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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Slielf.LB-U^S 
 
 A^jk- 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
4. 
 
THE DISTAFF SERIES 
 
 Issued under the auspices of the Board of Women 
 
 Managers of the State of New York for 
 
 the Columbian Exposition 
 
THE DISTAFF SKRIKS. 
 
 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00 each. 
 
 Woman- and the Highkb Education. Eilited by 
 
 Anna C. Brackett. 
 Thk Literature of Philanthropy. Edited by 
 
 Frances A. Goodale. 
 Kakly Prose and Verse. Edited by Alice Morse 
 
 Earle and Emily Ellsworth Ford. 
 Thh Kindergarten. Edited by Kate Doujrlas Wiggin. 
 Hou.sKHOLD Art. Edited by Candace Wheeler. 
 Short Stories. Edited by Constance Cary Harrison. 
 
 PuBi.isHKD BY HARPER & BROTHERS, N. Y. 
 
 t^" For sale bi/ all booksellers, or will be snit, postage 
 prepaid, to any 'part of the United States, Canada, or 
 Mexico, on receipt of the price. 
 
THE J\ 
 
 KINDERGARTEN 
 
 EDITED 
 
 r 
 
 KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 
 
 NEW YORK ^^^^^J 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 MDCCCXCIII 
 
.W6 
 
 Copyright, 1893, by Hakpek & Brothers. 
 
 All riyAts reserved. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 Mrs. Wiggin's paper " The Relation of the 
 Kindergarten to Social Reform " appeared in her 
 volume " Children's Rights," and is reprinted 
 here by the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co. ; Miss Brooks's article " The Philoso- 
 phy of the Kindergarten " is included by the 
 permission of the Christian Union. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 THE RELATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN TO 
 
 SOCIAL REFORM 3 
 
 By Kate Douglas Wiggin. 
 
 THE CHILD AND THE RACE 30 
 
 By Mrs. Mary H. Peabody. 
 
 SEED, FLOWER, AND FRUIT OF THE KINDER- 
 GARTEN 41 
 
 By Alice Wellington Rollins. 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE PURE KINDERGARTEN . . 74 
 By Jenny B. Merrill. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KINDERGARTEN. . 97 
 By Angelixe Brooks. 
 
 AN EXPLANATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN, 
 
 INTENDED FOR MOTHERS 133 
 
 By Alice A. Chadwick. 
 
 THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE MOTHER'S 
 WORK 162 
 
 By Mrs. Elizabeth Powell Bond. 
 
 OUTGROWTHS OF KINDERGARTEN TRAINING . 180 
 By Mrs. A. B. Longstreet. 
 
 i 
 
INTEODUCTIOK 
 
 The series of collections of which this volume 
 is a part is made up of representative work of 
 the women of the State of New Yorli in period- 
 ical literature. 
 
 This literature has been classified under its 
 conspicuous divisions — Poetry, Fiction, History, 
 Art, Biography, Translation, Literary Criticism, 
 and the like. 
 
 A woman of eminent success in each depart- 
 ment has then been asked to make a collection 
 of representative work in that department, to 
 include in it an example of her own work, and 
 to place her name upon the volume as its 
 Editor. 
 
 These selections have been made, as far as 
 possible, chronologically, beginning with the 
 earliest work of the century, in order that 
 the volumes may carry out the plan of the 
 
" Exhibit of Women's Worii in Literature in 
 the State of New Yorlv," of which tliey are 
 an original part. 
 
 The aim of this Exliibit was to make for the 
 Cohmibian Exposition a record of literary work, 
 limited, through necessity, both by sex and local- 
 ity, but, as far as possible, accurate and com- 
 plete, and to preserve this record in the State 
 Library in the Capitol at Albany. 
 
 It includes twenty-five hundred books, begin- 
 ning with the works of Charlotte Ramsay Lennox, 
 the first-born female author of the province of 
 New York, published in London in 1752, closing 
 with the pages of a translation of Herder, still 
 wet from the press, and comprising the works of 
 almost every author in the intervening one hun- 
 dred and forty years. 
 
 It includes also three hundred papers read be- 
 fore the literary clubs of the State, a summary 
 of the work of all writers for the press, and the 
 folios which preserve the work of many able 
 women who have not published books. 
 
 The women of the State of New York have 
 had the honor of decorating and furnishing the 
 Library of the Woman's Building. Believing 
 
the best equipment of a library to be literature, 
 they have therefore prepared this Exhibit, and 
 have made its character comprehensive and his- 
 toric, in order that it may not be temporary, but 
 that it may be preserved in the State Library 
 and may have permanent value for future lovers 
 and students of Americana, 
 
 In the preparation of these volumes Messrs. 
 Harper & Brothers have arranged that the com- 
 position and other mechanical work, as well as 
 the designing of the cover, should be done by 
 women, thus giving especial significance to the 
 title, "The Distaff Series." 
 
 Blanche Wilder Bellamy, 
 Chairman of the Committee on Literature 
 of the Board of Women 3fanagers of the 
 State of New York. 
 
THE KIKDERGAETEK 
 
"The ordinary child remembers to be good; the kin- 
 dergarten child forgets to be naughty." 
 
 —Alice W. Rollins. 
 
 J 
 
THE RELATION OF THE KINDER- 
 GARTEN TO SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIX. 
 
 " Social reform !" It is always rather an 
 awe-striking plirase. It seems as if oue 
 ought to be a philosopher eveu to approach 
 so august a subject. The kindergarten — a 
 simple uupreteutious place, where a lot of 
 tiny children work and play together; a 
 place into which if the hard-headed man 
 of business chanced to glance, and if he did 
 not stay long enough, or come often enough, 
 would conclude that the children were 
 frittering away their time, particularly if 
 that same good man of business had 
 weighed and measured and calculated so 
 long that he had lost the seeing eye and 
 understanding heart. 
 
 Some years ago a San Francisco kiuder- 
 gartner was threading her way througli a 
 dirty alley, making friendly visits to the 
 children of her fiock. As she lingered on a 
 
certaia door-step, receiviug the last confi- 
 dences of some "weary woman's heart, she 
 heard a loud but not unfriendly voice ring- 
 ing from an upper window of a tenement- 
 house just round the corner, ^' Clear things 
 from underfoot !" pealed the voice, in sten- 
 torian accents. '' The teacher o' the Kids^ 
 Guards is comin' down the street !" 
 
 "Eureka!" thought the teacher, with a 
 smile. " There's a bit of sympathetic trans- 
 lation for you ! At last the German word 
 has been put into the vernacular. The odd 
 foreign syllables have been taken to the 
 ignorant mother by the lisping child, and 
 the Mndergartners have become the Eids' 
 Guards ! Heaven bless the rough transla- 
 tion, colloquial as it is !" 
 
 What has the kindergarten to do with 
 social reform ? What bearing have its theory 
 and practice upon the conduct of life ? 
 
 A brass-buttoned guardian of the peace 
 remarked to a gentleman on a street-corner, 
 "If \ve could open more kindergartens, sir, 
 we could almost shut up the penitentiaries, 
 sir!" We heard the sentiment, applauded 
 it, and promptly printed it on the cover of 
 three thousand reports ; but on calm reflec- 
 tion it appears like an exaggerated state- 
 ment. I am not sure that a kindergarten in 
 
every ward of every city in America " would 
 almost shut up the peuiteutiaries, sir !" The 
 most determined optimist is weighed down 
 by the feeling that it will take more than 
 the ardent prosecution of any one reform, 
 however vital, to produce such a result. We 
 appoint investigating committees, who ask 
 more and more questions, compile more and 
 more statistics, and get more and more con- 
 fused every year. "Are our criminals na- 
 tive or foreign-horn ?" that we may know 
 whether we are worse or better than other 
 people ? " Have they ever learned a trade ?" 
 that we may prove what we already know, 
 that idle fingers are the devil's tools ; " Have 
 they been educated f — by any one of the 
 sorry methods that take shelter under that 
 much-abused word — that we may know 
 whether ignorance is a bliss or a blister ; 
 " Are they married or single ?" that we may 
 determine the influence of home ties ; " Have 
 they been given to the use of liquor ?" that 
 we may heap proof on proof, mountain-high, 
 against the monster evil of intemperance ; 
 '' What has been their family history ?" 
 that we may know how heavily the law of 
 heredity has laid its burdens upon them. 
 Burning questions all, if we could find out 
 the causes of crime. . 
 
To discover the "why and wherefore of 
 thiugs is a law of huraau thought. The re- 
 form schools, penitentiaries, prisons, insane 
 asylums, hospitals, and poor-houses are all 
 filled to overflowing ; and it is entirely sen- 
 sible to inquire how the people came there, 
 and to relieve, pardon, bless, cure, or reform 
 them as far as we can . Meanwhile, as we 
 are dismissing or blessing or burying the un- 
 fortunates from the imposing front gates of 
 our institutions, new throngs are crowding 
 in at the little back doors. Life is a bridge, 
 full of gaping holes, over which we must 
 all travel ! A thousand evils of human 
 misery and wickedness flow in a dark cur- 
 rent beneath ; and the blind, the weak, the 
 stupid, and the reckless are continually fall- 
 ing through into the rushing flood. We 
 must, it is true, organize our life-boats. It 
 is our duty to pluck out the drowning 
 wretches, receive their vows of penitence 
 and gratitude, and pray for courage and res- 
 ignation when they celebrate their rescue by 
 falling in again. But we agree nowadays 
 that we should do tliem much better service 
 if we could contrive to mend more of the 
 holes in the bridge. 
 
 The kindergarten is trying to mend one 
 of these "holes." It is a tiny one, only 
 
large enough for a cliild's foot ; but that is 
 our bit of the workl's work — to keej) it 
 small! If we can prevent the little people 
 from stumbling, we may hope that the grown 
 folks will have a surer foot and a steadier 
 gait. 
 
 A wealthy lady announced her intention 
 of giving $25,000 to some home for incu- 
 rables. " Why," cried a bright kindergart- 
 ner, "don't you give twelve and a half 
 thousand to some home for curahles, and 
 then your other twelve and a half will go so 
 much further ?" 
 
 In a word, solicitude for childhood is one 
 of the signs of a growing civilization. " To 
 cure, is the voice of the past ; to prevent, 
 the divine whisper of to-daj^" 
 
 What is the true relation of the kinder- 
 garten to social reform ? Evidently, it can 
 have no other relation than that which grows 
 out of its existence as a plan of education. 
 Education, we have all glibly agreed, lessens 
 the prevalence of crime. That sounds very 
 well ; but, as a matter of fact, has our past 
 system produced all the results in this direc- 
 tion that we have hoped and prayed for? 
 The truth is, people will not be made much 
 better by education until the plan of educat- 
 ing them is made better to begin with. 
 
Froebel's idea — the kindergarten idea — 
 of the child and its powers, of humanity 
 and its destiny, of the universe, of the whole 
 problem of living, is somewhat different 
 from that held by the vast majority of par- 
 ents and teachers. It is imperfectly carried 
 out, even in the kindergarten itself, where a 
 conscious effort is made, and is infrequently 
 attempted in the school or family. 
 
 His plan of education covers the entire 
 period between the nursery and the univer- 
 sity, and contains certain essential features 
 which bear close relation to the gravest 
 problems of the daj'. If they could be 
 made an integral part of all our teaching in 
 families, schools, and institutions, the bur- 
 dens under which society is groaning to-day 
 would fall more and more lightly on each 
 succeeding generation. These essential feat- 
 ures have often been enumerated. I am no 
 fortunate herald of new truth. I may not 
 even put the old wine in new bottles ; but 
 iteration is next to inspiration, and I shall 
 give you the result of eleven years' experi- 
 ence among the children and homes of the 
 poorer classes. This experience has not been 
 confined to teaching. One does not live 
 among these people day after day, pleading 
 for a welcome for unwished-for babies, stand- 
 
ing beside tiny graves, receiving pathetic 
 coufideDces from wretched fathers and help- 
 less mothers, witliout facing ever}^ problem 
 of this workaday world ; they cannot all be 
 solved, even by the wisest of ns ; we can 
 only seize the end of the skein nearest to our 
 hand, and patiently endeavor to straighten 
 the tangled threads. 
 
 The kindergarten starts out plainly with 
 the assumption that the moral aim in educa- 
 tion is the absolute one, and that all others 
 are purely relative. It endeavors to be a 
 life-school, where all the practices of com- 
 plete living are made a matter of daily 
 habit. It asserts boldly that doing right 
 would not be such an enormously difScult 
 matter if we practised it a little — say a 
 tenth as much as we practise the piano — 
 and it intends to give children plenty of op- 
 portunity for practice in this direction. It 
 says insistently and eternally, "Do noble 
 things, not dream them all day long." For 
 development, action is the indispensable req- 
 uisite. To develop moral feeling and the 
 power and habit of moral doing we must 
 exercise them, excite, encourage, and guide 
 their action. To check, reprove, and punish 
 wrong feeling and doing, however necessarj'^ 
 it be for the safety and harmony, nay, for 
 
the very existence of any social state, does 
 not develop right feeliug and good doiug. 
 It does not develop anything, for it stops 
 action, and without action there is no de- 
 velopment. At best it stops wrong devel- 
 opment, that is all. 
 
 In the kindergarten, the physical, mental, 
 and spiritual heiug is consciously addressed 
 at one and the same time. There is no 
 " jiiece-work " tolerated. The child is viewed 
 in his threefold rehitious, as the child of 
 Nature, the child of Man, and the child of 
 God ; there is to be no disregarding any one 
 of these divinely apj)ointed rehitions. It 
 endeavors with equal solicitude to instil 
 correct and logical habits of thought, true 
 and generous habits of feeling, and pure and 
 lofty habits of action ; and it asserts se- 
 renely that, if information cannot be gained 
 in the right way, it would better not be 
 gained at all. It has no special hobby, un- 
 less you would call its eternal plea for the 
 all-sided development of the child a hobby. 
 
 Somebody said lately that the kindergar- 
 ten people had a certain stock of metaphysi- 
 cal statements to be aired on every occasion, 
 iind that they were over -fond of prating 
 about the "being" of the child. It would 
 hardly seem as if too much could be said iu 
 
favor of the symmetrical growth of the 
 child's nature. These are not mere "silken 
 phrases ;'' but, if any one dislikes them, let 
 him take the good, honest, ringing charge of 
 Colonel Parker, " Remember that the whole 
 boy goes to school !" 
 
 The whole boy goes to school ; but the 
 whole boy is seldom educated after he gets 
 there. A fraction of him is attended to in 
 the evening, however, and a fraction on 
 Sunday. He takes Jiimself in hand on Sat- 
 urdays and in vacation time, and accom- 
 plishes a good deal, notwithstanding the 
 fact that his sight is a trifle impaired al- 
 ready, and his hearing grown a little dull, 
 so that Dame Nature works at a disadvan- 
 tage, and begins, doubtless, to dread boys 
 who have enjoyed too much "schooling," 
 since it seems to leave them in a state of 
 coma. 
 
 Our general scheme of education fui'thers 
 mental development with considerable suc- 
 cess. The training of the hand is now be- 
 ing laboriously woven into it ; but, even, 
 when that is accomplished, we shall still be 
 working with imperfect aims, for the stress 
 laid upon heart-culture is as yet in no way 
 commensurate with its gravity. We know, 
 with that indolent, fruitless half-knowledge 
 
that passes for knowing, that "ont of the 
 heart are the issnes of life." We feel, not 
 with the white heat of absolute conviction, 
 but placidly and indifferently, as becomes 
 the dwellers in a world of change, that 
 "conduct is three-fourths of life;" but we 
 do not crystallize this belief into action. 
 We " dream," not " do " the " noble things." 
 The kindergarten does uot fence off a half- 
 hour each day for moral culture, biit keeps 
 it in view every moment of every day. Yet 
 it is never obtrusive ; for the mental facul- 
 ties are being addressed at the same time, 
 and the body strengthened for its special 
 work. 
 
 With the methods generally practised in 
 the family and school, I fail to see how we 
 can expect any more delicate sense of right 
 and wrong, any clearer realization of duty, 
 any greater enlightenment of conscience, any 
 higher conception of truth, than we now 
 find in the world. If you are a fair-minded 
 man or woman, and have had much experi- 
 ence with young children, you will be com- 
 pelled to confess that they generally have a 
 tolerably clear sense of right and wrong, 
 needing only gentle guidance to choose the 
 right when it is put before them. I say 
 most, not all, children ; for some are poor, 
 
blurred humau scrawls, blotted all over 
 "with the mistakes of other people. And 
 how do we treat this natural sense of what 
 is true and good, this willingness to choose 
 good rather than evil, if it is made even the 
 least bit comprehensible and attractive? 
 In various ways, all equally dull, blind, and 
 vicious. If we look at the downright ethi- 
 cal significance of the methods of training 
 and discipline in many families and schools, 
 Tve see that they are positively degrading. 
 We appoint more and more "monitors" in- 
 stead of training the "inward monitor" in 
 each child, make truth- telling difficult in- 
 stead of easy, punish trivial and grave of- 
 fences about in the same way, practise open 
 bribery by promising children a few cents a 
 day to behave themselves, and weaken their 
 sense of right by giving them picture-cards 
 for telling the truth and credits for doing 
 the most obvious duty. This has been car- 
 ried on until we are on the point of need- 
 ing another Deluge and a new start. 
 
 Is it strange that we find the moral sense 
 blunted, the conscience unenlightened? The 
 moral climate with which we surround the 
 child is so hazy that the spiritual vision 
 grows dimmer and dimmer, and small won- 
 der! Upon this solid mass of ignorance 
 
and stupidity it is difficult to make any im- 
 pression ; yet I suppose there is greater joy 
 in heaven over a cordial "thwack" at it 
 than over most blows at existing evils. 
 
 The kindergarten attempts a rational, re- 
 spectful treatment of children, leading them 
 to do right as much as possible for right's 
 sake, abjuring all rewards save the pleasure 
 of working for others and the delight that 
 follows a good action, and all punishments 
 save those that follow as natural penalties 
 of broken laws — the obvious conseqnences 
 of the special bit of wrong-doing, whatever 
 it may be. The child's will is addressed in 
 such a way as to draw it on, if right ; to 
 turn it willingly, if wrong. Coercion in the 
 sense of fear, personal magnetism, nay, even 
 the child's love for the teacher, may be used 
 in such a way as to weaken his moral force. 
 With every free, conscious choice of right, a 
 human being's moral power and strength of 
 character increase ; and the converse of this 
 is equally true. 
 
 If the child is unruly in play, he leaves 
 the circle and sits or stands by himself, a 
 miserable, lonely unit, until he feels again in 
 sympathy with the community. If he de- 
 stroys his work, he unites the tattered frag- 
 ments as best he may, and takes the moral 
 
object lesson home witli him. If he bas neg- 
 lected his own work, he is not given the 
 joy of working for others. If he does not 
 work in harmony with his companions, a 
 time is chosen when he will feel the sense 
 of isolation that comes from not living in 
 nnity with the prevailing spirit of good-will. 
 He can have as much liberty as is consis- 
 tent with the liberty of other people, but no 
 more. If we could infuse the sjj'irit of this 
 kind of discipline into family and school 
 life, making it systematic and continuous 
 from the earliest years, there would be few- 
 er morally " slack-twisted " little creatures 
 growing up into inefficient, bloodless man- 
 hood and womanhood. It would be a good 
 deal of trouble ; but then, life is a good deal 
 of trouble anyway, if you come to that. We 
 cannot expect to swallow the universe like 
 a pill, and travel on through the world 
 '' like smiling images pushed from behind." 
 Blind obedience to authorit}^ is not in it- 
 self moral. It is necessary as a part of gov- 
 ernment. It is necessary in order that we 
 may save children dangers of which they 
 know nothing. It is valuable also as a 
 habit. But I should never try to teach it 
 by the story of that inspired idiot, the boy 
 who '' stood on the burning deck, whence all 
 
16 
 
 but him Lad fleet," and from wlieuce Lo 
 would have fled, if his mental endowment 
 had been that of ordiuaiy boys. For obedi- 
 ence must not be allowed to destroy com- 
 mon- sense and the feeling of personal re- 
 sponsibility for oue's own actions. Our task 
 is to train responsible, self-directing agents, 
 not to make soldiers. 
 
