I'irat. Vice-Pre&icleiit — G. Pa,rry Jctikins, F'.lt.A.S. 



Sc<3oiid Vlce-Pi'eaident' — J. P. Ballard. 



Corresponding Secretary — W. H. Child, Ph.B., M.A. 



Cura,toi--Col. C. C. Grant. 



Treasurei' — P. L. S-crivon. 



Pi^cording Se<?ret-ary— -Jas. Gadsby. 



)xecutive Council — T. H, Wingham, B.A. ; E. S. 

 Hogai-t.h, B.A.; B. 0. Hooper, A. H. Baker, F. C. Grkt, 

 E. G. Overholt. 



Mr. H. B. Witton then pi^esented the following ad- 

 dress, entitled St-caie-.s^ and Story Tellers : — 



STORIES AND STORY-TELLERS. 



By H. B. Witton, Sr, 



Pi-ead before the Hamilton Association, May 26th, 1910. 

 A tale, or story, is a little narrative or history. It 

 may be ti-ue or imaginai'y, in prose or in verse, and being 

 less elaborate than a novel, may be- written or oral. Of 

 unwritten stoiies — Maerchen- — the bmtherB Grimm collect- 

 ed more than two hundred in Europe; and the word folk- 

 lore, coined by W. J. Thoms, has sei-vexi as the heading of 

 a chapter containing many hundred such stories. East and 

 west, north and south, all peoples, civilized and semi-sav- 

 age, have their stories. Joseph Jacobs, who speaks with 

 authority on the subject, says the "tell-me-a-story" instinct 

 is as universal as any craving of mankind. He wonders 

 that somebody has not defined man as a t-ale-telling animal, 

 Vv'ith ,the corollary of woman as a tale-bearing one. A cur- 

 sory glance at a few groups of the numberless stories cur- 

 rent in the world, with a passing reference hei-e and there 

 to Bome special tale, may be interesting. 



If not the oldest collection of famous stories, that of 

 the Arabian Nights for many years, in the western part of 

 the world at least, has had most readers. The Arabic ver-* 

 sion of these tales took nearly its present shape somewhere 

 \n Elgypt, likely at Cairo, in the fifteenth centui-y. A mm- 



