Children, who find difficulty in general ideas, learn best from particular instances.

Yet boys and girls who can give a coherent account of such stimulating personalities as Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Henry VIII.

and his wives, or Napoleon--none of whom have so very much to tell us that bears on the permanent interests of the soul--do not as a rule possess any vivid idea, say, of Gautama, St.Benedict, Gregory the Great, St.Catherine of Siena, St.Francis Xavier, George Fox, St.Vincent de Paul and his friends: persons at least as significant, and far better worth meeting, than the military commanders and political adventurers of their time.

The stories of the early Buddhists, the Sufi saints, St.Francis of Assisi, St.Ignatius, the early Quakers, the African missionaries, are full of things which can be made to interest even a young child.

The legends which have grown up round some of them satisfy the instinct that draws it to fairy tales.
They help it to dream well; and give to the developing mind food which it could assimilate in no other way.