 Virtue thrives in a bracing moral atmos- 
 phere, where good actions are taken rather 
 as a matter of course. The attempt to in- 
 stil an idea of self-government into the tiny 
 slips of humanity that find their way into 
 the kindergarten is useful, and infinitely to 
 be preferred to the most implicit obedience 
 to arbitrary command. In the one case, we 
 may hope to have, some time or other, an 
 enlightened will and conscience struggling 
 after the right, failing often, but rising su- 
 perior to failure, because of an ever stronger 
 joy in right and shame for wrong. In tlie 
 other, we have a " good goose,^^ who does the 
 right for the picture-card that is set before 
 him — a "trained dog" sort of child, who 
 will not leap through the hoop unless he 
 sees the whip or the lump of sugar. So 
 much for the training of the sense of riglit 
 and wrong. Now for the ]ii'ovision which 
 the kindergarten makes for the growth of 
 
certain practical virtues, much needed in 
 the world, but touched upon all too lightly 
 in family and school. The student of polit- 
 ical economy sees clearly enough the need 
 of greater thrift and frugality in the nation ; 
 but where and when do we propose to de- 
 velop these virtues ? Precious little time is 
 given to them in most schools, for their cul- 
 tivation does not yet seem to be insisted 
 upon as an integral part of the scheme. 
 Here and there an inspired human being 
 seizes on the thought that the child should 
 really be taught how to live at some time 
 between the ages of six and sixteen, or he 
 may not learn so easily afterwards. Ac- 
 cordingly, the pupils under the guidance 
 of that particular person catch a glimpse 
 of eternal verities between the printed 
 lines of their geographies and grammars. 
 The kindergarten makes the growth of 
 every -day virtues so simple, so gradual, 
 even so easy, that you are almost beguiled 
 into thinking them commonplace. They 
 seem to come in, just by-the-way, as it were, 
 so that at the end of the day you have seen 
 thought and word and deed so sweetly min- 
 gled that you marvel at the "universal 
 dovetailedness of things," as Dickens puts 
 it. They will flourish better in the school, 
 
too, when the cheerful hum of labor is heard 
 there for a little while each day. Tlie kiu- 
 dergarten child has "just euongh" strips 
 for his weaviug mat — noue to lose, none to 
 destroy; just enough blocks in each of his 
 boxes, and every one of them, he finds, is 
 required to build each simple form. He cuts 
 his square of paper into a dozen crystal- 
 shaped bits, and behold ! each one of these 
 tiuy liakes is needed to make a symmetrical 
 figure. He has been careless in following 
 directions, and his form of folded paper 
 does not "come out" right. It is not even, 
 and it is not beautiful. The false step in 
 the beginning has perpetuated itself in each 
 succeeding one, until at the end either j)ar- 
 tial success or complete failure meets his 
 eye. How easy here to see the relation of 
 cause to effect ! " Courage ! " says the kin- 
 dergartner ; " better fortune next time, for 
 we will take greater pains." " Can you rub 
 out the ugly, wrong creases?" ''We will 
 try. Alas, no ! Wrong things are not so 
 easily rubbed out, are they ?" " Use your 
 worsted quite to the end, dear; it costs 
 money." "Let us save all the crumbs from 
 our lunch for the birds, children ; do not 
 drop any on the floor ; it will only make 
 work for somebody else." And so on, to 
 
19 
 
 tbe eud of the busy, bappy day. How easy 
 it is in the kindergarten, how seemingly dif- 
 ficult later on ! 
 
 The most superficial observer values the 
 industrial side of the kindergarten, because 
 it falls directly in line with the present ef- 
 fort to make some manual training a part of 
 school work ; but twenty or tweuty-five years 
 iigo, when the subject was not so popular, 
 kindergarten children were working away at 
 their pretty, useful tasks — tiny missiona- 
 ries helping to show the way to a truth now 
 fully recognized. As to the value of lead- 
 ing children to habits of industry as early 
 in life as may be, that they may see the dig- 
 nity and nobleness of labor, and conceive of 
 their individual responsibilities in this world 
 of action, that is too obvious to dwell upon 
 at this time. 
 
 To Froebel, life, action, and knowledge 
 were the three notes of one harmonious 
 chord ; but he did not advocate manual 
 training merelj" that children might be kept 
 busy, nor even that technical skill might be 
 acquired. The piece of finished kinder- 
 garten work is only a symbol of something 
 more valuable which the child has acquired 
 in doing it. It is always the creative in- 
 stinct that is to be reached and vivified; 
 
everything else is secondary. By repro- 
 duction from memory of a dictated form, 
 by taking from or adding to it, by changing 
 its centre,corners, or sides — by a dozen ingen- 
 ious preliminary steps — the cliild's inventive 
 faculty is developed ; and he soon reaches a 
 point in drawing, building, modelling, or 
 what not, where his greatest delight is to 
 put his individual ideas into visible shape. 
 Instead of tw^enty hackneyed and slavish cop- 
 ies of one pattern, we have twenty free, indi- 
 vidual productions, each the expression of 
 the child's inmost personal thought. This 
 invests labor with a beauty and powder, and 
 confers upon it a dignity to be gained in no 
 other way. It makes every task, however 
 lowly, a joy, because all the higher faculties 
 are brought into action. Much so-called 
 " busy work," where pupils of the " A class" 
 are allowed to stick a thousand pegs in a 
 thousand holes while the "B class" is re- 
 citing arithmetic, is quite fruitless, because 
 it has so little thought behind it. 
 
 Unless we have a care, manual training, 
 when we have succeeded in getting it into 
 the school, may become as mechanical and 
 unprofitable as much of our mind training 
 has been, and its moral value thus largely 
 missed. The only way to prevent it is to 
 
borrow a snggestiou from Froebel. Then, 
 and only then, shall we have insight with 
 power of action, knowledge Avith practice, 
 practice witli the stamp of individuality. 
 
 The kindergarten succeeds in getting 
 these interesting and valuable free produc- 
 tions from children of four or five years 
 only by developing, in every possible way, 
 the sense of beauty and harmony and order. 
 We know that people assume, somewhat at 
 least, the color of their surroundings ; and, 
 if the sense of beauty is to grow, we must 
 give it something to feed upon. 
 
 The kindergarten tries to provide a room, 
 more or less attractive, quantities of pict- 
 ures and objects of interest, growing plants 
 and vines, vases of flowers, and plenty of 
 light, air, and sunshine. A canary chirps 
 in one corner, perhaps ; and very likely 
 there will be a cat curled up somewhere, or 
 a forlorn dog which has followed the chil- 
 dren into this safe shelter. It is a pretty, 
 pleasant, domestic interior, charming and 
 grateful to the senses. The kindergartner 
 looks as if she were glad to be there, and 
 the children are generally smiling. The 
 work, lying cosily about, is neat, artistic, 
 and suggestive. The children pass out of 
 their seats tu the cheerful sound of music, 
 
and are presently joiuing in an ideal sort of 
 game, Avliere, in place of the mawkish sen- 
 timentality of " Sally Walker," of obnox- 
 ious memory, we see all sorts of healthfnl, 
 poetic, childlike fancies woven into song. 
 Eudeness is, for the most part, banished. 
 The little human butterflies and bees and 
 birds flit hither and thither in the circle; 
 the make-believe trees hold up their branches 
 and the flowers their cups; and every- 
 body seems merry and content. As they 
 pass out the door, good-byes and bows and 
 kisses are wafted backward into the room ; 
 for the manners of polite society are ob- 
 served in everything. 
 
 You draw a deep breath. This is a real 
 kindergarten, and it is like a little piece of 
 the millennium. "Everything is so very 
 pretty and charming," says the visitor. Yes, 
 so it is. But all this color, beauty, grace, 
 symmetry, daintiness, delicacy, and refine- 
 ment, though it seems to address and de- 
 velop the aesthetic side of the child's nature, 
 has in reality a very profound ethical signifi- 
 cance. We have all seen the preternatural 
 virtue of the child who wears her best dress, 
 hat, and shoes on the same august occasion. 
 Children are tidier and more careful in a 
 dainty, well-kept room. They treat pretty 
 
materials more respectfully than ugly ones. 
 They are inclined to be ashamed, at least in 
 a slight degree, of uncleanliness, vulgarity, 
 and brutality, when they see them in broad 
 contrast with beauty and harmony and 
 order. For the most part, they try " to live 
 up to " the place in which they find them- 
 selves. There is some connection between 
 manners and morals. It is very elusive and 
 perhaps not verj^ deep ; but it exists. Vice 
 does not flourish alike in all conditions and 
 localities, by any means. An ignorant negro 
 was overheard praying, " Let me so lib dat 
 when I die I may hah manners, dat I may 
 know what to say when I see my heabenly 
 Lord!" Well, I dare say we shall need 
 good manners as well as good morals in 
 heaven ; and the constant cultivation of the 
 one from right motives might give us an un- 
 expected impetus towards the other. If the 
 systematic development of the sense of beauty 
 aiid order has an ethical significance, so has 
 the happy atmo8i)here of the kindergarten 
 an influence in the same direction. 
 
 I have known one or two ''solid men" 
 and oue or two predestinate spinsters who 
 said that they didn't believe children could 
 accomplish anything in the kindergarten, 
 because they had too good a time. There is 
 
sometLiug nuiqnely vicious about people who 
 care nothing for children's happiness. That 
 sense of the solemnity of mortal conditions 
 Avhicli has been indelibly impressed upon us 
 by our Puritan ancestors comes soon enough, 
 Heaven knows ! Meanwhile, a happj'^ child- 
 hood is an unspeakably precious memory. 
 
 The social phase of the kindergarten is 
 most interesting to the student of social 
 economics. Co-operative w^ork is strongly 
 emphasized; and the child is iuspired both 
 to live his own full life, and jet to feel that 
 his life touches other lives at every point — 
 *'for we are members one of another." It 
 is not the unity of the '' little birds " in the 
 couplet who '' agree " in their '' little nests," 
 because " they'd fall out if they didn't/' 
 but a realizatiou, in embryo, of the divine 
 principle that no man liveth to himself. 
 
 As to specifically religious culture, every- 
 thiug fosters the spirit out of which true 
 religion grows. 
 
 In the morniug talks, when the children 
 are most susceptible and ready to " be 
 good," as they say, their thoughts are led 
 to the beauty of the world about them, the 
 pleasure of right -doing, the sweetness of 
 kind thoughts aud actions, the loveliness of 
 truth, patience, and helpfulness, aud the 
 
goodness of the Creator to all created 
 tbiugs. No parent, of whatever creed or 
 lack of creed, whether a bigot or unbeliever, 
 could object to the kind of religious instruc- 
 tion given in the kindergarten ; aud yet in 
 every x)ossible way the child-soul aud the 
 child-heart are directed towards everything 
 that is j)ure and holy, true aud steadfast. 
 
 There is a vast deal of practical religion 
 to he breathed into these little children of 
 the street before the abstractions of beliefs 
 can be comprehended. They canuot live on 
 words and prayers and texts ; the thought 
 and feeling must come hefore the expres- 
 sion. As Mrs. Whitney says, " The world 
 is determined to vaccinate chiklren with 
 religion for fear they should take it in the 
 natural way." 
 
 Some wise sayings of the good Dr. Hol- 
 land, in Xicholas Mintunif come to me as 
 I write. Nicholas says, in discussing this 
 matter of charities, and the various means 
 of effecting a radical cure of pauperism, 
 rather than its continual alleviation : '^ If 
 you read the parable of the Sower, I think 
 that you will find that soil is quite as nec- 
 essary as seed — indeed, that the seed is 
 tbrown away unless a soil is prepared in ad- 
 vance, ... I believe in religion, but before 
 
26 
 
 I undertake to i)lant it, I would like some- 
 thing to plant it in. The sowers are too 
 few, and the seed is too precious to be 
 thrown away and lost among the thorns 
 and stones." 
 
 Last but by no means least, the admira- 
 ble physical culture that goes on in the kin- 
 dergarten is all in the right direction. Phy- 
 siologists know as much about morality as 
 ministers of the gospel. The vices which 
 drag men and women into crime spring as 
 often from unhealthy bodies as from weak 
 wills and callous consciences. Vile fancies 
 and sensual appetites grow stronger and 
 more terrible when a feeble physique and 
 low vitality offer no opposing force. Deadly 
 vices are nourished in the weak, diseased 
 bodies that are penned, day after day, in 
 filthy, crowded tenements of great cities. 
 If we could withdraw every three-year-old 
 child from these physically enfeebling and 
 morally brutalizing influences, and give 
 him three or four hours a day of sunshine, 
 fresh air, and healthy physical exercise, we 
 should be doing humanity an inestimable 
 service, even if we attempted nothing more. 
 
 I have tried, as briefly as I might in 
 justice to the subject, to emphasize the fol- 
 lowing points : 
 
27 
 
 I. That we must act np to onr coiiyic- 
 tioiis with regard to the value of preveutive 
 work. If we are ever obliged to choose, let 
 ns save the children. 
 
 II. That the relation of the kindergarten 
 to social reform is simply that, as a plan of 
 education, it offers us valuable suggestions 
 in regard to the mental, moral, and phj^sical 
 culture of children, which, in view of certain 
 crying evils of the day, we should do well to 
 foHow. 
 
 The essential features of the kindergarten 
 which bear a special relation to the subject 
 are as follows : 
 
 1. The symmetrical development of the 
 child's powers, considering liim neither as 
 all mind, all soul, nor all body ; but as a 
 creature capable of devout feeling, clear 
 thinking, noble doing. 
 
 2. The attempt to make so-called "moral 
 culture" a little less immoral; the rational 
 method of discipline, looking to the growth 
 of moral, self-directing power in the child 
 — the only proper discipline for future citi- 
 zens of a free republic. 
 
 3. The development of certain iiractical 
 virtues, the lack of which is endangering 
 the prosperity of the nation ; namely, econ- 
 omy, thrift, temperance, self-reliance, fru- 
 
gality, iudustry, courtesy, and all the sober 
 Lost — none of them drawing-room accom- 
 pllsliments, and consequently in small de- 
 mand. 
 
 4. The emphasis placed upon manual 
 training, especially in its development of the 
 child's creative activity. 
 
 5. The training of the sense of beauty, 
 harmony, and order; its ethical as well as 
 eesthetical significance. 
 
 6. The insistence upon the moral etfect 
 of happiness ; joy the favorable climate of 
 childhood. 
 
 7. The training of the child's social nat- 
 ure; an attempt to teach the brotherhood 
 of man as well as the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 8. The realization that a healthy body 
 has almost as great an influence on morals 
 as a pure mind. 
 
 I do not say that the consistent practice 
 of these principles will bring the millen- 
 nium in the twinkling of an eye, but I do 
 affirm that they are the thought-germs of 
 that better education which shall prepare 
 humanity for the new earth over which shall 
 arch the new heaven. 
 
 Ruskin says, "Crime can only be truly 
 liindered by letting uo man grow up a crim- 
 inal, by taking away the will to commit 
 
29 
 
 sin ! " But, you object, that is sheer impos- 
 sibility. It does seem so, I confess, and yet, 
 unless you are willing to think that the 
 Avhole plan of au Omnipotent Being is to be 
 utterly overthrown, set aside, thwarted, then 
 you must believe this ideal possible, some- 
 how, some time. 
 
 I know of no better way to grow to- 
 wards it than by living up to the kinder- 
 garten idea, that just as we gain intellectual 
 power by doing intellectual work, and the 
 finest cesthetic feeling by creating beauty, so 
 shall we win for ourselves the power of 
 feeling nobly and willing nobly by doing 
 "noble things."^ 
 
THE CHILD AND THE RACE. 
 
 BY MRS. MARY H. PEABODY. 
 
 We ofteu hear the expression, "The child 
 repeats the history of the race." The words 
 are used from the psychological point of 
 view rather than in the historic sense. They 
 are quoted to show that the single human 
 being goes through a certain process of de- 
 velopment that in some way runs parallel to 
 the general progress of humanity as it has 
 grown from early ages up to its present con- 
 ditions, and that a study of that similarity 
 in the courses of life is of use in directing 
 the education of children. 
 
 The principle is of course applicable ev- 
 erywhere, but in the kindergarten there is 
 an especial ground for referring to it, be- 
 cause in the treatment that is there given 
 to the young mind this method of growth, 
 which is native to humanity, is met by a 
 more immediate and complete response than 
 is given by other systems of teaching. To 
 
31 
 
 see with what right we may make that 
 claim we need to look iuto histor3\ The 
 progress of the race has been the progress 
 and unfolding of mind. It has been by the 
 growth of thought that man has passed from 
 his days of simplest existence to these of 
 extended power; and recognizing this, men 
 have hastened to establish schools to teach 
 young minds how to think. The alphabets 
 of music, language, logic, and rhetoric were 
 once the chosen way, with efforts at natural 
 science, mathematics, and such curious ideas 
 of astronomy, physics, and geography as 
 masters ventured to assume were true. As 
 time passed and men beheld the face of Nat- 
 ure more clearly, they found that all think- 
 ing on the part of humanity had to try it- 
 self in her domain, and that only what could 
 hold true under her sky, wherever tried, was 
 of any real value. Nature has been the 
 great teacher of the world, and the question 
 has been and still is how to bring her into 
 the schools of men. 
 
 In the light of history action is the result 
 of thought. Jt is carrying out on the plane 
 of Nature, by means of her materials and 
 her forces, the ideas which have germinated 
 in the mind of man. Thus the great task 
 of mankind has been to make his owu 
 
32 
 
 thought clear as to the possibilities of Nat- 
 ure; to comprehend in his own mind her 
 laws of action, the relationship and meth- 
 ods of her forces, the agreement and disa- 
 greement of her materials, and to know by 
 means of Nature's refusals and compliances 
 in what way, working with her, he might 
 carry out his own conceptions. The diffi- 
 culty has never been that nature is one 
 thing and man another, but that man has 
 neither known himself, his own powers and 
 the laws that control them, nor the similar 
 action of things outside of himself in nature ; 
 and truly the sum of his history has been the 
 establishing of one point after another in 
 this great connection of the world within 
 and the world without, and so offering to 
 humanity at large one step after another by 
 which to ascend towards its height of mor- 
 tal power. 
 
 The spirit of man, being immortal and be- 
 longing to the Infinite, flies through space 
 to limitless regions beyond. For discipline, 
 for knowledge of itself, for the training that 
 is essential to its healthy growth in this be- 
 ginning of its career, it is cast in earthly 
 form and set face to face with nature that 
 it may develop thought — the clear, strong, 
 thinking, reasoning mind. This is the phi- 
 
losopby of Frocbel. He sees the new-born 
 human spirit as the first degree of life. He 
 sees the physical nature as its "outermost" 
 — the degree outside and opposite, and he 
 sees the man himself rising between the two 
 npou the plane of that third condition or de- 
 gree of life, the thoughtful, rational mind. 
 This mind of man is created and grows by 
 the union of the volatile interior spirit with 
 the limited forms and forces of nature with- 
 out ; and Froebel shows that since the his- 
 tory of the race reveals all this, we can take 
 advantage of its teachings, and in educating 
 the child give him from the beginning a 
 certain acquaintance with nature that shall 
 be a true foundation for his growth of mind 
 and offer the greatest service for his rapid 
 adv^ancement. In the teaching of Froebel 
 we find no point in life unrecognized. His 
 vision was keen in all directions, and as if 
 standing himself at the centre, he looks 
 through the entire circumference of life, 
 considering the past, the present, and the 
 future, relating the child to his felloWvS as a 
 man, and taking into his plan for education 
 all that man has done in his range of labor 
 from lowest forms of industry to highest 
 forms of art. The kindergarten is not, how- 
 ever, a museum. It does not bring into its 
 
borders materials for illustration of tbc di- 
 versity of tlie world, either as shown iu nat- 
 ure or in the works of man. On the contra- 
 ry, Froebel teaches explicitly that the visible 
 world of form and movement — its rolliug 
 spheres, its rocks and earth, its forms of 
 life, plant, animal, and human, and amid 
 all this the manifold labors and construc- 
 tions of men — that this great outside world 
 is not to be brought to the child. He sees 
 these things everywhere about him. They 
 are in themselves variety, their name is dis- 
 traction, and among them all the child, in- 
 quisitive and eager, stands where, seeing 
 much, he can comprehend almost nothing, 
 and therefore is not in the way of gaining 
 for himself the habit of clear, strong thought. 
 Sucb habit in the child or in the man is 
 gained only by knowing the principles of 
 things; so Froebel says we are to turn from 
 this outside variety and give the child the 
 inside unity from which they spring. The 
 plane of outer life is the plane of result. It 
 shows the conclusions of long continued ef- 
 fort both in nature and in the work of man; 
 and since all growth is expansion of life 
 from some small seed or germ of interior 
 vitality, it is in the order of true education 
 that the child should be drawn at once from 
 
35 
 
 the distraction of tbe outer to tlie unity of 
 the begiuuings of things, from the piano of 
 results to the plane of origins. We are to 
 give the opposite of what the child sees, the 
 heart of things, the cause for the existence 
 and character of what lies without. So that 
 the child can be led from within outward 
 along the lines of law. This explains why 
 wo find, as the outfit of the kiudergarten, 
 ouly three simple bare forms — the ball, the 
 cube, and the cylinder, and the limited set 
 of forms, faces, lines, and points that are de- 
 rived from these three originals. Froebel 
 went to the three forms which, in their j)re- 
 cision, stand as the basis of creation, the 
 starting -points of all construction and 
 growth in nature, and of all construction 
 and development of thought in man. These 
 elementary forms of nature and life show 
 to the child what he cannot see for himself. 
 They give the laws of things. All things that 
 exist are form without and force within — that 
 is, as the forces of life and nature act in con- 
 nection with one another they take visible 
 form, and all forms that are thus produced 
 grow out of and are related to these three, 
 which are represented in the Second Gift of 
 the kindergarten. Froebel sees the child in 
 ignorance of all things, knowing nothing 
 
36 
 
 of inetliods, movements, and measurements, 
 either of tbe Leavens above or the earth be- 
 neath ; the flying of trains, the flash of a 
 telegraphic message, or the building of an 
 Eifiiel tower. He is in a world of wonders, 
 all equally unreadable. Froebel saw, witb 
 insight beyond that of any other teacher, 
 that the child should be led, not from thing 
 to thing in the completeness of its finished 
 detail, but directly iuward to the starting- 
 points of each, to the principles upon which 
 each rests. And in doing this he compre- 
 hended that the child in his ignorance re- 
 peated the history of his race. There was a 
 time when the earth was not compassed with 
 a belt of human construction, when oceans 
 separated the lands which they now con- 
 nect, when the railway and the steamship 
 did not reach from China round agaiu. 
 Whatever were th'e beginnings of historj'^, 
 and these we do not know, the general rec- 
 ord of man goes to show that he has been 
 slow to comprehend the world of nature, 
 slow to learn the laws by exercise of which 
 he could be master upon the earth. 
 
