presented to him next, _he has been exercising his will in concentrating upon the process of waiting_. His power of sustained attention has been strengthened materially and ineffaceably.
For the very young child, the suspensive element in story telling must be very simple. It will consist often in _repetition_, the pleasureable recurrence in the story of certain _sounds_ that the child likes and is willing to wait for--sort of half way houses on the story road they are, where his mind wheels may stop and rest awhile--sign posts that lead the way to the end of the road. Sometimes this story suspense for the little folks is brought about through a jingle introduced into the story and repeated with certain changes as in the old folk tale of “The Cat and the Mouse.” Again suspense is brought about by means of a change of intonation on the part of the story teller. She adapts her voice to the needs of the story as in “The Three Bears” to the inexpressible delight of the children. This is a primitive sort of suspense quality to be found in the most elemental stories for children but it has its important place in the discipline of the child mind. The little child’s first attempts to attend have a butterfly quality. His mind flies from one stimulus to another with no very long stop anywhere. This is as it should be, for the world of sensations in which the child is plunged as an _ego_ is a varied, crowded world and there is temptation offered him to sip each flower, smell each new odor, touch everything and see everything with which he comes in contact. But a suspensive story holds him to one related set of images for a brief space and through this concentration, however simple it may be, he is developing the power of willed attention.