If I were asked to furnish a recipe for one of these professional story-tellers, these spinners of childish narratives, I should suggest one measure of pure literary taste, two of gesture and illustration, three of dramatic fire, and four of ready speech and clear expression.

He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a most painful description of mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as they see you can swallow at a timethe nibbling pickpockets of your patiencebut one who committed downright, daylight depredations upon his neighbour's faith.

It is said that the Khans, or story-tellers in Ispahan and other cities of the East, attain a controlling power over their audience, keeping them for many hours attentive to the most fanciful and extravagant adventures.

At any rate the story-tellers do.

They became immensely popular wherever they were told, and they were slowly carried by minstrels and story-tellers all over Europe.

Lowell justly says: "One of the world's three or four great story-tellers, he was also one of the best versifiers that ever made English trip and sing with a gayety that seems careless, but where every foot beats time to the tune of the thought.

Among nearly all the Indians of the Northwest there is a flood story, or legend, and there must be hundreds of Noahs in the minds of the story-tellers.

We have heard the same legend given by several story-tellers and no two agreed in many particulars.

"And when you read of all that has been brought here to Stockholm, think too of the latest that the city has attracted to itself: these old-time peasant cottages here at Skansen; the old dances; the old costumes and house-furnishings; the musicians and story-tellers.

Suddenly the eldest of the dairy girls looked up from her work and said laughingly: "There's no need of our sitting here so silent to-night, for we have two story-tellers with us.

I shall only mention another Occasion wherein he made use of the same Invention to cure a different kind of Men, who are the Pests of all polite Conversation, and murder Time as much as either of the two former, though they do it more innocently; I mean that dull Generation of Story-tellers.

As has been more than once remarked, these stories belong to the category of fiction as well as of poetry, and the duration of their power to attract was affected not only by the appearance of greater poets, but of prose story-tellers with equal knowledge of the human heart, and with other gifts to which Crabbe could make no claim.

In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers' turbaned audiences.

He is one of the best story-tellers of antiquity, and from his works a series of "Percy Anecdotes" of ancient men might easily be compiled.

Among those who have to deal with Time, few are more puzzled how to manage him than we story-tellers.

and the whole tableful are happy and contented again, till one of the story-tellers "thinks of another," and breaks loose.

In these pages, will be found stories of the chief men of the Revolution, so connected, by the manner in which they are narrated, as to give a general interest to them"The Old Bell of Independence" being the rallying point of the veteran story-tellers. CONTENTS.

All this and a great deal more was told on that celebrated nightsometimes by one, sometimes by another, and sometimes, to the confusion of the audience, by two or three at once, and, not unfrequently, to the still greater confusion of story-tellers and audience alike, the whole proceedings were interrupted by the outrageous yells and turmoil of the two indomitable young Buzzbys, as they romped in reckless joviality with Dumps and Poker.

Bob Rescues His FatherConclusion Publishers' Introduction George Alfred Henty has been called "The Prince of Story-Tellers."

Love, even of the sensual kind, seems to be almost entirely ignored by these dusky story-tellers in favor of a hundred other subjectsin striking contrast to our own literature, in which love is the ruling passion.

In course of time it naturally came about that all notable incidents of the chase and woodland warfare were incorporated into their lives by the story-tellers.

I shall only mention another Occasion wherein he made use of the same Invention to cure a different kind of Men, who are the Pests of all polite Conversation, and murder Time as much as either of the two former, though they do it more innocently; I mean that dull Generation of Story-tellers.

The story-tellers are no doubt right when they insist on the difficulty of telling a story.

[320] This is, as the vulgate hath it, "coming it a little too strong;" but be it remembered that Oriental story-tellers do not mar the interest of their narrative by a slavish adherence to probability.

Dickens, the king of story-tellers; Dr. Guthrie, the most picturesque of preachers; Bishop Wordsworth, Dean Stanley, themselves masters of stylehow eagerly they received the simple stories of Scotland told without ornament.