 From the East the progress of the race 
 has been westward. We hear the echo of 
 the songs of India, and leave untouched the 
 veil of Isis ; but while acknowledging mys- 
 
teries that are not revealed, we cau move 
 from Asia iuto Europe and across to Amer- 
 ica, following tokens of a life tliat began in 
 rudest, most primitive forms. Reading by 
 the fragments left lyiug in the drifted soil 
 we learn that men were once ignorant of 
 Nature. They ranged about as fishers mere- 
 I3", haunting the river valleys, and leaving be- 
 hind their piles of bones — the kitchen-mid- 
 dens — that tell their simple story. Gradually 
 this roughest life gave place to somethiug 
 better — to staying in a place to j)lant and 
 reap a harvest, to moving out of caves and 
 building huts and houses. Theu came the 
 use of metals, superior to the stones and 
 bones that had before served all purposes; 
 and after that, as one group learned from 
 another, this first grasp upon Nature's laws 
 and materials having been made, men went 
 forward in paths of industry, organizing and 
 expanding their lives at every step. 
 
 As we look back at history, however, we 
 see how slow has been the progress of the 
 race, and what a mighty effort has been 
 made by the great men who have opened 
 the way through learning some new x^rinci- 
 ple of natural science. Their questions were 
 all of principle and plau, of origin and end; 
 and for centuries the calm face of Nature 
 
vouclisafed no reply. Pythagoras, Plato, 
 Aristotle, with Nvhat earnestuess they strove 
 to look through creation to catch the secret 
 of movement, the direction aud the method of 
 its forces ; and what curious prejudice ruled 
 the mind of the race in those darker days. 
 Copernicus might lahor, aud Galileo might 
 die ; men would not yield their opinions and 
 be set in the way of truth. And after these, 
 how like a child creeping upon its knees be- 
 fore it finds the law of its erect, vertical 
 bearing, did Kepler toil through years of 
 baffled inquiry before he won the true sight 
 by which he could explain and reveal the 
 heavens and the earth, and open the way 
 for Newton aud the heroes of science who 
 have taught us the construction of the earth, 
 the development of plants, the progress aud 
 X'elationship of animal life, the anthropology 
 and ethnology of man, and his religious, 
 political, and social history. 
 
 In all this striving, success has been de- 
 clared by the advance of man upon new 
 territory, by his crossing the seas, by his 
 erection of buildings, and his annihilation 
 of space aud time. And if we look past the 
 outermost aspect of this occupation of the 
 earth, we come to one great principle that 
 underlies the whole, and here we find Froe- 
 
bel looking from uature and the work of 
 man to the child. In all that has been done, 
 men have been seeking for the relationship 
 of one thing to another. This, and this only, 
 gives the key to j)Ower — to know how things 
 are related, how they act one npon another, 
 how they repel and attract, how they bind 
 into one, and how they disperse and scatter 
 the vital forces of nature. Nature, as a whole, 
 is the manifestation of energy; her sepa- 
 rate parts, visible and invisible, are only so 
 many expressions of the one great life that 
 flows through suns, moons, stars, and earths. 
 This force is separated ; set in many forms. 
 Some of them will work together, and some 
 of them will not. Each great invention has 
 been completed by the discovery of this law 
 of relationship of parts, by learning how to 
 adjust and relate in a working order cer- 
 tain forms and forces. Whenever a point is 
 gained man has an extension of power, and 
 the world profits thereby. And here lies the 
 reason for keeping in mind the analogy be- 
 tween the single life and that of the world. 
 What the world has sought for the child 
 meets. The world has sought for the prin- 
 ciples of things, for the methods of power 
 in its first movements outward from the cen- 
 tre. Amid the diversity of uature this sim- 
 
40 
 
 plioity lias beeu hard to fiud, and iu the 
 desire to help the child, so that he in his 
 turn may help the world, Froebel gives hiui 
 the three forms that lie at the heart of all 
 construction and all growth, and begins to 
 teach him how to think, how to come up on 
 to the plane of the rational mind, by show- 
 ing him the relation of one thing to another ; 
 showing him how to construct, how to sepa- 
 rate, and bow to ally with mathematical 
 precision the forms, faces, angles, lines, and 
 points that men have been dealing with 
 since the world began. Thus, before the 
 child reads, and begins to range abroad at 
 his own will, he is set face to face with Nat- 
 ure, and is shown some of the secrets of 
 relationship by means of which the world 
 has moved and the race has grown from 
 childhood to maturity. 
 
SEED, FLOWER, AND FRUIT OF THE 
 KINDERGARTEN^ 
 
 BY ALICE WELLINGTON RQLLINS. 
 
 There was once a cliild, and because he 
 was born less fortunate than others, he was 
 less good. And those people who were bet- 
 ter, because more fortunate, said among 
 themselves : " It is very sad that he should 
 not be good. Let us be kind to him. What 
 shall we do?" And they said, "Educate 
 him." But what is education? "It is 
 teaching him facts. We will teach him that 
 two and two make four. Then he will be in- 
 telligent, and when he is intelligent he will 
 be good." So they taught him that two and 
 two make four, but he did not become any 
 better, nor did he seem much more intelli- 
 gent. Then they said, " Perhaps it is the 
 bad air." For they were teachiug him in 
 the same old haunts where he had lived, 
 where the rooms were small and stifling, so 
 that his muscles were cramped and there 
 
42 
 
 ■was scarcely any air to breatbo, aud what 
 be did breathe was abiiost poisouous. And 
 they said: "We will be kinder still. Wo 
 will bnild him a separate school-house, in a 
 good locality, with large rooms and plenty 
 of windows, and good air outside of the 
 windows." 
 
 This they did, and taught liim again that 
 two and two make four. This time he 
 learned it more quickly, because the air was 
 better; but he did not become a good boy, 
 and, although he had a little more intelli- 
 gence, it seemed almost as though he used 
 his intelligence to increase his ingenuity in 
 evil resources. Then they said, " We will 
 build other schools — moral schools, Sunday- 
 schools — and tell him how beautiful it is to 
 do right, and how terrible to do wrong." 
 But this did not have any percex^tible effect 
 upon him. Then they said, " We will 
 frighten him ; we will tell him that God 
 will punish him if he does wrong." But he 
 wasn't frightened. And then they said, " We 
 will punish him ourselves; we will build a 
 jail, with bolts and bars, and shut him up if 
 he does wrong." 
 
 But still he did wrong, aud was shut up ; 
 and when he came out he only did more 
 wrong, because all the time he had been in 
 
jail be had been angry at having been shnt 
 up, and had been thinking what he conld 
 do when he should get out to show that he 
 was angry. And then came some one who 
 said, "Let me take bim ;" and she took him 
 into a room where there was a piano and an 
 American flag and a big heaiJ of damp clay, 
 and she said to him, " Would you like to 
 make a rabbit?" And his eyes sparkled, 
 and he said he should. Then she took some 
 of the damp clay, and began moulding it in 
 her fingers, and she let him take some, and 
 watch how she worked 5 and so they worked 
 together, and by-and-by his rabbit was al- 
 most as good as hers. Then each of them 
 made another rabbit, and she asked, " How 
 many rabbits are there now ?" And he said, 
 instantly, " Four rabbits." 
 
 This time he had learned his lesson very 
 quickly, and his eyes sparkled as he gave 
 the right answer. Then she told him he 
 could not make any more rabbits that day, 
 but he might come again the next day at the 
 same hour, and they would make some more 
 rabbits, and perhaps a bird. So he went 
 away ; but he was so interested in the rabbit- 
 making that all the rest of the day he was 
 thinking about it, and picking up a little 
 mud in the street, not to throw at a police- 
 
man, as he used to do, but to try makiug a 
 rabbit of it ; and as it was not very easy, lie 
 tried it again with a bit of dough from the 
 bread his mother was making. And he was 
 so busy over this, and so happy, that he for- 
 got all about a lie he had meant to tell and 
 a gingerbread cake he had meant to steal. 
 This was what had happened to him : he had 
 learned even more easily than before that 
 two and two make four, but something else 
 had happened to him — he had forgotten to 
 be bad. He had not been given any higher 
 aspirations, any wider knowledge of good 
 and evil, or the results of good and evil; he 
 had simply forgotten about evil, because he 
 had been interested in something else. In- 
 terested — that is the magic word. The prob- 
 lem of the age is to make virtue, knowledge, 
 philanthropy, interesting. We all know 
 the witty advice, " If you would be wise and 
 good and happy, educate your grandmother," 
 And in this recognition of the immense power 
 of heredity, we are apt to acknowledge the 
 discouraging factor of the impossibility- We 
 cannot educate our grandmother, we say; 
 but there are grandmothers whom we can 
 educate. The children of to-day are the 
 grandmothers of the future ; we can educate 
 them. Let who will make the laws of the 
 
nation, so ouly we cau educate the children. 
 And what is education ? It is teaching peo- 
 ple to know things, you will say. So it is, 
 to some extent ; but to a far greater extent 
 it is teaching them to feel things — as the lit- 
 tle boy in the kindergarten feels far more pa- 
 triotic waving a little American flag as he 
 marches round the room to a stirring strain 
 from the piano than he feels after he has sim- 
 ply learned the fact from a teacher or book 
 that he has a country and ought to love it. 
 
 This, then, is the triple advantage of tlie 
 system of education which begins with the 
 kindergarten! it teaches facts, it develops 
 the faculty of being amused, it encourages 
 the power to create. The ordinary primary- 
 school teaches facts ; but the kindergarten 
 teaches them earlier, more thoroughly, and 
 more easily, while in addition it develops 
 character, rouses feeling as well as knowl- 
 edge ; teaches children to work, and, what is 
 more important, teaches them to like work. 
 It is foolish literary pathos to excite sympa- 
 thy for the degradation of the poor by writ- 
 ing, as Mrs. Browning does, of the children of 
 the slums : 
 
 "Bnt the young, young children, Oh, my brothers, 
 They nre weeping bitterly; 
 
 They are weeping in the play-time of the others, 
 In the country of the free." 
 
No ; they are not weeping ; let us not pre- 
 teud for a moment that they are. They are 
 perfectly happy, but they are happy in mis- 
 erable ways. They are shouting, laughing, 
 leaping, grimly rollicking in what they know 
 as ''fun," proud of their ingenuity in lying, 
 blissful in their ability to fasten fire-crackers 
 to clogs' tails and tin pans to cats', swearing 
 with delight, boasting in riotous glee of 
 tlieir stolen gingerbread. This is the most 
 tragic thing in their fate ; they are not un- 
 happy in their degradation. We are to 
 teach them not to be happy, but to be happy 
 in wise, sweet ways, and that is what the 
 kindergarten begins. Children are not happy 
 in merely learning that two and two make 
 four ; but they are happy in learning how 
 to make four rabbits out of two and two bits 
 of damp clay. Which brings us to the third 
 advantage of the kindergarten and its es- 
 pecial adaptation to the poorer classes — its 
 power in developing the faculty to create. 
 '* Of what use to the poor boy," it may be 
 asked, " can it possibly be to learn to make 
 rabbits out of clay?" It is of no special 
 moment that he should learn to do so, but it 
 is of great importance that he should learn 
 to make something. 
 
 '' Could you make as good a pair of shoes 
 
as that wbeu you came here ?" asked a visitor 
 of a convict iu prison. 
 
 ''No, sir/' was the reply. ''If I couhT 
 have, I'd never have been here." 
 
 It will be objected that perhaps a practical 
 vent is good for restless thought and hand, 
 but that it is unwise to foster in the poor an 
 artistic taste which may merely make them 
 long restlessly for advantages and things 
 they are never to have. Those who make 
 this plea forget that the kindergarten tends 
 to develop not art merely, but artists; not 
 taste merely, but i)ower; not eujoyment 
 merely, but ability ; not things alone, but 
 thinkers. It does not teach children to 
 crave what they cannot get, but to create 
 what otherwise they could not get. It is 
 opening a vent for ambition instead of 
 stilling it. 
 
 "What did you think of the new little 
 girl, Charlie ?" asked Charlie's mother, when 
 lie came home from the kindergarten. 
 
 " I don't think much of her," was the 
 lordly reply ; " she doesn't even know what 
 a cube is." 
 
 This is a typical effect of the system ; it 
 does uot so much teach children to know 
 things as create in them an ambition to 
 know things. Whatever we may think of 
 
it for tlie rich, it would seem self-evident 
 that it is what is needed for the children of 
 the poor. 
 
 The proposition to introduce kindergarten 
 into the public schools has been opposed by 
 one of the Board of Education on the ground 
 that it would be an "outrage" to put upon 
 the city the burden of an expense of $3,000,- 
 000, merely that the children of the city may 
 begin the study of grammar a little earlier. 
 The advocates of the measure acknowledge 
 frauklj'^ that to them an exx:)euse of $3,000,000 
 to a city which numbers nearly 2,000,000 in- 
 habitants, and whose real estate and personal 
 property are assessed at nearly two thou- 
 sand millions of dollars, would not seem too 
 great, even if "merely" there would thereby 
 be secured to the next generation a little 
 more, a little easier, or a little better educa- 
 tion. To which may be added a gentle re- 
 minder as to the art of putting things: a tax 
 of $3,000,000 for a city sounds large ; but the 
 sum decreases in effect if yon put it in a way 
 equally true, that the average individual 
 tax would be but a dollar and a half per- 
 haps; while if the city would grant even 
 the $26,000 which has been asked in humbler 
 hours for making the experiment, the in- 
 dividual tax would hardly be twenty-five 
 
49 
 
 cents a year, uo more than many a man 
 tosses to a beggar on the street many days 
 on bis way up-town. But to tbose wbo 
 tbink otber and stronger arguments neces- 
 sary, we would respectfully present tbe ap- 
 peal as one for self-preservation and tbe city 
 interests. It is an appeal tbat tbe cbildren 
 of tbe city — and we trust tbe patbos of tbe 
 name will toucb tbe imagination — may look 
 to tbeir parents for tbe same training of tbe 
 soul as well as tbe mind tbat tbe individual 
 cbild bas a rigbt to demand from tbe indi- 
 vidual parent; and tbis, not "merely" for 
 tbe individual good of tbe cbild, but for 
 tbe eventual benefit to tbe parent. We ap- 
 peal for kindergarten in the puhlic schools on 
 tbe ground tbat it will tend, far more tban 
 any otber iufluence possible for tbe city to 
 exert en masse, to tbe training of good citi- 
 zens. We appeal for an expense of |3,000,000 
 not " merely " because tbe cbildren of tbe 
 city will be made bappier and more intelli- 
 gent in scbools of wbicb tbe pre-eminent ad- 
 vantage is less tbat tbey begin education 
 early tban tbat tbey begin it rUjhtlij, but 
 also to save tbe city an eventual expense of 
 $10,000,000 or more for " bomes " and jails 
 and paujier institutions and reformatories, 
 wben later in life its neglected cbildreu 
 4 
 
drift inevitably to the squalor, the want, tlie 
 sliiftlessness, the wrong, that spring less 
 from temperament than from neglected tem- 
 perament. The individual parent feels the 
 responsibility of heredity, dreads to discover 
 in the child seeds of evil sown by himself. 
 Not less should a great city realize its power 
 to determine the heredity, not of its own im- 
 mediate generation of children, but that of 
 their children, exactly so far as it consents 
 to endow its own children with advantages 
 perfectly in its power to bestow, and certain 
 to react in the years to come with a force 
 that grows with geometric progression ; a 
 force which, leaving out of consideration 
 the interests of the children themselves, 
 will be of incalculable power to the city it- 
 self Divert the minds of the young, and 
 you will not need to reform the old. Neglect 
 tbe mind of the young, and you will not be 
 able to protect yourself from them when 
 you are old. 
 
 It will at once be ashed : " Granting 
 the value of the results claimed, by what 
 methods are they secured by the kinder- 
 garten system ? How is it possible for citi- 
 zens of so much finer calibre to develop mere- 
 ly from beginning school a little earlier." 
 To which we must repeat that it is not in 
 
51 
 
 the beginniug earlier, but iu the beginning 
 tetter, that the miracle lies. The ordinary 
 primary-school teaches truths as facts; the 
 kiudergarteu teaches the same, aud more 
 truths, as impressions. A boy may forget or 
 disdain a fact; but he never recovers from 
 an impression. It is atmosphere, not dogma, 
 that educates; the kindergarten surrounds 
 the child with an atmosphere of culture and 
 intelligence and good-will to men. Said the 
 boy Heine, of the old French drummer in his 
 father's household : " When he talked about 
 liberty, I did not understand; but when he 
 played the Marseillaise on his drum, then I 
 understood." The kindergarten plays the 
 Marseillaise on the finely responsive chords 
 of the young soul, which will never vibrate to 
 any other intiuence so eifectively. The ordi- 
 nary school tells the child he ought to love 
 his country ; the kindergarten maJces him 
 love it. The one tells him facts about Wash- 
 ington and Jefferson and patriotic lives; the 
 other gives him a little American flag to 
 wave as he marches round the room to a 
 stirring national air, and behold! he himself 
 has become patriotic! And as he is made 
 indelibly patriotic by a mere impression, so 
 lie is taught indelibly iu other ways, by 
 other impressions, to be courteous, to be 
 
houest, to be uuselflsb, to "be thouglitfal, to 
 regard the riglits of others, to feel the im- 
 pulses of love and teuderuess and symiiathy, 
 and of self-respect, and to be sensitive to 
 beauty. No one denies the importance of 
 these factors of education ; but it is general- 
 ly supposed that everything except intel- 
 lectual facts will be taught the child at 
 home and in society ; and it is too often for- 
 gotten that too many of the children of the 
 city find the worst of influences in their 
 homes and the society that surrounds them. 
 There is not a game, not a talk, not a pict- 
 ure, not a song, in the kindergarten method 
 which lightens learning by games and talks 
 and pictures and songs, but has an ulterior 
 motive of teaching a fact, or imparting a 
 feeling, by making an impression. 
 
 This, then, is the chief value of the kin- 
 dergarten method; it fixes habits in the 
 mind, as important as the habits of the body 
 or of occupation. That which you make a 
 habit for yourself becomes the good or bad 
 taste of your children and the virtue or vice 
 of your grandchildren. We are all good or 
 bad, not because of the circumstances that 
 confront us, but because of the attitude of 
 mind in which we confront circumstances. 
 Aheap of damp clay in the road suggests to 
 
53 
 
 one boy modelling a rabbit, to another mak- 
 ing a mnd-ball to throw at a policeman. 
 Yon cannot arrange the life of your child 
 so that he shall never have to pass a heap 
 of damp clay ; bnt you can train his mind 
 in channels that shall determine what he 
 he will think about when he meets damp 
 clay. You cannot make a boy good by 
 hemming him in with silken curtains; evil 
 dwells within as well as without, and he 
 may need outlets rather than curtains. Nor 
 can you keep yourself safe from evil by lock- 
 ing up evil in a distant part of the city. 
 You cau neither lock evil out or in. You 
 can only supply educational forces by which 
 to determine the attitude of the growing 
 soul to the evil which it is liable at any mo- 
 ment to meet from within or without. It is 
 in creating this atmosphere of taste that 
 the Kindergarten excels; the taste that in a 
 second generation becomes virtue. I can 
 think of no better description of it than as 
 a divine hypnotism of the soul ; a method of 
 mental " suggestion," by which the teacher 
 determines for the young soul under her 
 guidance, not the circumstances it is to en- 
 counter, but the attitude it shall assume 
 towards whatever circumstances may con- 
 front it, whether of good or evil. 
 
54 
 
 Many have objected to the public recog- 
 nition of kindergarten on tbe ground that 
 their own children in private schools have 
 not been benefited by it. They forget a 
 difference in the aim of education in pri- 
 vate and public schools. In the latter 
 its object is not to ornament with " fanci- 
 ful " education the minds of children already 
 too much amused perhaps at home, but to 
 reach a class for whom whatever seems "or- 
 namental" or "fanciful" in the method, 
 is the only ornament of their lives. To 
 children with dozens of "gifts" and hun- 
 dreds of playthings in their homes, the two 
 or three more little "gifts" and toys of the 
 kindergarten may become "confusing;" 
 but to those who have only these two or 
 three — and a large part of the children of 
 our public schools must necessarily come 
 from the very poor — it is probable that they 
 are not confusing at all. If the " little 
 games " that are their only games, perhaps 
 seem frivolous to those whose whole life out 
 of school is one happ}^ game, two things may 
 be remembered — first, that the innocent 
 amusement, so important a part of all edu- 
 cation, is doubly important among a class 
 in whom discontented brooding is especially 
 to be avoided ; and, secondly, that every one 
 
of these apparently simple "games" has 
 some ulterior object iu actual instruction. 
 
 lu reply to a prefereuce that has been 
 expressed for the old-fashioned education 
 which produced '^ Whittier, Longfellow, Brj-- 
 aut, Prescott, Curtis, and Abraham Lincoln," 
 we may say that the object of the public 
 kindergarten is not to produce Whittiers 
 and Longfellows. They may be trusted to 
 produce themselves. The object is to train 
 the average respectable citizen. Not to de- 
 velop exceptional men, but to raise the level 
 of the average. Not to inspire genius, but 
 to lift mediocrity. Not to inculcate exces- 
 sive virtue or ability, but to save from in- 
 capacity, and from the grinding poverty, the 
 mischievous idleness which sow the seeds of 
 crimiuals. Not to create six distinguished 
 meu whose very prominence comes from the 
 low average of the rest ', but to elevate a 
 little the entire community of those Avhora, 
 as Kingsley says, we call " on Sundays our 
 brethren and on week-days 'the masses.'" 
 Even in the case of Whittiers and Liucolns, 
 one may still say, iu emulation of the Free 
 Traders who, if assured that the country 
 has prospered under Protection, at once 
 advance the argument that it would have 
 prospered more under Free Trade, that great 
 
ns are Wliittiers and Lincolns, perhaps even 
 tliey would have been a little greater if they 
 liad enjoyed in youth the inestimable privi- 
 lege of wet clay and cubes ! It may be noted, 
 also, that of the six great men mentioned all 
 but one belonged, not only to the privileged 
 classes, but to the exceptionally privileged 
 classes, to whom every possibility of culture 
 and generous education was open in their 
 own homes. This is not the class for whom 
 we make the appeal of a public kindergar- 
 ten. To aim at developing Bryants and 
 Lowells would be a species of intense selfish- 
 ness, as we shall be certain of reaping an 
 immense reward for ourselves in the event- 
 ful returns ; but we advocate the public 
 kindergarten, not in the hope of reaping 
 exquisite poems, noble satires, lofty elo- 
 quence, inspiring comradeship, and mag- 
 nificent statesmen, but in the hope of mak- 
 ing a little happier, and therefore a little 
 better, and very much wiser and more ca})- 
 able, lives that may never come in touch 
 with our own except in the general brother- 
 hood of humanity. 
 
