Milton Erickson's teaching tales—the stories he told his patients and the stories he told the pilgrims who came to sit at his feet —are ingenious and enchanting. They are extraordinary examples of the art of persuasion. Some people would say that they are much too good to be tucked away on the psychiatry shelf, since even though their intention was therapeutic, they are part of a much larger tradition: the American tradition of wit and humor whose greatest exemplar is Mark Twain