A Double Experience

George du Maurier

Punch

(26 March 1881): 134

“Shall I tell you a pretty story, Effie?”

“Has it a Moral to it?”

“Yes, Darling.”

“Then, Mummy, I'd rather not. A Story with amMoral is like Jam with a Powder [medicine] in it!”

Effie here agrees with John Ruskin, who believed that the children’s stories should stimulate their imaginations and avoid moralization.