 We have even heard it in all serious- 
 ness suggested that the old-fashioned meth- 
 od of education at West Point had pro- 
 duced very fine men and citizens without 
 
57 
 
 the aid of kindergarten. The superiority of 
 West Point is indisputable; still, if it is 
 remembered how exceedingly few can enter 
 West Point of the sixty million inhabitants 
 of the United States, perhaps we shall re- 
 ceive a less grudging consent to devoting a 
 little of the public money to those whose 
 problem of education is not that of kinder- 
 garten or West Point, but of kindergarten or 
 nothing. The aim of a public kindergarten 
 is to develop early in life, among a class less 
 favored than those who usually enter West 
 Point, a happiness of disposition which shall 
 prevent the habit of brooding discontent; 
 the manual ability to earn a reasonable live- 
 lihood ; the quickened intelligence and ca- 
 pacity to make Labor a skilled and efificient 
 agent in securing to itself rights which at 
 present it covets without knowing how to 
 deserve and obtain them ; a result which 
 would be the most reliable safeguard we can 
 oppose to the unfortunate condition which 
 at present compels ofttimes eight thousand 
 of the glittering bayonets of West Point to 
 step forward to control eight hundred dis- 
 contented and brooding hearts from the 
 haunts of labor. The bayonets disperse the 
 hearts — for a time — but the education begun 
 in the spirit of the kindergarten will disperse 
 
the discontent and brooding for all time. 
 And to secure this admirable aim, the hy- 
 giene of kindergarten drill plaj's no small 
 part. Whatever value mere intellectual 
 education possesses, it is comparatively weak 
 without the support of sanitary foundation. 
 That so large a part of kindergarten teach- 
 ing is given while the children are in mo- 
 tion, not nervous and rebellious motion, but 
 healtliful, natural, and charming exercise, 
 tends much to that quickened circulation of 
 tlie blood which brings, with rapid change 
 of impressions and wise release from the 
 tension of cramped muscles and slowly 
 drawn breath, the sanity of strong bodies. 
 Add to this that these are not mere gym- 
 nastic exercises, but that the mind and im- 
 agination and thoughts are kept healthfully 
 at work while tlie exercise is going on, and 
 you- will penetrate the secret of the new 
 education. Forbid the restlessness of a 
 child, and the blood stagnates, and will 
 eventually have its revenge, whatever the 
 apparent spiritual gain in self-control ; give 
 the restlessness a vent in right directions, 
 and you have made a friend instead of an 
 enemy of the forces of nature. One of the 
 most admirable sayings in that delightful 
 book AmieVs Journal, is this, "Every real 
 
need is stilled, every vice stimulated, by satis- 
 faction." This is a certain test for ^Ybat shall 
 be done in any given case. If a cbild craved 
 brandy, you would not give it some to quiet 
 its craving; you yrould know the certain 
 result would be before long a greater crav- 
 ing for more. But if a cbild wants to move, 
 and you let liim move, you have secured 
 more reijose for him and from him in the 
 end. 
 
 At a recent exhibition of the graduating 
 kindergarten teachers from the Normal Col- 
 lege, a daiuty little by -play in the back- 
 ground, of which only a few spectators were 
 aware, was the prettiest object-lesson that 
 could have been prepared as an illustration, 
 though the performers were all uncouscious 
 of the parts they were playing. A mother 
 among the audience had brought with her a 
 three-year old boy, thoroughly alive, alert, 
 and restless. He toddled about, and cooed 
 and amused himself with pulling at things, 
 till the distressed mother felt she must soon 
 take him away, and certainly heard and saw 
 nothing of what w^as going on while she was 
 there. Suddenly the row of teachers on the 
 platform rose and began reciting, illustrat- 
 ing by graceful and appropriate gestures 
 all the things that a little boy saw while he 
 
wasruiiniug across a field — the pretty brook, 
 rniiniug almost as fast as he ; the fishes leap- 
 ing in the brook j the tall grass looking 
 over into the brook to see, too ; the tiny 
 bird's nest in the grass ; the birds flying up 
 from the nest and into the sky ; the long, 
 lovely, floating clouds, sailing away, away, 
 away, across the blue heaven. Struck by the 
 sudden silence of my baby- friend, I turned 
 to see if his mother had taken him away, 
 and beheld him transfigured from a naughty 
 little boy into something far better than a 
 saint — an interested, eager, silent, intelligent 
 child. He was standing on tiptoe in his 
 chair, silent as a statue in one sense, since 
 he was no longer restless, but with his face 
 lifted, his eyes intently watching the motions 
 on the i)ki^Porm; his little eyes alight, his 
 whole attitude eager, attentive, interested, 
 though of course he could not understand a 
 word that was said. His tiny hands kept 
 time with the graceful gestures of the 
 teachers in the distance, as their hands 
 swayed with the breeze, or flew with the 
 birds, or leaped witb the fishes, or sailed 
 with the clouds. His restlessness had not 
 been checked ; for even when a mother can 
 control a turbulent child by forcing it to sit 
 still either by a caress or a threat, she often 
 
61 
 
 does not realize the miscbief she is doiug to 
 the peut-up little hody and the rebellious 
 little mind; no, his restlessness had not 
 been checked, but turned in a beautiful di- 
 rection. He was silent now, but his mind 
 was active and his little heart was happy. 
 He had not been told he must not move, 
 but he had been shown how he could move 
 still more delightfully. He was keeping 
 very still, but his imagination was doiug 
 wonderful things. He need not hush his 
 little voice, but see if he could imitate a 
 bird. He had not been thwarted, he had 
 been developed. He went home, not worn 
 out and cross, but gentler and brighter than 
 ever. He had not resisted his impulse to 
 be naughty, but he had found it pleasauter 
 to be good. Unless he kept quite still, he 
 could not see what was going on. He had 
 not learned the great duty of self-control, 
 perhaps, but he had acquired something 
 better — a tendency to habits that would not 
 need to be controlled. 
 
 The physical restlessness, in one way so 
 troublesome when it is the nervous outbreak 
 of unused energies, in another way so de- 
 lightful, when it is spontaneous but well- 
 directed motion, moving with physical grace 
 to the rhythm of an intellectual idea, sug- 
 
62 
 
 gests another great .advantage of the kinder- 
 garten in the public schools. We know that 
 the kindergarten makes children happy, in 
 itself alone an ohject worth sacrificing much 
 for; we know that it trains the heart and 
 the artistic sense as well as the mind; that 
 it cultivates feeling as well as knowledge, 
 courtesy and manners as well as facts, imag- 
 ination as well as reason and memory ; hut 
 more than that, it keeps the little body well, 
 and the little mind sane as well as active; 
 or perhaps one might even say, with still 
 more justice, sane because it is active in 
 many, and always in wise ways. The nec- 
 essary captivity of poor little restless bodies 
 in the long school hours is well known to be 
 an objection. During an investigation of 
 the over-crowded primary-schools, the state- 
 ment was made that even the recess given 
 could hardly afford much relief; there was 
 no yard big enough for the children to rnn 
 about in, and even the rooms were not large 
 enough for free movement; so that to ob- 
 tain something of the desired release for 
 fretted limbs, the children were formed into 
 files and marched ronnd the aisles and down- 
 stairs! Take, again, in schools a little more 
 fortunate, the gymnastic class, a form of or- 
 ganized exercise only a makeshift at the 
 
best, with its dull, heavy, self-conscious, ex- 
 cessive effort at motion. Of bow little ben- 
 efit tliis deliberate exercise compared with 
 the siiontaueons flatter of little hands, not 
 weighed down with dumb-bells, but made 
 alive with eagerness, lifted above the head 
 and sailing with clouds, or bending like 
 grasses, or flying like birds. It is the dif- 
 ference between giving plants lattice-work 
 to support them, and giving them the sun 
 and air and water that enable them to sup- 
 port themselves. Add to this the glad out- 
 break into well-trained singing, the patriotic 
 march with banners, the graceful games that 
 teach them to be kind as well as clever; 
 then they come back to their little chairs, 
 glad to rest, instead of hating an enforced 
 stillness, ready to learn arithmetic and color 
 by stringing beads, or to make a lovely de- 
 sign for mamma's bureau-cover out of a geo- 
 metrical problem. We have long known 
 that sedentary training of the mind, even to 
 very high things, is somewhat dangerous. 
 First we tried physical exercise as abrupt and 
 severe and unnatural as the intellectual ef- 
 fort, in the hope to counteract the intel- 
 lectual strain ; but gymnastics at the best 
 are but a corrective, a medicine ; what we 
 need, old and young, is the rounded develop- 
 
uieut where nothing is abnormal, and where 
 we need not balance one error by another. 
 This is the element that Delsarte has intro- 
 duced into gymnastics — a mental idea, a 
 feeling of the heart, an artistic sympathy 
 with grace, and a sense of dainty humor. 
 These make movement a delight, and itself 
 a development and an inspiration, not a 
 mere palliative relief. The mental and moral 
 sanity that comes from perfect health, and 
 the perfect health that depends so much on 
 mental and moral sanity, are exquisitely in- 
 terwoven. You can aid each by developing 
 the other. The kindergarten system that 
 keeps body and mind in harmony is working 
 incalculably more good than the mere intel- 
 lectual training of the ordinary schools; the 
 latter at best can only congratulate tliem- 
 selves when the pupils, by sheer effort at 
 self-control, li a ve remembered to behave quite 
 properlj^ all through the session. 
 
 To illustrate, however, how the old order 
 changes, and how now it gives place to the 
 new, a brief series of contrasts may be given 
 between the old and the new systems, as fol- 
 lows; the idea being to show, not the ab- 
 solute method, but the difference in spirit, 
 which is at the base of the two kinds of in- 
 struction. 
 
65 
 
 Old-Fashioned Teacher. ''Take care, 
 Jobiiuy ! I see you are restless. Unless 
 you learu to sit perfectly still, I shall have 
 to give you a bad mark." 
 
 KiNDERGARTEX Teacher ^' I See you are 
 restless, Johnny. Suppose we play a game 
 to rest ourselves a little, and move about. 
 We mustn't interrupt our lessons, but we 
 can play astronomy, and that will keep us 
 moving; because, you know, though the 
 stars look so quiet, a great many of them do 
 keep moving all the time. Margaret shall 
 be the sun, and Johnny shall be the earth, 
 and you must turn rouud on your owu feet, 
 Johnny, all the time that you keep moving 
 round the sun. That is the way the earth 
 does, and Herbert can be the moon, and 
 keep going round the earth, that is, round 
 Johnny, while Johnny keeps going round 
 Margaret. Now I think Jobnny will soon 
 be tired enough to want to be a boy again 
 and sit still." 
 
 O.-F. T. '^ Washington and Jefferson were 
 very wise men who made good laws for their 
 country. And you must all remember always 
 to obey the laws, and if anything happens to 
 the country, you must be willing to leave 
 everything else to defend her. Now" see 
 
 5 
 
if yon remember what laws Wasbingtou 
 made." 
 
 K. T. "Now we will march a w'hile. Here 
 is a little American flag for j^ou all to wave, 
 and Miss Fanny will play the piano, and 
 you can all sing, if you like. Suppose 
 we sing 'The Star- Spangled Banner;' or 
 would you rather sing 'My Country, 'tis of 
 Thee V To-morrow I shall dismiss school 
 half an hour earlier, so that you can go out 
 and see Sherman's funeral procession when 
 it goes past here. What did Sherman do ? 
 Well, to-morrow, when you have seen how 
 much the country thought of him, and 
 monrns him, I will tell you." 
 
 O.-F. T. "I see, Johnny, that you cannot 
 sit still, even w^hen you are afraid of a bad 
 mark. Come here; I shall have to tie your 
 bauds behind you, and then you must go 
 and stand iu that corner half an hour, till I 
 see you have learned to be quiet." 
 
 K. T. " Now, children, if you are tired of 
 marching, you can come and sit down. Here 
 is a pencil and some paper, and I want you 
 to draw me a picture of what you like best." 
 
 O.-F. T. "When I came into the school- 
 room this mornin": I found a caricature on 
 
the blackboard with ' Tcaclier ' written niuler 
 it. The boy who did it must staud up and 
 coDfess ; come here, sir!" 
 
 K. T. "Now yon may bring me the pict- 
 nres yon have drawn of what yon like best. 
 Johnny's is a dog ; I can see it is a dog, 
 though its legs are a little too short, Johnny. 
 What is it ? Yon meant him to be running, 
 and his legs look shorter when he is run- 
 ning? Well, perhaps you are right; we 
 will all look on the way home for a dog run- 
 ning, and see if we think you are right. And 
 Lucy has drawn a doll, and Katie an orange, 
 and Bertie a stick of candy, and Mary has 
 drawn a very pretty face ; so Mary likes some- 
 body's fiice best. Whose face is it, Mary V 
 
 Child (shyly). " Please, teacher, it's 
 yours !" 
 
 O.-F. T. "Two and two make four, and 
 four and two make six, and six and two 
 make eight. You must repeat that ten times, 
 Johnny, before you can go liome." 
 
 K. T. " Would you like to take home to 
 mamma a string of beads? Well, here is a 
 needle and thread and there are the beads. 
 First, put on two blue beads, and then two 
 red beads; that makes four beads; and then 
 two purple beads, that makes six^ and then 
 
(58 
 
 two white beads, that makes eight. Now we 
 will put on another eight ; hut we'll chauge 
 it a little : first two red, then two blue, then 
 two white, and then two purple ; that makes 
 another eight. Now tell me how we can 
 make another eight, a little differently ; yes, 
 that's right : two purple, two red, two bine, 
 two white ; and now another ; w^liy, what a 
 long string we're getting ! Here are ten eights 
 already ; now yon can go home, and ask 
 mamma how many beads there are in the 
 whole string. She will tell you, and won't 
 she be surprised! What is it? You don^t 
 want to go home? you'd like to make anoth- 
 er string for sister Jennie ? Well, Ave'U 
 make another string. Only suppose wo 
 make Jennie's different ; let's make hers a 
 string of fives — two blue beads and then 
 three red beads ; two purple beads and three 
 white beads, till we get a string of ten fives. 
 Then you must ask Jennie how many beads 
 there are in all." 
 
 O.-F. T. "Unless the boy who put that 
 pin in my chair confesses at once, I shall 
 have to keep the whole class in at re- 
 cess !" 
 
 K. T. " I'm very sorry, children ; but I 
 shall have to stay in at recess to-day. You 
 
cau all go out in tlio yard and pla}'^ at what- 
 ever you like. I meant to show you tbat 
 new out-door game to-day; but I can't, be- 
 cause yesterday some of you did not take as 
 much pains as you could have taken with 
 the designs I wanted you to make of colored 
 paper. To-day I shall have to stay in and 
 jdan a design for you that is easier. If you 
 do this better when you come in, then to- 
 morrow I'll go out with you at recess and 
 show you the new game." 
 
 O.-F. T. " And, children, Washington was 
 a very remarkable man ; he never told a 
 lie." 
 
 KiXDERGARTEX Child. " Please, teacher, 
 lots of people don't tell lies." 
 
 K. T. '' Now, the boy who makes the pret- 
 tiest house out of these twenty-five blocks, 
 to-morrow can walk at the head when we 
 march, and carry the big flag.** 
 
 Kindergarten Boy. ''Please, teacher, 
 you told us yesterday that we were always 
 to let tlie girls go first." 
 
 K. T. " Yes, that is the nicest way to do. 
 Well, then, the boy who makes the prettiest 
 house can choose which girl shall march at 
 the head." 
 
70 
 
 O.-F. T. " Henry Steele, you were live 
 minutes late this morning ; I shall keep you 
 in ten minutes after school." 
 
 K. T. " Harry, you were five minutes late 
 this morning; what did you see on the way 
 that interested you so much? A hird teach- 
 ing the little birds to fly ? Well, that was 
 worth stopping for. Tell us about it, and 
 perhaps we can make a new game like it. 
 Now, to-morrow morning suppose you all 
 take five minutes more on the w;iy to school, 
 and see who will have the most to say about 
 what he has seen on the way. The one who 
 has seen the most things shall beat the drum 
 w^heu we march, and the one who has seen 
 the most interesting thing shall carry the 
 flag. * There will be the same things for you 
 all to see ; but the kind of things you do see 
 and notice will show me what kind of a 
 boy you are."' 
 
 And the next morning, when Herbert Win- 
 throp said he hadn't seen anything, because 
 he came upon a man abusing a horse, and 
 had run round the corner to find an officer 
 to tell him he mustn't, the children all voted 
 that Herbert should beat the drum, because, 
 though he hadn't seen anything, he had done 
 something, which was even better. 
 
71 
 
 And to continue the ^Yise process of cou- 
 deusatiou, let us reduce even this brief se- 
 ries of contrasts to still briefer kindergarten 
 axioms : 
 
 The kindergarten child is not sent to 
 school; he goes of his own accord. 
 
 He is not kept in school; he stays, because 
 he likes it. 
 
 He does not go home as soon as he can ; 
 he has to be told that it is time to go. 
 
 What he hates — vacation. 
 
 He does not answer questions ; he asks 
 them. 
 
 He learns, not what he is told, but what 
 he finds out. 
 
 He never forgets ; because he is never told 
 anything which he has not lirst wanted to 
 know. 
 
 The child of the primary - school knows 
 what he feels ; the child of the kindergarten 
 feels what he knows. 
 
The ordinary boy crosses a fiekl to get 
 somewhere; the child of the kiudergartea 
 sees things on his way. 
 
 The ordinary child remembers to be good ; 
 the kindergarten child forgets to be nanghty. 
 
 The high - school graduates exceptional 
 scholars, who Avill frame wise laws for the 
 community; the kindergarten trains a com- 
 munity that will need less the restraint of 
 so much law. 
 
 The more public kindergartens now, the 
 fewer jails hereafter. 
 
 Mothers think up little things to amuse 
 their children when they come home from 
 school; kindergarten children bring home 
 from school little things to amuse their 
 mothers. 
 
 Mothers tell their children pretty stories 
 at bedtime to make them forget the weary 
 hours at school ; kindergarten children ask 
 for nothing better than to remember the 
 pretty things they have learned, or heard, 
 or seen, or made, at school, and repeat them 
 to their mothers. 
 
lu tbe ordinary scliool the cliild feeds his 
 mind; in the kindergarten his mind feeds 
 him. 
 
 In training the intellect merely, the ordi- 
 nary teacher runs tbe risk of making a bad 
 boy ^Yorse, by increasing his capacity, his 
 ingenuity, his resources; in training the 
 heart and cultivating the artistic sense, in 
 addition to encouraging the mind, the kin- 
 dergarten teacher is a homoeopathic physi- 
 cian, constantly correcting and restraining 
 the symptoms he develops. 
 
A PLEA FOR THE PURE KINDER- 
 GARTEN. 
 
 BY JENNY B. MERRILL. 
 
 The kindergarten system olfers the most 
 ingenious arrangement of exercises ever 
 devised for the development of the child. 
 
 The system is based upon philosophical 
 principles — principles which do not diifer 
 essentially from those propounded by other 
 educators than Froebel, but in this system 
 these principles are worked out to a practi- 
 cal issue, the details of which are astonishing 
 in their simplicity and in their adaptation of 
 means to desired ends. 
 
 The system may be called "an invention," 
 for it is unique, and yet it is in reality noth- 
 ing but a systematic arrangement of plays 
 and occupations gathered from a careful ob- 
 servation — 
 
 (a) Of the methods of wise mothers. 
 
 (b) Of children at play. 
 
(c) Of Nature iu the plant, animal and 
 mineral kingdoms — 
 
 (d) And a consideration of the fundamental 
 industries of life, and the possibility of imi- 
 tating such industries in children's play and 
 work. 
 
 The system of gifts and occupations is so 
 philosophically arranged that it is a grave 
 question how far it can he modified and the in- 
 tegrity of the system fully preserved. This 
 we shall endeavor to prove by an examina- 
 tion of the various details of gifts and occu- 
 pations, and by criticisms upon certain in- 
 novations which have become more or less 
 popular. 
 
 It is one thing to understand, appreciate, 
 and approve an educational principle, and 
 another to apply it successfully. 
 
 The kindergarten, as it is commonly seen 
 and known, is a visible application of certain 
 fundamental educational principle's. Many 
 persons can see and appreciate the applica- 
 tion who give no thought to the principles 
 underlying it. It commends itself to those 
 who love children and humanity because it 
 furnishes pleasant employment for little 
 hands, and brings the ready smile to the 
 childish face ; but it is only after the closest 
 
76 
 
 study that we begiu to realize the wonder- 
 ful adaptation of meaus to ends iu this well- 
 organized system. 
 
 We speak, not of the great underlying 
 principles of the kindergarten, which cau be 
 variously applied at the different periods of 
 school life, but of that definite arraugernent 
 of gifts and occupations that was phiuned 
 by Froebel for the child under seven years 
 of age. 
 
