gest all sorts of exploits to form an endless tale. A portrait, like the head of Van Dyck’s Prince Charles, may be the starting-point of the life-story of the Merry Monarch. This story use of the picture is perfectly legitimate, but it is not the original intention of the artist. A real story picture differs from one upon which a story may be based as the Adoration of the Shepherds differs from a simple Madonna, or Boughton’s Pilgrims going to Church from Stuart’s portrait of George Washington. The real story picture is dramatic in character and contains a story by implication, the story the artist meant to tell, and to draw this out is quite another matter than building one of our own upon a picture not designed for the purpose. The line cannot be rigidly drawn, but it seems to me well to keep the distinction clearly in mind. We do not want to fix the “literary habit” upon a child so that every picture necessarily means a story to him. In a real story or anecdotic picture, the position or action of the figures and the accessories of the composition all point out a story, and if the artist has done his part, we ought to read it easily.
The first story subjects we give our children are naturally those dealing with child life. We begin by looking for pictures illustrating the doings of the average boy and girl in the home, with his playmates, and in the great outdoor world. Few artists have in any sense specialized in these lines, and we pick up our material among scattered examples from many countries and many periods. The most satisfactory
