It would have been impossible to secure the voluntary attention of these boys. The fact that some one wanted to tell them a story would have probably inspired them to more lawlessness. If the story teller had begun the story after this fashion:--
“Fifty years ago there were few railways in the western part of our country. The prairies were peopled by Comanche tribes who were unfamiliar with the inventions of civilization, and the first train that ran through an Indian settlement inspired an Indian lad to a strange deed”--
Not a boy would have listened. This form of story beginning is _bad_ and phenomenally common in many stories for children. It is an example of _words_, not _interest stimuli_. It explains a story situation instead of _presenting_ it. A story to secure the involuntary attention of children should have the quality of a crashing orchestral overture, a thunder clap, a pistol shot--so unexpected, compelling, and penetrating will it be.
“_There was once a little Indian boy who rode fifty miles on the cow-catcher of an engine!_”
Could there be a more stimulating story beginning for a group of boys than this? There is an apperceptive appeal in the Indian lad. He was not a man, not a chieftain, but just a little lad like themselves. There is an immediate sense appeal in the steam-engine image that the story beginning brings to their minds. Smoke, smell, bell ringing, whistle blowing, steam escaping, and the rattle of iron wheels on iron tracks are all recalled to a boy’s mind in one glorious bit of imagination whose only stimulus is the word _engine_. Then, to clinch the apperceptive and sensory appeal of the sentence, is the quick introduction of a new story interest--the Indian boy did a deed that they, in their wildest dreams, had never considered--he rode an engine.
If a story, otherwise good, opens poorly--is too wordy, too descriptive, too pedantic--study the story carefully for its main interest and, selecting just the right words to convey this overture of interest, begin _there_. It will be discovered that certain of the classic, favorite tales of childhood fulfill this story test. They open compellingly and carry the interest that was stimulated in the first paragraph clear through to the end.