 It is becoming so general to hear of tlie 
 kindergarten princ i[)les and their wider 
 application, and of the freedom that may 
 be exercised even in the use of the w^ell- 
 known kindergarten material, that there 
 is a danger of forgetting that Froebel 
 was not only a philosopher but a ]}ractical 
 U'orhnan. 
 
 Rarely do we find such practical ability 
 as a teacher united with such deep philo- 
 sophic understauding of the child -nature 
 and indeed of humanity in general. 
 
 There is apparently a tendency at the 
 present time, under the plea of elevating the 
 spirit above the letter, to dei)art more or 
 less widely from the exercises of the kinder- 
 garten as developed by Froebel. But w^hen 
 such a genius as Froebel, one who himself 
 Avas the master-spirit, has given us the letter, 
 
it is Ijoth fittii]<5 aud safe tliat any departure 
 be most carefully cousidered. 
 
 It is our purpose to enumerate some of 
 the details of the methods developed by 
 Froebel from his lifetime of observation and 
 experience, noting at the same time the need 
 in the child which suggested the use of the 
 particular means. 
 
 I. We find a graded series of gifts and oc- 
 cupations, the first six of which are num- 
 bered to correspond with the year of intro- 
 duction. 
 
 These six gifts are, in general terms, mere- 
 ly balls aud blocks ; aud what more ordinary 
 playthings could have been selected? But 
 when we examine into the details of ar- 
 raugement, for example, of the First Gift, 
 which consists of six small colored worsted 
 halls with cords for suspension, we find that 
 behind each descriptive adjective there is a 
 philosophic reason. 
 
 (a) And first, why a hall ? No one denies 
 that a ball is a good plaything from child- 
 hood to manhood, but how few babies bave 
 actually received the ball for theirs/ play- 
 thing, and at the early age suggested by 
 Froebel ! What led Froebel to place tbe 
 ball first f Its unity, its simplicity, its beau- 
 ty, its ready motion, aud its significance as 
 
a symbol, for it may stand, as the cliild ad- 
 vances, for the apple, orange, peacli, plum ; 
 for the earth, sun, or moon. 
 
 Its motions when suspended represent the 
 ticking clock, the ringing bell, the turning 
 wheel, the hopping bird. 
 
 Its unity, simplicity, and beauty make it 
 aj)pTopriate for the very early use suggested 
 by Froebel, namely, suspending it over a 
 child's bed at a proper distance from the 
 eye, when the infant is but six weeks old. 
 It soou becomes au object to hold the at- 
 tention of the opening mind. This is so 
 simple au exercise that eveu educated peo- 
 ple often overlook its value, and eveu smile 
 when a kindergartner mentions it. 
 
 Many think that a red shawl, or a bright 
 flower, or a variegated ball much larger in 
 size, would answer the purpose. Others 
 would prefer a hell or a rattle ! but Froebel 
 insisted upon such an apparently trilling de- 
 tail as a small red hall at the age of six weeks. 
 Experience as well as reason show the value 
 of his judgment. 
 
 The child acquires a certain degree of 
 concentration upou a given object, and as 
 the same ball appears day after day for many 
 weeks, we have an excellent illustration of 
 the way in which "perception goes on per- 
 
fecting itself," so clearly set forth by Ros- 
 mini. 
 
 Let me attempt to imlicate the steps in 
 tbe gronvth of the perception. At first the 
 infant becomes conscious that " something 
 exists."* Then possibly the bright color 
 (red or yellow is taken) makes its impres- 
 sion; then the simple roundness (of course 
 this is not fully recognized at this point). 
 
 Later comes thought of motion, for after 
 a few weeks the ball is to be swung from 
 right to left, and later still, forward and 
 backward, and up and down. 
 
 In the last exercise, after a time the ball 
 touches the child's face or hands ; soon the 
 child puts forth his hand, and after many 
 efforts at last grasps it. Now comes percep- 
 tion of distance and of substance ; the sense 
 of touch and the muscular sense are aroused, 
 and the notion of a solid is attained to a 
 degree. 
 
 Baby bites the ball ; it is soft. He throws 
 it down ; it disappears. 
 
 It may be argued that all these ideas would 
 be gained gradually from any object, but 
 would they all be united and recognized as 
 belonging to one object so soon as by this 
 
 * Rosmiui.— Sec. 109. 
 
80 
 
 simple device of calling aud rccalliug the 
 cliild's attention daily to one simple aud 
 pretty form ? 
 
 (b) But in the second place, wby s/j^balltj? 
 Wby are certain fixed colors used, and wby 
 are tbe balls of worsted ? 
 
 Tbere is a reasonable answer to every 
 question. 
 
 Tbe six standard colors of tbe spectrum 
 only are used ; here again we bave reference 
 to nature ; tbe kindergarten material is full 
 of such references. 
 
 Tbe variety is sufficient for tbe first year ; 
 a few strong impressions of color are made, 
 and tbe nnmber, six, is not too many. 
 
 Worsted is soft aud warm aud pleasant 
 to tbe baby's toucb, aud it Avill not hurt. 
 It makes a quiet playmate, and again it 
 points to uature, for wben baby is old euougli 
 for a simple story, be will find new pleasure 
 in bis ball wben be bears about tbe lamb 
 and its soft wool, wbicb it gives for a coat 
 for baby and for bis ball. 
 
 II. Anotlier important detail in tbe kinder- 
 garten metbod is tbe selection of tbe forms 
 of tbe Second Gift, viz.: tbe sphere, tbe cube, 
 and tbe cylinder. 
 
 Tbere are tbose wbo bave essayed to im- 
 prove upon Froebel's judgment by adding 
 
the coue and spheroids, but we again recog- 
 nize the superior wisdom of Froebel, who 
 after careful thought rejected all but these 
 three typical forms, and concentrated the 
 chikVs attention upon them, leaving modifi- 
 cations for advanced work. It requires 
 great wisdom to be as simple as this great 
 man. 
 
 Mrs. Mary H. Peabody, in writing of the 
 forms of this gift, says, "They are chosen as 
 representing in school the gifts of the Crea- 
 tor to man as seen in nature. 
 
 "They present the substance of creation in 
 its mineral, vegetable, and animal divisions. 
 Overhead hangs the sphere of the sun; un- 
 derfoot lies the crystal kingdom, whose sim- 
 plest form is the cube; between the two, 
 partaking of the qualities of each, rise the 
 forms of life, all sliowing the cylindrical 
 figure, from the grass of the field to the 
 working fingers of man."* 
 
 But not only is the selection of the 
 forms of interest, but also the change of 
 material from worsted to wood; again we 
 find a natural substance waiting for its 
 story to be told. 
 
 While the sphere is retained as the cou- 
 
 * Kindergarten and Primary School, page 121. 
 6 
 
82 
 
 necting liuk with the First Gift, we note 
 the strong contrasts presented. 
 
 The child learns by accentuating differ- 
 ences. 
 
 The high color is lacking. This helps to 
 concentrate attention upon the form more 
 perfectly. The material, wood, is hard, not 
 soft; the noise as it falls or rolls on the table 
 attracts attention through the sense of hear- 
 ing, and is in strong contrast with the quiet 
 worsted ball. The wooden sphere is heavy, 
 not light; it is smooth, not rough. And all 
 its differences seem to accord with the grow- 
 ing child, for they suggest strength and more 
 vigorous action. 
 
 There is also the satisfaction of not hav- 
 ing lost an old friend, for although, the differ- 
 ences are all attractive, still the similarities 
 are scarcely less pleasing. 
 
 The wooden ball rolls and swings, ticks 
 and rings, and is as active as a ball can be. 
 But it can roll faster and farther, for there is 
 less friction. 
 
 Again another contrast — baby must not 
 throw the wooden ball; it is hard; it will 
 hurt ; it can break other objects. 
 
 Here is a new lesson, one of carefulness; 
 a lesson also in self-control, for there is 
 scarcely a "must not" of any kind in the 
 
worsted ball. Now there must ueeds be re- 
 straint, but baby is older aud ready for the 
 moral lesson. 
 
 Another important detail of method in re- 
 gard to this gift is the order of presenting 
 the forms. 
 
 As already suggested, the method of the 
 kindergarten presents strong contrasts to 
 the child ; hence it may readily be inferred 
 that the cube and not the cylinder is present- 
 ed directly next the sphere. 
 
 It must be after a study of the cube that 
 the child gets his first true notion of the 
 unity of the ball. He has no means of ap- 
 preciating fully the simple outline of the 
 sphere until he has compared it with the 
 many sides, edges, aud corners of the cube. 
 
 He returns to the sphere to find it all one. 
 
 We will not undertake to enumerate all 
 the striking contrasts between the sphere 
 and the cube to which the attention of the 
 child is called, but pass on to note the satis- 
 faction which the child feels in receiving 
 another block (the cylinder) which rolls like 
 the ball, and yet stands firm like the cube, 
 and is difterent from both. 
 
 Here is seen the connecting link, the inter- 
 mediate, which Froebel always strives to 
 X)resent. This gift is an outward expression 
 
of the great iiiuer educatiouiil law which 
 Froebel called " the law of the conuection of 
 opposites," or " the law of contrasts and 
 their connections."* 
 
 There is a field, indeed, in the cylinder, for 
 tlie stndy of both similarities and differences. 
 Here in the Second Gift we find Froebel's key- 
 note of method that nothing is ever to be 
 studied for itself alone, but always in its re- 
 lations to what has gone before. Thus the 
 chain of association is strong, and what is 
 learned is a gradual development corre- 
 sponding to the inward development of the 
 child. 
 
 III. This careful connection of the new 
 with the old is further illustrated in the in- 
 troduction of the Third Gift, which as a 
 whole presents the form of the cube, and yet 
 is new in being subdivided into eight small 
 cubes. 
 
 We do not puri)0se to indicate the full use 
 of any of these kindergarten gifts, but, as 
 before stated, simply to set forth a few im- 
 portant details, with their underlying j>hi- 
 losophy, in order to establish our argument. 
 
 In the Third Gift we will refer, therefore, 
 to but one principle of method which, while 
 
 * Kindergarten and Primary School, page 63. 
 
85 
 
 it appears in the preoediug- gift, ])ecomes 
 the maiu feature in this and several im- 
 mediately succeeding gifts, viz.: building or 
 construction. 
 
 To lead the child to build, to construct, to 
 make, is a ruling feature throughout the 
 kindergarten methods; andFroebel, learning 
 as he did from observing the ordinary plays 
 of children, wisely phiced seveial sets of 
 building-blocks among his gifts. 
 
 They are so graded as to give each a spe- 
 cific educational value. 
 
 They differ from the sets of blocks in 
 ordinary use in being, as a whole, cubical in 
 form, and are composed of a fixed number of 
 blocks, each separate block bearing a certain 
 relation to the cube, which is always to be 
 rebuilt at the close of the exercise. 
 
 Thus, both analysis and synthesis are 
 recognized. Other forms, as prisms, appear 
 in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Gifts, but 
 they are always studied in relation to the 
 cube, as half-cube, quarter-cube. 
 
 The work to be accomplished by the use 
 of these gifts is classified under three heads, 
 namely : forms of knowledge, forms of life, 
 and forms of beauty. 
 
 This is a detail of method which appears 
 again and again in tlie use of all the gifts 
 
and occnpatious, and is helpful, suggestive 
 and comprehensive. By means of this divi- 
 sion each gift and occupation of the kinder- 
 garten is made to touch — 
 
 1. Mathemaiics — in the ''forms of knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 2. Nature, and the common objects of life, 
 whether natural or made 1)3" man — in the 
 " forms of life." 
 
 3. Art (especially designing) — in the 
 " forms of beauty." 
 
 There are incidents related in Beminis- 
 cences of Froehel, showing how these diifer- 
 ent phases of the work were the means of 
 enlisting the interest and attention of men 
 of widely dilferent professions. 
 
 For example, "A privy councillor from 
 Berlin," writes the Baroness Marenholz, 
 " who had made some objections to the 
 playing of the children, and had also re- 
 peatedly opposed my statements, expressed 
 the wish to learn the manner in which Froe- 
 bel prepared for mathematical ideas by his 
 plays and occupations. This hitherto very 
 cold and reserved gentleman became quite 
 animated when Froebel formed various fig- 
 ures with his little sticks, and then explained 
 by these embodied lines the areas enclosed 
 in 
 
especially tbe relations of size and number 
 of the geometrical figures, and theu still 
 further the simple representations of form 
 and number with other materials." * 
 
 At the same time a young artist was pres- 
 ent, who ashed impatiently, "Whether the 
 contemplation of the beautiful at the child- 
 age would not be more conducive to the 
 awakening of the imagination than occuxja- 
 tion with mathematical figures ?" 
 
 " You are quite right," auswered Froebel ; 
 " the beautiful is the best means of edu- 
 cation for childhood, as it has been the 
 best means for the education of the hu- 
 man race. Look, here are my forms of 
 beauty." 
 
 This classification is, of course, for the 
 teacher, and not for the child. Froebel thus 
 comprehended tbe all-sided possibility of any 
 material he put into th^ child's hand. 
 
 He did not plan to teach number with one 
 gift, and form with another, and natural his- 
 tory with another; but he saw all the ele- 
 ments in any one, and by this method, as 
 well as others, the child is gradually led 
 to feel, if not to know, the unity, which 
 Froebel saw in life. 
 
 * Reminiscences of Froebel. 
 
IV. The gifts already iDeutioued represent 
 solid geometrical forms. 
 
 Froebel decided to follow the analysis of 
 the solid, and thus to present in orderly suc- 
 cession, by means of his gifts, the plane, the 
 line, and the point. 
 
 Hence follow (1) the tablets, representing 
 squares, triangles, etc. ; (2) wooden sticks and 
 metal rings, representing the straight and 
 curved edges found upon the solids already 
 considered ; and, lastly, (3) lessons with seeds, 
 representing the point. 
 
 By the occasional use of the occupation 
 of perforating, Froebel's thought is carried 
 out in having the solid built up, as it were, 
 in the child's work, as it has been previously 
 analyzed ; for the occnj)ations proceed syn- 
 thetically from the 2Joint, in pricking, to the 
 line in sewing and drawing; to the surface, in 
 paper cutting, folding, and weaving; to the 
 solid in card-board work and clay modelling. 
 
 V. It was a happy thought, indeed, as 
 well as a truly philosophical one, which led 
 Froebel in selecting the occupations of the 
 kindergarten system to base them upon the 
 simple industries of life. 
 
 By this means the child follows the lead- 
 ings of the race, and becomes one with it in 
 so doinff. 
 
80 
 
 For example, the occupation of weaving 
 is a great favorite among children. It is 
 after carefullj^ weaving in and out the little 
 slips of paper — one np, one down ; two np, 
 one down, etc., that the little weaver looks 
 with au awakened and intelligent interest 
 upon the little threads in a piece of cloth as 
 the teacher draws them ont and shows how 
 every little child owes a debt to the weaver 
 for his clothing. 
 
 Modelling in clay is another very ancient 
 industry of the race which Froebel brought 
 into the kindergarten. 
 
 The favor with which children regard it 
 is an indication that it meets a want in 
 them as it certainly did in the race. Un- 
 fortunately working directly in the soil is 
 denied many children in city kindergartens, 
 but this suggestion of the great industry of 
 the cultivation of the soil is part of Froe- 
 bel's complete system. 
 
 VI We pass now to notice a few details 
 of method which appeal to the feelings 
 rather than the intellect. Pestalozzi em- 
 phasized the principle "Activity is the law 
 of childhood; let the child do; educate the 
 hand," but he did not point out in detail 
 how to do this. 
 
 Froebel followed and worked out this 
 
90 
 
 fmidameutal priuciple. The watchword of 
 the kindergarten is ^' Do." Mothers rejoice 
 in the kindergarten because it gives the 
 child something definite to do. It furnishes 
 a vent for their ceaseless activity. 
 
 What do children do in the kindergarten ? 
 
 They build, they sew, they draw, they 
 prick, they weave, they fold, they cut, they 
 paste, they mould, they dig, i\\Qy sing ; they 
 imitate in gesture, hopping, flying, sowing, 
 reaping, the turning of a wheel, the falling 
 of the rain, the snow, the winding of a 
 river, etc. 
 
 Not only is the love of doing thus grati- 
 fied, but nnderlying this is the appeal to 
 the love of imitating ; for in all these ac- 
 tivities the children become imitators of the 
 work of real life which they see about them 
 or hear described in stories. 
 
 It is sympathy, a feeling with, that awa- 
 kens this desire to imitate, and in the very 
 act of imitating the feeling of sympathy 
 with different workmen and even with dif- 
 ferent animals is strengthened, and thus the 
 child is again led to the feeling of unity, to 
 which Froebel's philosophy ever tends. 
 
 This love of unity is further strengthened 
 by the simple detail of method in seating 
 children in a kindergarten. 
 
91 
 
 The cliildreu never sit as in ordiuary 
 scLools, in rows, one behind tlie other, but 
 around a table, that each may be, as it were, 
 a part of a circle. So it is in standing in 
 the ring during the playing of games. 
 
 The use of the ring in playing games has 
 long been in favor with children, but it was 
 Froebel who realized its educational force. 
 Possibly there is no more beautiful feature 
 in the kindergarten. 
 
 We deprecate any tendency towards fol- 
 lowing a leader blindly. 
 
 We recognize that there are those who 
 would have a more perfect kindergarten on 
 the beach, with only the sand and pebbles 
 and shells with which to work out the 
 forms of knowledge, forms of life, and forms 
 of beauty, than others with a cabinet full of 
 the best kindergarten material ; but it is 
 often safer to distrust ourselves than the 
 man of such pre-eminent genius. 
 
 But there is a danger in having a system 
 so complete in its detail, to which we will 
 now refer. 
 
 It lies in the possibility it affords to per- 
 sons of inferior education to carry out these 
 methods by simple imitation. While this is 
 a serious evil, it is undoubtedly the key-note 
 
to the great success of the kiudergarten 
 thns far. Haviug a genuine love for chil- 
 dren as a foundation, the mere imitator can 
 do much for the child by following closely 
 the prescribed work in building, weaving, 
 sewing, cutting, etc. It is by this practical 
 advantage, as shown in the hands of mothers 
 and nurses and teachers of infant education 
 that the kindergarten has won its way so 
 rapidly. 
 
 At the same time the careful study of its 
 philosophy is now putting it upon a surer 
 foundation, and Froebel is being studied, not 
 only as the '' old fool " who could amuse 
 children, but as a philosopher whose "Educa- 
 tion of Man" deals with universal problems. 
 
 The very details of the system seem to 
 prevent some students from seeing more 
 than the balls, cubes, sticks, wires, and 
 papers in use from day to day; but there 
 are other deeper questions of study for the 
 kiudergartner. Among these is the culti- 
 vation of language. 
 
 The recent report in Dr. Hall's Pedagogical 
 Seminary* bears testimony to the superior 
 use of language by kindergarten children. 
 
 Out of seventy -five selected words, the 
 
 * Pedngogical Semmary, No. 2. 
 
93 
 
 chiltlreu from kiudergarteiis, comijared with 
 cbildreu from families, showed themselves 
 more familiar with all but fifteen of the 
 seventy-five chosen words. This record is 
 takeu from the Berlin table. In another 
 sim.ilar report of children in Boston the 
 percentage of ignorance of the words used 
 as a test was greater in thirtj'-eight out of 
 fifty w^ords among American children who 
 had not attended kindergartens. 
 
 The following nunsnal words I have gath- 
 ered from a boy's vocabulary (now six years 
 old) who has attended kindergarten two 
 years : natives, complete, frolicsome, recep- 
 tion, promoted, certificate, aritlimetic, re- 
 lapse, ideas, attracted, intelligent, tint, fear- 
 ful condition, contenting fun, patiently, 
 extreme, such an invalid, dainty pink, 
 credit, cylinder, hexagon, triangle, rhomb, 
 weaving, slanting, arranging, pattern, in vent. 
 These words are not all directly suggestive 
 of kindergarten exercises, but many of them 
 are. 
 
 The child's language is cultivated in the 
 kindergarten because he is brought into re- 
 lation with new^ objects and is given names 
 for these. He handles them again and 
 again, and is gradually led to describe them, 
 to tell what they can do. He is also led to 
 
tell where oue part is iu relation to other 
 parts. 
 
 Thus we find a training in the use of 
 noun, adjective, verb, adverb, and preposi- 
 tion. His language is enriched, also, by 
 means of the stories related by the kiuder- 
 gartner, and by the verses of song which he 
 memorizes. 
 
 I have heard a child quote lines from 
 these songs while at play in the home or in 
 the fields to express Ms thoughts, and not for 
 the sake of quoting. 
 
 For example, a little boy of four, as he 
 ran about, the summer after he had entered 
 a kindergarten, would suddenly exclaim, 
 
 "Bnttercnps and daisies, 
 Oh, the pretty flowers." 
 
 Or, 
 
 "Open your eyes. 
 My pansies sweet," 
 
 as he passed a bed of j)ansies. 
 
 After saying '^ Twinkle, twinkle, little 
 star," oue night, he asked, "Little star, did 
 you know I called you a diamond?" 
 
 When he wanted to call some one, he has 
 said, 
 
 " Beckon to the chickens small. 
 Come, dear chickens, one and all," 
 
 [Froebel's Mother Song] 
 
95 
 
 or " Help, neighbors, help." This couplet 
 was often quoted in the most pleasing tone, 
 and with a most gracious manner. It was 
 used to secure help. Another time he said, 
 "'Give,' said the little stream — that's the 
 same as ' Help me.' " 
 
 In speaking of a dog, he said, " He is full 
 of glee," the last three words being taken 
 from a song. 
 
 The kindergarten has always stood for the 
 development of individuality in the pupil. 
 
 This is shown by the small number of 
 pupils usually allotted to one teacher. It is 
 shown by the free work called for in con- 
 nection with every gift and occupation. 
 
 The children work in unison at times, and 
 thus learn to attend to a leader's voice, to 
 follow dictation ; but soon is heard the word, 
 "Children, now you may make anything you 
 please." Then the individual bent is followed 
 and the teacher's time has come to study her 
 pupils, and thus learn to treat them in ac- 
 cordance with their individual tendencies. 
 
 The all — important subject of "Individu- 
 alism in Education " has been very ably 
 treated recently' bj" Nathaniel A. Shaler, in 
 the Atlantic Monthly* 
 
 * Atlantic Monthly, May, 1S91. 
 
His snggcstious in relation to the necessity 
 of sympathy between pnpil and teacher, in 
 order to develop the individual tendencies 
 of the child, are well carried out in the kin- 
 dergarten. 
 
 He says, "If we compare the intellectual 
 movements of a child when he is with those 
 whom he regards wnth affection, and wiien 
 he is in contact with strangers, we see the 
 nature of this diiference in action of the 
 infantile mind." 
 
 He closes with these words, ''There are 
 doubtless many ways in which men may 
 make a new heaven and a new earth of 
 their dwelling-places, but the simplest of all 
 ways is through a fond discerning and in- 
 dividual care of each child." 
 
 Such care is at least the aim of the true 
 kiudergartuer. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KINDER- 
 GARTEN. 
 
 BY ANGELINe' brooks. 
 
 Froebel, the founder of tlie kindergar- 
 ten, announced as the basis of his system 
 an educational law wbicli be called tbe law 
 of unity. Tbe first cbapter of bis Educa- 
 iion of Man entitled "Groundwork of tbe 
 Wbole," opens witb tbese words : '■'■ In all 
 tilings tbere lives and reigns an eternal 
 law. . . . Tbis all-controlling law is necessa- 
 rily based on all-pervading, energetic, liv- 
 ing, self-conscious, and bence eternal. Unity. 
 . . . Tbis Unity is God. All tbings bave 
 come from tbe Divine Unity, from God, and 
 bave tbeir origin in tbe Divine Unity, in 
 God alone. God is tbe sole Source of all 
 tbings. In all tbings tbere lives and reigns 
 tbe Divine Unity, God." 
 
 Froebel declared tbat it was tbe applica- 
 tion of tbis eternal law, bere traced to its 
 source, wbicb gave bim tbe rigbt to call bis 
 metbod a system. He spoke of it under dif- 
 7 
 
fereut terms, as the law of the coDiiection of 
 opposites, the law of development, the law 
 of balauce, the law of contrasts and their 
 connections, as well as the law of unity, and 
 declared that the whole meaning of his edu- 
 cational scheme rested upon this law alone. 
 Other great minds have recognized the op- 
 eration of the same law, and it is towards 
 the consideration of the underlying unity 
 of all things that all modern thought tends, 
 whether in the realm of religion, of science, 
 or of philosophy. It is seen that all things 
 are from God, that all things have rela- 
 tion to man, and that therefore all must 
 have relation to one another. Emerson gives 
 expression to the satisfaction which the hu- 
 man mind experiences in the contemplation 
 of this truth when he says, " The day of 
 days, the great day of the feast of life, is that 
 in which the inward eye opens to the unity 
 of things." 
 
 An extended reference to the law of unity 
 in its universal application is not pertinent 
 to the purpose of this paper, but it is hoped 
 that a correct apprehension of the idea in- 
 volved in the term in its application to edu- 
 cation may be gained by a brief considera- 
 tion of the underlying principles of Froebel's 
 philosophy. 
 
99 
 
 The term education, as Froebel uses it, 
 contains the central idea of his system ; for, 
 recognizing "the identity of the cosmic laws 
 with the laws of our mind," and seeing that 
 the operations of natnre are always in order- 
 ly evolutions, he defines education to be a 
 process of development. This thought is 
 contained in the word kindergarten (child- 
 garden), for, as the wise gardener seeks to 
 give each plant the best conditions for un- 
 folding the divine thought which it contains, 
 so the kindergarten demands for each hu- 
 man being, created for freedom in the iraage^ 
 of God, the opportunity to develop his in- 
 born possibilities, spontaneously and freely, 
 in accordance with the eternal law. The 
 limiting, repressing, dwarfing methods of 
 mere instruction, which prescribe for all 
 alike, and which regard the human mind as 
 merely a receptacle to be filled, have no 
 place in the new education. Admitting that 
 at j)resent the schools are far from making 
 vital, in actual practice, the developing 
 method, it is encouraging and inspiring to 
 note that the tendency of the most advanced 
 educational thought is in this direction. 
 
 "The object of education," says Froebel, 
 " is the realization of a faithful, pure, invio- 
 late, and hence holy life." Enlarging upon 
 
tbis idea, he says: ''Edncatiou should lead 
 and guide niau to a clearness couceruiug 
 himself and iu himself, to peace with nat- 
 ure, and to unity with God; hence it should 
 lift him to a knowledge of himself and of 
 mankind, to a knowledge of God and of nat- 
 ure, and to the pure and holy life to which 
 such knowledge leads." How far preseut 
 educational methods are from attaining the 
 results required by this standard our crimi- 
 nal records, our juvenile asylums, our State 
 prisons, and the general disorders of society 
 testify. Such results can be reached only 
 through that unification of life, everywhere 
 spoken of in Froebel's writings, which in- 
 volve all man's relationships — to God, to 
 nature, and to humanity — and which neces- 
 sitates the education of the whole human 
 being — his head, his heart, and his hand — 
 in uninterrupted continuity of development 
 from the earliest infancy. 
 
 The child is born to three relationships — 
 to nature, to God, and to his fellow-man — 
 each of which involves necessities, duties, 
 and the possibilities of failure. He begins 
 life at the bottom — at first has no possession 
 of his bodily faculties, nor of his intellectual 
 and spiritual powers. He needs education 
 iu each of these directions. 
 
101 
 
 Froebel liad in miud tliis comprehensive 
 idea of the work to be done when he set him- 
 self to develop a theory of education. The 
 kindergarten he intended to be a practical 
 school, in which the child should get physi- 
 cal, moral, and spiritual culture. In the true 
 kindergarten this threefold object is never 
 lost sight of, for to neglect any side of it is 
 to do less than Froebel's theory requires. He 
 intended the kindergarten to be an epitome 
 of life, in which the great world of grown- 
 up people should be represented in minia- 
 ture. " We learn by doing " was a favorite 
 motto of his, and, true to his thought, he de- 
 veloped a system through which the funda- 
 mental principles of morality should be 
 learned by actual experience. As a basis for 
 this moral and spiritual culture, the physical 
 well-being of the child is the object of con- 
 stant attention. 
 
 All the discords of society arise from man's 
 ignorance of the way to adapt himself in 
 just relations to his fellow-man, or, if not 
 from his ignorance, from his unwillingness 
 to do so. To train the child to the practice 
 of honor and justice with children of his 
 own age is to lay the foundation of a just 
 and honorable character. To develop in him 
 love for others and a willingness to sacrifice 
 
himself for them within proper limits, is the 
 cliief object of the true kiudergarfciier. 
 
 The kiudergarten takes the child from the 
 nursery aud introduces him into a community 
 of his equals, in which the usual collisions of 
 child life are constantly occurring, in the 
 adjustment of which he gets experience that 
 has much to do with the formation of char- 
 acter. 
 
 He learns to respect the rights of others, 
 and to be himself self-asserting when need 
 requires. He is treated justly and tenderly, 
 and learns to treat in the same way those 
 younger or weaker than himself. 
 
 That the child's relations with his fellows 
 are important, and that there is need of 
 guiding him in those relations, are ideas uot 
 readily received by those who have thought 
 of the intellect alone as requiring culture, at 
 least in the schools. The prevailing idea 
 has been and still is that the training of 
 the intellect is the chief work of education. 
 This is a serious mistake, for in moral and 
 spiritual culture the will is especially iu- 
 volved, and to strengthen the desire of right- 
 willing is at least as Im^iortant as to increase 
 the capacity to know. The kindergartner 
 believes that to lead the child to love that 
 which is good and true is more important than 
 
103 
 
 to fill bis mind with stores of knowledge, for 
 simply to know the right is not enough; he 
 alone does the right who loves to do it. We 
 are sorry if our neighbor is an ignorant man, 
 we are still more sorry if be is an unamiable 
 man. 
 
 At the outset the kindergartner is con- 
 fronted by the necessity of studying deeply 
 the two great forces which lie back of every 
 act of the child's life. He who would man- 
 age a steam-engine must know what the 
 motive power is and how to control it. 
 
 Froebel, having set for himself so compre- 
 hensive a task in education, saw that he 
 must begin with the youngest children, with 
 tlie babies, and before we can witness the 
 fullest illustration of the value of his system, 
 mothers and nurses must adopt its methods 
 and be imbued with its spirit. Helpless in- 
 fancy, without the power of resistance to 
 either physical or spiritual evils, must be 
 guarded tenderly, lest from wounds thus 
 early received there remain life-long scars, 
 and the seed-sowing from which shall spring 
 the fruitage of future life must be done by 
 judicious hands. 
 
 The first seven years of the child's life 
 Froebel saw to be the most important for pur- 
 poses of education ; for, as he said, during 
 
tbat time tendencies are giv^en aQcl the germs 
 of character are set. No impressions stop 
 with the body : all enter the soul. A body 
 untenanted by a soul receives no impres- 
 sions. 
 
 To direct the tendencies of mind and heart, 
 to prepare the mind to love truth and good- 
 ness, to lay broad and deep the foundations 
 on Tvhich the future educator may build in 
 beauty and strength — this is the -work of 
 the mother and the kindergartner. The 
 wisest parents are those who are quickest to 
 see the tendencies of their children for good 
 or for evil, and who are most judicious in 
 using stimulus or ]ireventive, as the case 
 may require. 
 
 The kindergarten is the only institution 
 except the family that seeks to educate 
 children under school age; but the necessity 
 of such early training in loving and doing 
 the right is plainly shown by the fact that 
 many children enter school with evil tenden- 
 cies strongly developed and evil habits firm- 
 ly fixed. There is a work, both of prevention 
 and of up-building, which may be done be- 
 fore school age, and the omission of which at 
 that time can never be made up. It is un- 
 wise to overlook the earliest seed-time. In 
 these days, when so much is to be feared 
 
105 
 
 from the ignorance and unbridled passions of 
 the h)\vest classes of society, the kiudergar- 
 teu offers itself as one most potent prevent- 
 ive of the dreaded evils, and this chiefly 
 because it, as no other means does, begins 
 with the babies. 
 
 On one occasion Froebel thus expressed 
 himself in regard to the importance of the 
 earliest education : 
 
 " Every age of life has its own peculiar 
 claims and needs in respect to nurture and 
 educational assistance, appropriate to it 
 alone ; what is lost to the nursling cannot be 
 made good in later childhood, and so on. 
 The child, and afterwards the youth, have 
 other needs and make other demands than 
 the nursling, which must be met at their 
 proper ages — not earlier, not later. Losses 
 which have taken place in the first stage of 
 life, in which the heart-leaves — the germ- 
 leaves of the whole being — unfold, are never 
 made up. If I pierce the young leaf of the 
 shoot of a plant with the finest needle, the 
 prick forms a knot which grows with the 
 leaf, T)ecomes harder and harder, and pre- 
 vents it from obtaining its perfectly com- 
 plete form. Something similar takes place 
 after wounds which touch the tender germ 
 of the human soul and injure the heart- 
 
106 
 
 leaves of its beiug." At tins poiut, turning 
 to his pupils who were present, he said, 
 " Therefore, you must keep holy the being 
 of the cbild; protect it from every rough 
 and rude impressiou, from every touch of the 
 vulgar A gesture, a look, a souud, is often 
 sufficient to iuflict such wounds. The child's 
 soul is more tender and vulnerable than the 
 finest or tenderest plant. It would have 
 been far different with humanity if every in- 
 dividual in it had been i)rotected in that ten- 
 derest age as befitted the human soul which 
 holds within itself the divine spark. 
 
 " The first impressions which a j'oung 
 child receives are stronger and more lasting 
 than those in later life, because that power 
 of resistance is theu wanting wbich its later 
 consciousness brings. As the thriving of 
 the child's body depends in a great measure 
 upon its breathing pure air, so the purity 
 and morality of the soul depend partly on 
 the impressions which the nursling and child 
 receive. The careful nursing of the inner 
 spiritual life must begin much earlier than 
 the expression of it is possible, before its 
 tender susceptibility is disturbed by outward 
 influences. This tender susceptibility re- 
 quires a tender handling, or it is in a certain 
 sense choked, as if I should cover the grow- 
 
iug roots of this little plant I have here with 
 sand. No development can be forced in nat- 
 ure, still less in the human mind. With 
 right care everything blossoms iu its own 
 time. If I forcibly tear open this poppy- 
 bud, its fine folded leaves may be seen, but 
 the flower will not unfold ; it withers with- 
 in. In the same manner many a child's soul, 
 artilicially and violently broken into, will 
 wither within, be despoiled, and at least will 
 not bear the fruit it was destined to bring 
 forth. 
 
 " Now, what can "we do for the unfolding 
 of these heart-leaves of life, which contain 
 the whole future man, with all its future 
 tendencies ? We must launch the child 
 from its birth into the free and all-sided use 
 of its powers. That is just the aim of these 
 plays aud occupations which exercise the yet 
 unseen powers of the nursling on every side. 
 But we must not, as is often erroneously 
 done, take care only of the bodily powers 
 by exercising merely the senses and limbs, 
 and then later, when the school period ar- 
 rives, make the intellectual powers alone act ; 
 but steadily, and during the whole period of 
 childhood, body and mind should be exer- 
 cised and cultivated together. The mind 
 develops itself in and with the organs that 
 
are inseparably couuected with it in the 
 eartbly life. Child's play streugtheus the 
 powers both of the sonl and of the body, pro- 
 vided we know how to make the first self- 
 occupation of a child a freely active, that is, 
 a creative or a productive one." 
 
 Froebel may be called the " discoverer of 
 childhood," because he has had the philo- 
 sophic insight to trace back to tlieir begin- 
 nings in infancy, the germ-period of life, all 
 the universal traits of the fully developed 
 man. Love of home, love of country, desire 
 for possession, all the domestic, social, and 
 religious instincts which enter into the char- 
 acter of mankind have, according to him, 
 their root in some manifestation of early 
 childhood, and he declared that it is the 
 duty of those who have the responsibility of 
 the education of children to know the mean- 
 ing of their first utterances, in which are 
 seen the germs of the mature character, and 
 to nourish and direct them as such. 
 
 A striking illustration of this thought of 
 Froebel's is found in the use of figurative lan- 
 guage. We speak of warm hearts, glowing 
 words, dark deeds, lofty purposes, deep in- 
 sight, near friends, wounded hearts, cutting 
 sarcasms, bitter reproaches, stinging re- 
 proofs ; in fact, it is impossible to express 
 
109 
 
 iutellectual and spiritual truth except by 
 means of words derived from tbe qualities of 
 things. 
 
 Emerson says, " What men value as sub- 
 stance has a greater vahie as symbol. The 
 whole world is thoroughly anthropomor- 
 phized, as though it had passed through tlie 
 mind of man and taken his mould and form ; 
 the huge heaAens and earth are but a web 
 drawn around us ; the light, skies, and 
 mountains are but the painted vicissitudes 
 of the soul." 
 
 The thought which Froebel everywhere 
 expresses is that things of the sjiiritual 
 world are related to things of the natural 
 world by corresjiondence, and that things of 
 the natural world are related to one another 
 by analogy. Here we find the meaning of 
 his often repeated words, unity of life. To 
 him they were words full of important truth ; 
 indeed, they furnished the key to liis whole 
 system. 
 
 To develop a system of education which 
 should be in accordance with nature had 
 made a thorough study of nature necessary, 
 and with childlike docility Froebel had set 
 himself to the task. As a result of his stud- 
 ies in all departments of science he came to 
 see an underlying unity in all tlie works of 
 
the visible creation, that each of tlie three 
 great kiugdoins of nature is a whole, that 
 each is related to the others, and that all 
 find their consummation in man. In reaching 
 this conclusion Froebel was but anticipating 
 the work of modern scientists, for it is tow- 
 ards the discovery of underlying unity that 
 their vast researches tend. An English 
 writer speaks of the " grand consanguinity 
 of all knowledge arising from the unity of 
 nature," and the same writer says, "No por- 
 tion of nature is truly intelligible till its 
 analogies with the other portions are inves- 
 tigated and applied." In another x^lace he 
 says, " The beginning of philosophy is the 
 study of differences; but we climb to that 
 beautiful Olympus where simple and essen- 
 tial truths reside, the heaven of all the other 
 spheres of knowledge, by comparing and de- 
 ducing resemblances." 
 
 The three kingdoms of nature stand in 
 close relation to one another. Broadly, it 
 may be said that plants feed upon minerals, 
 and animals feed upon plants. Then, again, 
 each kingdom prefigures the one above it. 
 The mineral kingdom in some of its beauti- 
 ful crystalline forms foretells the vegetable 
 world. Silver and copper, for instance, in 
 crystallizing often assume shapes striking- 
 
Ill 
 
 ly suggestive of vegetable forms, and the 
 frost-crj^stals of the wiudow-paue aud of the 
 pavemeut are sometimes almost perfect re- 
 productions of certain mosses aud ferns. 
 Crystalline forms are also seen in the cell of 
 the honey-bee and iu the hexagoual facets 
 of the eyes of insects, and in innumerable 
 other instances the connection between the 
 different kiugdoms of nature is seen. 
 
 So close is the analogy between the vege- 
 table and animal kingdoms that, taken 
 together, they may be said to form a whole. 
 The respiratory and circulatory systems and 
 the digestive organs of the human body 
 have their analogues in plants. The mem- 
 bers of both kiugdoms have their allotted 
 periods of growth and of maturity, aud both 
 are subject to the law of death and decay. 
 
 The underlying unity of all plant life is 
 now fully recognized, and all the marvellous 
 varieties of vegetable growths are reduced 
 to root, stem, and leaves. Indeed, the leaf 
 itself may be taken as the plant unit, to 
 which root aud stem are but accessaries. 
 Goethe first suggested this theory, and 
 science now fully confirms it. 
 
 The animal kingdom, like the vegetable, 
 is a grand whole, for between the most mi- 
 croscopic animalcule aud the largest quad- 
 
rnped there is no essential dififereuce as to 
 structure aud modes of life. 
 
 It is because man is thus related to nature 
 that he can understand nature and can be 
 educated through nature ; indeed, the study 
 of the three kingdoms of nature is the best 
 preparation that man can make for the un- 
 derstanding of his own life, since in nature 
 man sees himself reflected as in a mirror. 
 
 In developing his edncatioual system, 
 Froebel at every step of the way looked to 
 nature for guidance. In speaking of direct- 
 ing the child in his attempts at creative ac- 
 tivity, he says, '' Where shall we take the 
 rule, if not from nature f We mortals can 
 only imitate Avhat the dear God has created : 
 therefore ive 7nust malce use of the same law 
 according io wJiicli He creates. With this 
 law I give children a guide for creating, and, 
 because it is the law accordiug to which 
 they, as creatures of God, have themselves 
 been created, thej^ can easily apply it. It is 
 born with them, and it also guides the ani- 
 mal instinct in its activity." 
 
 Illustrations of the ox^eration of the law 
 of unity, obvious to the most careless observ- 
 er, abound everywhere, while the searcher 
 after nature's secrets finds the same law 
 working in all her most hidden processes. 
 
113 
 
 It is the balancing of centrifugal and cen- 
 tripetal forces that keeps the heavenly bodies 
 in their unvarying paths; it is the united 
 action of the heat and liglit of the sun that 
 gives life and fertility to the earth ; it is by 
 the balancing of waste and repair through 
 the wonder-working chemistry of nature that 
 the ever-returning wants of the vegetable 
 and animal world are supplied, and the face 
 of the earth renewed continually. The dis- 
 integration of all material things w^ould re- 
 sult should the action of tlie law of unity be 
 for one moment suspended. 
 
 The law of unity underlies all fornuition 
 in the w^orks of nature and all construction 
 in the works of man. The bird builds its 
 nest in obedience to it, bringing together 
 scattered sticks and straws and weaving them 
 into a whole, and man makes a dwelling for 
 himself by bringing together and subjecting 
 to one unifying thought and purpose, through 
 the skilled labor of unnumbered hands, the 
 products of the quarry, the mine, and the 
 forest. The arch illustrates the law we are 
 considering. It derives its unity from the 
 key-stone, which enters as a wedge and con- 
 nects the opposite parts. The truss of ar- 
 chitecture is another illustration of the same 
 law, its use, like that of the key-stone, being 
 
based npou the fact that ^' action and reac- 
 tion in opposite directions are equal." 
 
 All the industries and arts are only appli- 
 cations of tlie Jaiv of' unity. The farmer by 
 his activities puts in operation the chain of 
 causes that must intervene between the seed 
 and the harvest. The manufacturer and 
 the merchant bridge the gap between the 
 producer and the consumer, and ships and 
 railroads, telegraphs and telephones, unite 
 X^laces and peoples that would otherwise be 
 separated. Terrible famines have recently 
 devastated some parts of India because there 
 Avas no available means by which food from 
 the overflowing granaries of the Western 
 World could be carried to the starving mill- 
 ions of the East. Nothing is of any value 
 so long as it exists in isolation, and nothing 
 is fully understood until its relations to all 
 other things are seen. 
 
 To apply in education the law of unity had 
 been FroebeFs thought long before he con- 
 ceived the idea of the kindergarten. In 
 The Education of Man, written nearly ten 
 years before the opening of the first kinder- 
 garten, it is constantly referred to as the one 
 guiding law in education. In one place he 
 says, "Nothing whatever is truly known 
 unless it is compared with the opposite of 
 
its kind, and the points of agreement and 
 resemblance detected; and knowledge is 
 complete in proportion to the thoronghuess 
 of the process of comparison and discovery." 
 Again he says, " Never forget this : It is not 
 by teaching and imparting a mere variety 
 and mnltitnde of fiicts that a school becomes 
 a school (in the trne sense), bnt only by em- 
 phasising thelivinf/ unity thai is in all things" 
 Froebel thns states his idea of what the 
 school should be: "School is the effort to 
 acquaint the pupil with the trne nature and 
 inner life of things, and to bring him to a 
 consciousness of his own inner life and nat- 
 ure; to acquaint him with the real relation 
 of things to each other, and also to mankind, 
 to the pupil himself, and to the living ground 
 and self-conscious unity of all things, i.e., 
 God; so that these relations maybe a living 
 reality to his consciousness. The aim of 
 instruction is to give the pupil an insight 
 into the unity of all things, how they live, 
 move, and have their being in God, for the 
 purpose of applying this insight to practical 
 life and work ; the method and means to 
 this end is instruction, the verj^ process of 
 teaching." He defines the school-master as 
 " one who is in a i^osition to demonstrate 
 the nnity of things." 
 
116 
 
 That the way pointed out by Froebel is 
 the natural and, therefore, the right way of 
 presenting subjects, is shown by the delight 
 with which children work in accordance 
 with it. Related opposites being given, 
 the child will look with the greatest inter- 
 est for the intervening links that connect 
 them. He will go at once, from things that 
 he sees and handles, to God, the Cause of all, 
 and then will ask with eagerness to be 
 shown by what means the Cause has pro- 
 duced the effect. 
 
 Froebel took a comprehensive view of this 
 subject when he said, " What other objects of 
 our knowledge exist but God, man, nature ? 
 What other task can our intellect have than 
 to find the relation between these three sole- 
 existing objects ?" 
 
 God, the Self-existing, expresses Himself 
 in unconscious nature. Man stands between 
 God and nature. For man nature exists, 
 and through the knowledge and use of nat- 
 ure man is led up to God ; for, as Froebel said, 
 " Creation is the embodied thought of God." 
 
 The Baroness Marenholz says, "By-and- 
 by Froebel's educational law will be accepted 
 as distinctlj^ and independently as Newton's 
 law of gravitation." When that time comes, 
 things and events will be presented to the 
 
117 
 
 pupil in their natural counections ; history 
 will not be taught as a mere patchwork of 
 battle-scenes, and scientific study will be 
 something more than the collectiug of dis- 
 connected facts. 
 
 Froebel's deep thought of education was 
 that it should be the means of showing to 
 each individual his own possibilities. To 
 accomplish this there must be freedom of 
 activity ; for by no other means can indi- 
 vidual ity be developed. No external mould- 
 ing of the mind after a given pattern will 
 do: that is the Chinese idea of education. 
 Froebel more than any other educator has 
 insisted upon this necessity of spontaneous 
 activity as a means of development, and he 
 has devised a system that has made it pos- 
 sible. As a first step towards securing this 
 freedom of activity, he would rouse in the 
 child a desire to know ; for as we may gauge 
 the health of the body by the keenness of 
 the appetite for food, so the healthy mind 
 may be known by that " curiosity which is 
 the appetite of the understanding." The 
 constant effort of the kindergartner is to 
 induce children to use their eyes and ears, 
 and to lead them to seek for the causes that 
 lie back of the phenomena which come 
 within their observation. In orderly de- 
 
118 
 
 velopment the next step will be the desire 
 to give expression to the ideas that have 
 been received. Use is the law of increase in 
 intellectual as it is in physical strength, and 
 Froebel's system is shown to be in accord- 
 ance with nature in the fact that giving as 
 well as receiving, doing as well as knowing, 
 are constantly insisted upon. If sponta- 
 neous activity is not the result of the child's 
 training, there is somewhere a fatal defect. 
 If the child of the kindergarten, treated ten- 
 derly and lovingly, justly and with respect, 
 does not learn to show to his fellows tender- 
 ness and love, justice and respect — if, having 
 had an opportunity through the use of the 
 gifts to gain clear ideas of external things, 
 he never becomes inventive in the use of the 
 occupation-materials, and his work is always 
 only that which he is told to do — the great 
 object of his training has not been accom- 
 plished, for " the end and aim of the kinder- 
 garten is harmonious development leading 
 to spontaneous activity." 
 
 The test of the true kindergarten is al- 
 ways the joyous spontaneity of the children 
 in their games and their inventiveness in 
 the use of the gifts and the occupations. 
 
 Froebel said, " Only that knowledge fur- 
 thers the ripening of the mind which mounts 
 
up through its own activity and effort from 
 the perception and contemplation of external 
 objects to the thoughts or the conceptions that 
 dwell in things." 
 
 All the activity of the kindergarten is 
 easily roused, because everything is done in 
 accordance with the child's natural activity 
 — that is, in the play -spirit. It is not 
 merely in the games of the kindergarten 
 that the children play. The games are the 
 Inlays, but the children play in all they do. 
 If they march, they are playing soldiers,* 
 if they build ^Yith the gifts, they are playing 
 at building; if they work at weaving, or 
 sewing, or paper-cutting, they are playing 
 that they are working. There are no tasks 
 in the kindergarten. Froebel saw in the 
 child's play the thought of God for him as 
 to the means of development suited to this 
 stage of his growth. 
 
 In that chapter of The Education of Man 
 ill which he treats of man in the period 
 of his earliest childhood, he says, " Play is 
 the highest stage of a child's development, 
 of man's development at that period ; for it 
 is the spontaneous utterance of the inner 
 life, flowing from an inner necessity and 
 impulse. Play is the purest and most spir- 
 itual product of man's activity at this j)eriod, 
 
and is at once the type and image of human 
 life in its entire range, of the secret life that 
 flows through mankind and nature ; hence 
 it gives biith to joy, freedom, contentment, 
 tranquillity, and peace with the world. In 
 it are the springs of all good ; the child that 
 plays sturdily and with quiet enei-gy, hold- 
 ing out to the point of bodily fatigue, will 
 surely become a sturdy, quiet, and steadfast 
 man, promoting with self-sacrifice his own 
 and others' welfare. Is not the playing 
 child the most beautiful sight at this period 
 of life? — the child fully absorbed in his 
 play — falling asleep while thus absorbed? 
 
 " Play, as above indicated, is at this period 
 no mere sport, it is deeply serious and signif- 
 icant. Cherish and nourish it, j^ou who are 
 mothers ; protect and guard it, you fathers. 
 The penetrating eye of one thoroughly ac- 
 quainted with human nature plainly dis- 
 cerns in the spontaneously chosen play of 
 the child his future inner history. The 
 plays of this period are the germs of the en- 
 tire future life, for in them the whole nature 
 of the child is expanding, and showing his 
 finest traits, his inmost soul. In this period 
 lie the springs of the entire course of human 
 life, and upon the proper conduct of life now 
 will it depend whether the future is to be 
 
121 
 
 clear or clouded, geutle or boisterous, calm 
 or agitated, industrious or idle, gloomy and 
 morbid or bright and productive, obtuse or 
 keenly receptive, creative or destructive; 
 whether it is to bring concord and peace or 
 discord and war; on that, too, depend like- 
 wise, in keeping with the peculiar natural 
 constitution of the child, his relations to 
 father and mother, brothers and sisters, to 
 the community and the race, to nature and 
 to God." 
 
 Children, whether in school or out of it, 
 love to work if they are playing that tJiey are 
 working. The story of a man who by this 
 means cleared a piece of ground of stones 
 illustrates this. Wishing to remove the 
 stones which Avere thickly strewn all over 
 the ground, he told the boys of the neigh- 
 borhood that on a given day he would help 
 them build a stone fort. Delighted, as chil- 
 dien alwaj^s are, to play under the direction 
 of an older person, they came eagerly, with 
 little express - wagons and wheelbarrows, 
 and carried all the stones to one corner of 
 the field, where they were skilfully piled up 
 to make a fort. The boys had a day of fun, 
 and they accomplished for their frieud a 
 piece of work which it would have been 
 cruelty to ask them to do in any other way. 
 
The practical carrying out of Froebel's 
 theory makes the constant nse of the hands 
 necessary. Here he has shown himself to be 
 in harmony with nature's plan, for children 
 always love to have something to do. In a 
 well-conducted kindergarten the children 
 are never listless ; for their attention is al- 
 ways held by connecting all instruction with 
 the use of the hands. They are not bur- 
 dened by being taught dry abstractions ; 
 they '' learn by doing," and the hand, man's 
 distinguishing implement of power, is made 
 a chief means of education. By the use of it 
 the inner thought and purpose find outward 
 expression, and, by being thus expressed, 
 reveal the child's possibilities to himself. 
 It is with feelings of self-respect and a 
 sense of dignity and importance that he 
 looks upon the work of his own hands. He 
 can do something well, and he feels that he 
 lias earned his right to a place in the world. 
 All experience shows that if special skill in 
 the use of the hands is desired, the muscles 
 must be trained in early childhood ; and it 
 is partly because the kindergarten gives 
 employment to the tiny hands of the very 
 little children that its industries are so 
 valuable. 
 
 In all reformatory institutions the impor- 
 
tance of tlie training of the hand as a means 
 of moral culture is acknowledged. Statistics 
 show that penal and reformatory institu- 
 tions are largely filled by tliose who have 
 no special aptitude for any useful work. 
 Mr. Dugdale, in his book upon crime and 
 pauperism, says that if the children of vice 
 and crime, born with the lowest tendencies, 
 could be from their earliest childhood trained 
 in Froebel's methods, these tendencies might 
 be to a great extent overcome. This state- 
 ment is easily accepted by those who see 
 the delight which the children of the kin- 
 dergarten take in their employments, and 
 esiiecially by those who see how the dullest 
 and most refractory are made eager and 
 docile when given work to do suited to their 
 tastes and capacities. 
 
 The activity of play gives the freest scope 
 to the imagination, and one very important 
 part of the kindergartner's work is to guide 
 and educate this " kingly faculty of the 
 soul." One of the greatest of living preachers 
 says, "To fill the mind with beautiful im- 
 ages is the best mode of culture for the very 
 young. Make sure of the imagination, and 
 you secure the character." The kinder- 
 gartner recognizes this truth, and for this 
 reason seeks as far as possible to surround 
 
124 
 
 the children with beautiful objects, and at- 
 tempts constantly in the games and songs, 
 the talks and stories, and by every other 
 possible means, to waken such thoughts and 
 feelings as shall elevate and refine. It is in 
 these opportunities for seed-sowing that the 
 true kindergartner finds her greatest satis- 
 faction. 
 
 No language can be too strong to express 
 the emphasis which Froebel places upon the 
 need of religious education. In one place 
 he says, "All education which is not found- 
 ed npou the Ciiristian religion is one-sided, 
 defective, and fruitless;" again, he says, 
 '' The object and end of all education is the 
 union of the individual soul with God." 
 This idea is pervasive of all his writings ; it 
 is the central thought of the whole. 
 
 Recognizing the interdependence of differ- 
 ent planes of spiritual activity, Froebel sees 
 social education to be essential to true relig- 
 ious culture. In fact, he traces the religious 
 and the social instinct to the same source, 
 and finds in the child's love of companion- 
 ship — in his desire to find some being in 
 loving response to himself — the germ of all 
 religious feeling. A guiding thought in 
 Froebel's philosophy is the idea of the or- 
 ganic relation of the individual to the race. 
 
125 
 
 He says: "lu tlie development of the intli- 
 Tidnal man the history of the spiritual de- 
 velopment of the race is repeated, and the 
 race in its totality may he viewed as one 
 human heing, in whom there will he found 
 the necessary steps in the development of 
 individual man." That humanity is a living 
 organism, whose memhers are vitally related 
 to one another, is acknowledged in common 
 language in such expressions as "the body 
 of the people," "the popular voice," "com- 
 mon consent ;" and the analogy between 
 the development of the race and that of the 
 individual is recognized in such terms as 
 " the infancy of the race," " this age of the 
 world," "the development of humanity." 
 That the human being needs practical so- 
 cial education is shown by the discords 
 which result from violations of the laws 
 governing human society. The first social 
 life of the child is that of the family, which 
 Froebel would have cherished and fostered 
 most tenderly; but at an early age there 
 comes the necessity for a wider companion- 
 ship than the home circle affords, and the 
 kindergarten, which is pre-eminently a place' 
 of social education, offers itself to meet the 
 needs of this important stage of develop- 
 ment. Edward Everett Hale says, "The 
 
great itlea of the present century is the 
 togetherness of the human race." 
 
 Considering man in his relation to nat- 
 ure, the first and most obvious thought is 
 that of his body, which, formed of the ele- 
 ments of the material world, is- subject to 
 the same chemical laws, and upon whose 
 healthy condition right living on the higher 
 planes of thought and affection so largely 
 depends ; but a deeper thought than this 
 underlies the expressions " a knowledge of 
 nature," "peace with nature," which Froebel 
 includes in his statement of the object of 
 education, quoted above. In nature he sees 
 the "embodied thoughts of God," and it is 
 to nature as a book of God that he would 
 lead the child. The interpretation of the 
 book of nature he finds in its symbolisms of 
 spiritual truth. His words are, "All natural 
 phenomena are signs of spiritual truth to 
 which they give expression ; thus they may 
 be called symbols." In this correspondence 
 between spiritual truth and its natural sym- 
 bol Froebel sees a grand illustration of the 
 law of unity, and most earnestly he urges 
 upon educators the obligation to apply it. 
 He says: "It is quite a different thing 
 whether we look upon concrete things and 
 facts as merely material things aud facts, 
 
127 
 
 serving tbis or that outward purpose, or 
 contemplate them as the outward forms of 
 spiritual contents, the intermedia of higher 
 truths and higher knowledge. In this sense 
 the material world is a symbol of the spirit- 
 ual world, and it is in this sense that educa- 
 tion needs to use it, especially in leading the 
 child to the ultimate cause of all things — 
 God." In the technical kindergarten gifts 
 and occupations Froehel presents what may 
 be called a primer of the book of nature. 
 These gifts and occupations he bases upou 
 three typical forms — the sphere, the cube, 
 and the cylinder — in which he sees the 
 whole material universe epitomized and 
 symbolized. These three forms taken to- 
 gether embody the law of unity, and in their 
 use in the true kindergarten that law is al- 
 ways observed, in sequences of thought and 
 of work. 
 
 Hitherto school education has been one- 
 sided, confining itself chiefly to the intellect, 
 and making little provision for the cultiva- 
 tion of the heart or the training of the hand. 
 In fact, although claiming to give attention 
 to good morals, the schools, in their systems 
 of marks and distinctions, have had a pow- 
 erful influence in exactly the opposite direc- 
 tion, fostering untruthfulness, self-seeking. 
 
jealous}^, aud disbouesty iu its worst forms, 
 aud teudiug to defeat eveu the one end chief- 
 ly souglit; for the painstaking but slow 
 child, seeing the honors of the school be- 
 stowed upon his more gifted but possibly 
 less faithful companion, becomes discour- 
 aged and indifferent, while the prize pupil, 
 who has worked, not in joy and freedom, 
 from the love of knowledge, but, as he un- 
 blushingly confesses, for marks, is thereby 
 dwarfed aud crippled intellectually as well 
 as morally. 
 
 Against the self-seeking system of the 
 schools the kindergarten protests in the 
 most practical manner, for all its methods 
 are adapted to develop feelings of kindness, 
 of helpfulness, of sympathy with and of re- 
 spect for others. No one is encouraged to 
 do better than another, but each is stimu- 
 lated to do his best. Right feeling is neces- 
 sary for true thinking; it is only when the 
 heart is joyous that the intellect does its 
 best work. The child depressed by discour- 
 agement, burdened with fear, wounded by 
 injustice, or hungry for love, does not thrive 
 either intellectually or morally, and the first 
 aim of the kindergarten is to see that he is 
 happy. 
 
 But right feelings, without means of ex- 
 
129 
 
 pression, are mere sentiments; they must 
 take definite and tangible shape before they 
 can be of any value, either to the subject of 
 them or to another*, and the crowning ex- 
 cellence of Froebel's system — that which 
 gives it practical value — is found in its in- 
 dustries and activities, its manual work and 
 representative play, through which, by act- 
 ual doing, the loving thought is expressed. 
 One application of the law of unity is seen 
 in the fact that the industries of the kinder- 
 garten are the industries of the race in min- 
 iature — working in clay, building, weaving, 
 sewing, etc, — all leading out into the life 
 of the world. But it is not from considera- 
 tion of their use in the activities of practi- 
 cal life, important as these may be, that 
 Froebel lays such emphasis upon the indus- 
 tries of the child. He sees that man in his 
 best development is necessarily a creative 
 being, and he urges a higher application of 
 the law of unity in the reasons which he 
 gives for the encouragement of creative ac- 
 tivity. He says: ''The Spirit ofGod hov- 
 ered over chaos, and moved it; and stones 
 and plants, beasts and man, took form and 
 separate being and life. God created man 
 in his own image; therefore man should 
 create and bring forth like God. His spirit. 
 
130 
 
 the spirit of mau, should hover over the 
 shapeless, and move it, that it may take 
 shape aud form, a distiuct being and life of 
 its own. This is the high meaning, the deep 
 significauce, the great purpose of work and 
 industry, of productive and creative activ- 
 ity." 
 
 It is only through doing that the human 
 being can be developed — can realize his 
 own possibilities — can be himself; and he 
 must see himself objectively in some prod- 
 uct of his own activity before he can know 
 himself. With what feelings of satisfaction 
 and self- respect, with what a sense of his 
 own dignity and importance, the little child 
 of the kindergarten exclaims, as he holds 
 up some finished piece of work, ''See what 
 I have made! I did it all myself!'* 
 
 The seed sown b}' Froebel more than six- 
 ty years ago is bearing fruit. Character- 
 building the end of education, and the train- 
 ing of the hand an indispensable means to 
 that end, are two thoughts now iiromineutly 
 before our leading educators. 
 
 In regard to the training of the hand, the 
 question of the schools now is not " Shall 
 we encourage it?" but "What industries 
 can be introduced, aud in what way ?" 
 
 The most difficult part of the problem — 
 
131 
 
 that of providing work suitable for the 
 youngest children — was solved by Froebel 
 himself. It is left for his followers to de- 
 vise occupations adapted to the schools and 
 suited to the needs of our times. 
 
 A recognition of tlie importance of infan- 
 cy for educational purposes is one of the pe- 
 culiar features of Froebel's system. "Life," 
 he says, " is one continuous whole, and all 
 the stages of development are but links in 
 the great chain of existence ; and since noth- 
 ing is stronger than its weakest part, it is 
 essential that the first link, babyhood, be 
 made firm enough to bear the strain of fut- 
 ure life." Practical as he always is, Froebel 
 shows in The Mother Play and Nursery 
 Songs — a book worthy of the most careful 
 study of all mothers — how this first link in 
 the chain of life may be strengthened. Two 
 thoughts, each involving the idea of unity, 
 furnish the key to this book ; they are, the 
 relation of the germ stage of life to all other 
 stages, and the symbolism of material things. 
 
 It is through the activity of play — the 
 only activity in which the child is free and 
 joyous — that the ends sought in the kinder- 
 garten are attained, and the school finds 
 work made easy when it is done in the i)lay 
 spirit. 
 
132 
 
 III his motto, " Come, let ns live with our 
 children," Froehel urges the fostering of a 
 sympathetic union between parent and child. 
 
 The importance and the sacredness of such 
 relationship he expresses in these words : 
 
 "For thyself in all thy works take care 
 That every act the highest meaning bear; 
 Wonld'st thou unite the child for aye with thee, 
 Then let him with the Highest One thy union see. 
 Believe that by the good that's in thy mind 
 Thy child to good will early be inclined; 
 By every noble thought with wiiich thy heart is 
 
 fired 
 The child's young soul will surely be inspired; 
 And can'st thou any better gift bestow 
 Than union with the Eternal One to know?" 
 
AN EXPLANATION OF THE KINDER- 
 GARTEN, INTENDED FOR MOTHERS. 
 
 BY AOCE A. CHADWICK.* 
 
 If to fight its way were the only proof 
 Deeded of a good thing, then the kinder- 
 garten lias j)roved itself. It seems a marvel 
 at first sight that this system has gained 
 gronnd so slowly in America. We call our- 
 selves progressive; we feel our common peo- 
 ple in thought-power to be more than abreast 
 of those of other nations; we are especially 
 proud of our educational advantages, and 
 the foundation principle of the kindergarten 
 — liberty under law — is the corner-stone of 
 our civil government. How, then, shall we 
 account for the lack of assimilation ? 
 
 In the first place, the kindergarten made 
 its entrance among us as " Hamlet, with 
 Hamlet left out." Miss Peabody, to whose 
 philanthropic courage and persistence we 
 
 * Written in April, 1890, in aid of a proposed kinder- 
 garten movement in Jamaica, L. I. 
 
134 
 
 owe the introduction of the system into onr 
 country, during her first observation of it 
 in Geriuanj^, caught some of the mechanism 
 and ideas without the spirit and controlling 
 laws. Thus presented, the scheme lacked 
 balance; in fact, became no scheme at all, 
 but a mere collection of rather interesting 
 novelties among educational ideas. No 
 one felt this with keener regret than Miss 
 Peabody herself. She describes her first 
 kindergarten as "a presumptuous attempt" 
 — as "only the old primary-school amelio- 
 rated by a mixture of infant-school plays." 
 The result, all over the country, was a wave 
 of so-called object-teaching which produced 
 a set of precocious little prigs, more painful 
 to our good American common-sense than 
 the veriest dullard ever salted and put down 
 for use by the old system. I have often 
 heard a child of five or six years go through 
 a formula something like the following: 
 
 " I hold in my hand an object. It is 
 spherical ; it has a circumference or periph- 
 ery and a diameter; its circumference is 
 3.1416 times its diameter. Its diameter is a 
 right line passing through its centre and 
 terminating in opposite points of its circum- 
 ference." And so on through all its quali- 
 ties of surface, density, opaqueness, etc., in 
 
the largest terms furQislied bj' a scientific 
 nomenclature. And admiring friends have 
 raised hands and eyes, exclaimiog, " Won- 
 derful !" And so it was — wonderful tom- 
 foolery! as wretched as any other mere 
 memory lesson. The kindergarten child 
 says " Ball " — like any other child. 
 
 lu the second place, probably we were so 
 soundly set in the notion that everything 
 American — and particularly everything edu- 
 cational in America — was of such superior 
 character that to import an improvement 
 from Germany verged, at least, upon the 
 ridiculous. We forgot that the philosophies 
 nested in Germany (and the secret of the 
 kindergarten is its philosophy), the arts 
 and sciences in France ; and when the Cen- 
 tennial exhibits from Spain, Sweden, and 
 other countries opened to us new revelations 
 of methods and appliances, our admiration 
 was tempered with indifference or incredu- 
 lity. 
 
 In the third place, the mere tools of edu- 
 cation have come to stand for its soul. Try 
 to conquer it as we may, the old-time super- 
 stition haunts our blood — that all the world 
 of knowledge is in a book — all the world of 
 action in a pen ; and the backbone of oppo- 
 sition to the kindergarten lies in the fact 
 
136 
 
 that, up to the age of six or seven, the child 
 is not taught reading and writing. 
 
 In the fourth phice, it was noticed that 
 kindergarten children, after promotion to 
 the primary grade, did poor work. Then 
 where was the boasted developing power of 
 the kindergarten ? The child could not 
 safely pass out of a system in which order 
 means rhythmical movement into a sysfcni 
 in which order means rigidity — therefore 
 the system which allowed movement was at 
 fault. 
 
 All these obstacles were overcome. Miss 
 Peahody visited Germany again, and brought 
 back the spirit to put with her materials. 
 America has developed modesty in connec- 
 tion with the knowledge that she does not 
 possess a single university, except in name, 
 and that most of her colleges are little more 
 than high-schools, the national passion for 
 unearned titles having attacked institutions 
 as well as individuals. 
 
 As to the third objection, it has been found 
 that the kindergarten child at seven learns 
 in two mouths to read and write as well as 
 his compeers in the old primarj'^, has wasted 
 no energy upon dead material, and is at 
 home in all the world beside. And as to the 
 fourth, educators have begun to realize that 
 
la? 
 
 a flower which has laughed in the sunshine 
 and nodded its head to the wind canuot be 
 suddenly taken up by its roots, put in a 
 pot, and set in a row with seventy -three 
 other little pots (I believe the average of 
 tlie public school primary in Brooklyn has 
 been reduced to seventy-three) without visi- 
 bly drooping, and losing for .1 long time 
 both leaf and l)lossom. So, at the present 
 time in the best schools, the kindergarten 
 spirit reaches up through all the primaries; 
 and great hearts and bright minds are work- 
 ing that the sun may shine and the breeze 
 blow even through the academic department. 
 But, when all these difficulties were put 
 out of the way, the last enemy was worse 
 than them all. No o[)position, honest or 
 dishonest, ever hurt the kindergarten so 
 much as the raft of, perhaps conscientious, 
 but certainly misguided young women who, 
 with very superficijil knowhsdge, set up small 
 fancy-work establishments and called them 
 kindergartens. These have done the system 
 irremediable harm. These are responsible 
 for the misconceptions in the minds of par- 
 ents which, once rooted, are extremely diffi- 
 cult to remove. I can but believe that this 
 obstacle, too, will finally disappear before 
 the jpersistence of inteUigcnt mothers. 
 
But, while we talk of objections, to what 
 are the objections made ? What is this kin- 
 dergarten ? 
 
 I have heard many definitions. Some say 
 it is a play-school. Well, there is nothing 
 wrong about this definition. It is ouly in- 
 complete. Others say it is a pleasant nurs- 
 ery arrangement, by which mothers who are 
 tired of their children may dispose of them 
 for three hours each day. The most con- 
 spicuous deficiency of this definition is the 
 wholesale disposition of the mothers. What 
 of those who dismiss the maid, and add 
 house-work to their many cares, that they 
 may be able to pay tuition ? or of those who 
 undertake outside work to earn money for 
 the same purpose ? What of those who take 
 the children to school, stay with them, and 
 bring them home, in cases where the school 
 is too far from the home for the child to 
 travel alone ? And what of those who, un- 
 able to find a kindergarten near, spend time 
 and means to study the system that they 
 may give their children some of its benefits 
 at home ? 
 
 The most comprehensive definition I have 
 ever heard is that given by an acquaintance 
 of my own, a gentleman of some culture and 
 very decided opinions. He calls it a hum- 
 
139 
 
 bug! Cousidering the iiumLer of people of 
 noble character and advanced intelligence 
 who advocate the system, this gentleman 
 assumes for himself a very high standard of 
 criticism. I feel compelled to state that his 
 opinion is of that high and abstract order 
 which does not require local proof — he has 
 never entered a kindergarteu. 
 
 In J) resuming myself to oifer a definition, 
 I recall that systematized thought runs 
 along two parallel lines — the natural and 
 the conventional. The kindergarten, then, 
 is that scheme of education which reduces 
 the evolution of child- nature to conven- 
 tional form, and makes it an applied sci- 
 ence, to stand beside and co-operate with 
 the natural expression of child-nature in the 
 home. 
 
 But what is a child ? 
 
 He is a living, moving being — intensely 
 alive, and often unspeakably moving ! 
 
 What hashed 
 
 He has will-power. He loves to choose his 
 own way. 
 
 He has tlionght-power. He thinks of every- 
 thing in the heaven above and in the earth 
 beneath ; and the child does not live who, 
 if refused healthy food for thought, will not 
 find some food somewhere. 
 
He has lieart-power. He loves, or is very 
 liiiiigry to love. 
 
 He lias hody-power. He runs and leaps and 
 tumbles and swings and pulls and strains 
 and shouts from morning till niglit. 
 
 He has moral-power. His instinct of right 
 and wrong is keen, and his desire for the 
 right is earnest and eager. No ordinarily 
 normal child ever desires of himself to do 
 wrong ; when he does, it is because we make 
 him. 
 
 What does he ? 
 
 He ohserves. He w-atches nature from the 
 ground to the sky; all life, animal or vege- 
 table, is subject to his keen scrutiny ; he 
 holds the mineral kingdom in his hands j 
 and the inner world of our thought is not 
 hid from him, for he sees straight into the 
 heart of the man or woman who pretends to 
 be wise in his presence. 
 
 He investigates. He pokes and pries and 
 questions and searches, and if need be to 
 climb a tree, or slip down into a gully, or 
 crawl under a steam-engine, nor height nor 
 depth nor anything between shall hinder 
 him. 
 
 And he plays. 
 
 He plays untiringly ; and in his play two 
 elements preponderate — the exercise of the 
 
141 
 
 analytic and synthetic faculties, or games 
 of construction, aud of the dramatic faculty, 
 or games of imitation. 
 
 Very well then, what does the kiudergar- 
 teu do for this child ? In the first place, it 
 keeps him alive and keeps him moving. His 
 natural, healthy, God-given activity is not 
 confined within the cells of an artificial edu- 
 cational scheme, which is a sort of progressive 
 prison system, but every faculty of mind 
 and body is given free play through a thou- 
 sand avenues of expression. Are his dear 
 eyes, through which the eager soul questions 
 and will not down, pinned to a book to find 
 out that " The— sun— has— risen ?" No ! He 
 raises eyes aud arms aud soul, aud sings : 
 
 "Good-morning, merry sunshine!" 
 
 And through the hapi>y circle, and round 
 the busy table, he learns his kinship with 
 all the life aud motion in the great, wide 
 world. 
 
 It educates his icill; gives him gradual 
 power in choosing his own way. Here comes 
 in that marvellous principle of Froebel's 
 which he calls self-activity, and which I un- 
 derstand to mean the development of the 
 child from within aud of his oicn ivilling, 
 
142 
 
 traiuing him to take steps iu all directions 
 of himself, rather thau in obedieuce to com- 
 mands from without. This development of 
 iutelligeut free-will is the finest foundation 
 in boy or girl for good American citizenship. 
 It develops normally his tliougM-poicer. 
 He is not asked to grasp anything which 
 is unintelligible to him, and which has, 
 therefore, no "think" in it. He stores men- 
 tal food, not as a barn stores hay, but as his 
 stomach stores nutrition, with gradual as- 
 similation. He is allowed to look, to listen, 
 to touch, to smell, to taste to his heart's con- 
 tent, and is not asked to formulate his 
 thought until it lias rounded itself out of 
 his own perceptions. He is never asked to 
 make bricks without straw. Thus clear con- 
 ception is stimulated through exact percep- 
 tion ; and in the continual experience of the 
 relation of cause and effect, sure foundations 
 are laid for that logical power which is the 
 crown of all mentality, and for that rever- 
 ence for and obedience to law which comes 
 only from the habitual sense of its divinity 
 and immutability. 
 
 It gives him the calmness of a satisfied 
 heart. His emotional nature is tuned suc- 
 cessively in all keys of home-love, affections 
 of kinship and companionship, up to the de- 
 
143 
 
 vout worsliip-love. The little sougs range 
 from the "Mother good aud dear," along 
 " Teachers aud all dear compauious," up to 
 the Great Father — 
 
 "... whoge love alone 
 Thy little one doth keep." 
 
 I know of nothing which embodies the soul 
 of adoration more than the song of the lilies 
 opening their cups to the golden sun. To 
 see the sweet baby hands held together cup- 
 shaped, softly uplifted and opened, while the 
 earnest eyes look upward and the dear im- 
 perfect voices follow the melody as best they 
 may, some with bird - like clearness, some 
 with precious brokenness and failing — to 
 see this is to shed tears which come from 
 whence — who knows! perhaps "from the 
 depth of some divine despair," for who shall 
 not despair of seeing the eternity which lies 
 in these simple things ? 
 
 It uses his restless dody, from the," little 
 men" who "dance and sing" (the fingers) 
 to the legs which imitate the spring of a 
 frog. His fingers follow his thought and 
 construct untiringly ; and, by the continued 
 orderly taking apart and putting together 
 of material, destructiveness and constructive- 
 ness, analysis aud synthesis, are educated. 
 
144 
 
 The develojpment of moral power is iu- 
 teuded to iiudeiiie every part of kiudergarten 
 work. Not only is the atmosphere of the 
 school-room free from auy trace of suspicion 
 or distrust — not only are pictures of love, 
 truth, aud nobility continually held before 
 the child's mind— not only is individual in- 
 dependence united with mutual helpfulness 
 — not only are effects shown to be related to 
 causes — but every line drawn nearer straight- 
 ness, every circle curved more completely^ 
 every block placed more exactly, every color 
 defined more distinctly, every flower named 
 from its odor, every sound heard more cor- 
 rectly, is an advance in physical rectitude 
 which is considered to bear a direct relation 
 to morality. 
 
 His ohserration is trained to keenness 
 through the natural channels which lie close 
 to him, and everything dear to him, from the 
 bird which flies and the fish which swims 
 to the insects which creep and crawl, all 
 avenues of art and literature, and particu- 
 larly the noble world of common industry 
 — all these hold open doors to his percep- 
 tions. 
 
 It encourages him in mvcsiUjation. Infor- 
 mation is never put into him ; but he stands 
 towards all knowledge in the attitude of a 
 
discoverer. So, "whatever he acquires is 
 charged with the vitality of individnal ef- 
 fort aloDg the Hue of original investir/ation. 
 
 Aud — hej^^ttjis. Yes, let us say it frankly 
 and fearlessl.y to those who accuse aud scorn, 
 he plays with body aud heart and soul. The 
 absorbing passion of his nature is gratified 
 to the full ; his AA'ork is happy plaj^ ; his 
 play is happy work ; aud this is the crowu 
 of the system — happiness in activity. 
 
 Through what means does the kindergar- 
 ten accomplish these ends ? 
 
 Through tive agencies — Songs, Stories, 
 Gifts, Occupations, aud Games. 
 
 The songs form the basis of the natural 
 sciences, and inspire a reverence for nature, 
 human life, and the Author of life. 
 
 The stories develop imagination, the his- 
 toric taste, aud the recognition of law in the 
 unseen. 
 
 The gifts — balls, cubes, sticks, rings, peas, 
 etc. — form the basis of art and mathematics. 
 
 The occupations — perforating paper, mat- 
 w^eaving, clay - modelling, etc. — develop au 
 intelligent interest in aud respect for the 
 industrial arts. 
 
 The games are the basis of moral develop- 
 ment. 
 
 While these are the main lines of thought, 
 10 
 
146 
 
 it is impossible to draw sharp Hues of defini- 
 tion since, in some senses, each includes 
 every other. 
 
 No one can be more acutely aware than 
 myself how, in the endeavor to bring the 
 kindergarten within the limits of a half- 
 hour description, I have left ont much of its 
 life and spirit, and scarcely hinted at the 
 l)hilosophy upon which it is founded. The 
 mediation of opposites, or the law by which 
 the forces of nature are kept in equilibrium, 
 Avhich wastes and renews, destroys and re- 
 builds, takes in and gives out — the persist- 
 eucj^ with which, upon a fair adjustment of 
 body, mind, and soul, or morality, an earnest 
 religious spirit is developed — the various 
 adjustments of work through which inde- 
 pendence, generosity, concentration, alert- 
 ness, all qualities of character are brought 
 out and thought-power thrown along broad- 
 er lines — these and other principles might 
 be dwelt upou. 
 
 I may call your attention to the fact that 
 new schemes of physical development seem 
 to grow from kindergarten seed. The Del- 
 sarte gymnastic course embodies in its move- 
 ments the wave of the bird-wing, the sinking 
 of the frog, the uplifted hands to greet the 
 sun-risiuii", etc. And the sounds of nature 
 
147 
 
 furnish the best modern elocution practice. 
 To get the timbre of voice which comes 
 from throwing it forward into the nose and 
 lips, what better or more delightful exer- 
 cises than the soughing of the wind or the 
 mooing of a cow ? 
 
 I must give another word to the unity of 
 action which is the ideal phase of the kinder- 
 garten — that threefold development through 
 w^hich the house, fitly framed together, is 
 furnished throughout, and love becomes the 
 dweller within. We hear of this wonderful, 
 even growth of the physical, mental, and 
 moral faculties ; but what is it in actual 
 practice? Few schools seem to know. I 
 often hear it announced as the animating 
 principle of schools which in method might 
 be removed to red school-houses fifty years 
 back without serious trouble in the matter 
 of readjusting the century. We know that 
 formerly, in a child's education, to read was 
 one thing considered alone, to write another, 
 and to cipher another, and they all three 
 referred to mental development. The phys- 
 ical structure largely took care of itself ; and 
 if it did not develop satisfactorily, the stu- 
 dent was ordered to discontinue study. The 
 two were not considered harmonious. Mo- 
 rality, if not a matter of the home, was left 
 
148 
 
 to the Cluircli. There seemed to be uo con- 
 ception of the fact that these spheres conld 
 not be relegated to diiferent departments — 
 that they are indissolubly interwoven — a 
 marvellous trinity in unity — that a strong 
 body is indispensable to orderly mental ac- 
 tion — that mental balance is apart of physi- 
 cal health — that a clean, wholesome body 
 and a clear mind are essential elements of 
 morality— and that the whole is a dead ma- 
 chine without a fine religious intensity to 
 rule and direct it. But in the kindergarten 
 this truth is never lost sight of. In the sim- 
 plest mat, with the "one up, one down" of 
 the blue strijis through the white, while his 
 hand acquires skill, the child siugs of the 
 bird's-nest and the basket-weaver, and his 
 mind is enlarged by the conception of the 
 fine line which joins animals with man. 
 He works to develop his own power; yet, 
 if need be, his work is laid aside that he 
 may help some weaker one; and so he learns 
 to temper the aggressive " All things are 
 my right" with the gentler "All things are 
 not expedient," which is the foundation of 
 true and willing service for humanity. The 
 little mat is to be a gift for father or mother. 
 The more cleanly the Avork, the closer and 
 straighter the weaving, the more worthy the 
 
149 
 
 gift; aud so, iu the soil of liumau love, is 
 sowed the seed of the religion which hum- 
 bly refers its smallest service to divine 
 approval. 
 
 Of special developments of the kinder- 
 garten I select two which seem to me of 
 marked value — the education, or leading 
 out, of the imagination, and of the love of 
 nature. 
 
 There is nothing so essential to whole- 
 someness aud completeness of existence as 
 imagination. In most of us it is deadened 
 by a thousand artifices. Iu children we 
 are often afraid of it, lest it lead into un- 
 truth. Well, what is truth? Is it only some- 
 thing that can be seen or felt or heard, like 
 a chair, for instance. A chair can lie iu 
 many vs^ays. It cau say strength in its ap- 
 pearance, and carry the frailty of poor- 
 est glue ; it can say wealth, and embody the 
 disharmony of a plush -furnished parlor and 
 a shabby dining-room; it can say beauty, 
 and defy every principle of art. Truth is 
 not concrete nor literal nor material — but 
 ideal; aud imagination is the hand which 
 draws aside the veil of material and shows 
 us the shrine within. Pardon me if I illus- 
 trate by an experience of my own. One 
 Easter Suudny I opeued for the children a 
 
moth-cocooD wliic'li had beeu hanging in 
 the library all winter. As the poor brown 
 thing lay there — a marvellous contrast to 
 the magnificent creature with waving wings 
 which should have been born of it — we yet 
 noticed a certain beauty in the regular 
 circles of the body and the branching lines 
 of the close-laid wings. I was remarking 
 what a jiretty conventional Easter design 
 could be made of a series of interlacing 
 rings and folded wings, with free, waving 
 wings coming out of and above them, when 
 Mr. Chad wick suddenly exclaimed, '* It looks 
 like Egyptian architecture." 
 
 Suddenly the whole duml), dull ftice of 
 Egypt passed before me — the introverted, 
 unblooniing pillars of her temples, her im- 
 ages with cramped limbs and moveless 
 wings, her dead men and her dead divinities 
 enswatbed in countless wrappings, and it 
 seemed as if a sudden revelation had come 
 to me of one of nature's great parallels. 
 What if the centuries of Egypt's history 
 were only the chrysalis's sleep in which lay 
 folded the divine wings of the Christian 
 resurrection ? Which was the truth ? The 
 literal construction of the creature which 
 lay before us — Avhich we could see and 
 handle, or the interpretation through ira- 
 
151 
 
 agination of that construction wLicb gave 
 us the sense of God's slow and grand foot- 
 steps through eternity ? 
 
 On the first occasion of my reading this 
 paper I Avas asked by a gentleman in the 
 audience if I thought it possible to teach a 
 child this form of truth. I have ever since 
 regretted that my own slowness in formu- 
 lating thought, and the approach of train- 
 time prevented me from answering him. It 
 seems to me so simple. The child of the pro- 
 verbial " poor but honest " parents can easily 
 be led to see the untruth of a plush coat. Not 
 that it cannot be afforded; for the required 
 price might be strained out of papa's pocket, 
 but that it tells such horrible lies. It says, 
 "Everything I wear and eat and liv^e with 
 is as costly and fine as this coat. I have a 
 maid who cares for my elegant attire, and 
 Avalks with me when I go out, to see that I 
 do not soil it. My mamma wears tailor- 
 made street suits and silken house gowns. 
 My papa drives to business with a pair of 
 handsome grays." This child can be easily 
 made to see that a room furnished with 
 special elegance and set apart for purely so- 
 cial purposes iu a home of very limited so- 
 cial relations throws the home out of har- 
 mony. Every child has daily opportunity 
 
to see this sort of truth, and the chikl ac- 
 customed to this atmosphere is lifted largely 
 out of tlie sphere of temptation to mere un- 
 truth of the lips. The treud of all kinder- 
 garten work is in this direction — is towards 
 conceiving the relation of parts to each 
 other and to the whole. It is an education 
 in a sense of harmony and proportion — it 
 aims at the power to take away here and 
 put there in order to preserve balance — the 
 power to sacrifice non-essentials for essen- 
 tials — the power to see which are non-essen- 
 tials and which are essentials — the power 
 to liv^e towards ideals. 
 
 Again, through sight and sound, through 
 eager hope and happy remembrance, the 
 kindergarten brings tlie child closer to dear 
 Mother Earth. And love of nature is Imagi- 
 nation's twin-sister, without which she is 
 only half herself. Why are there so many 
 who have eyes and see not ? Because the 
 great gardeus of celestial beauty have been 
 shut to them as children. We ch3se heav- 
 en's gateway with the bolt of artifice, aiul 
 w^hen the little ones are tired waiting they 
 wander away. But the kiudergarteu, know- 
 ing that there is a divine reason in a child's 
 love of nature, draws the bolt, the children 
 pass within and find God. And there are 
 
153 
 
 deeper foiiudatious laid for tbem than the 
 mere surface sense of beauty. For it is uot 
 alone that rivers move to music, that 
 clouds have radiance, and flowers all tender- 
 ness of color and form — it is that there is a 
 great heart in nature which is the other half 
 of the passionate human heart — and that 
 " deep calleth unto deep." 
 
 But, having once made your chikl an 
 American citizen, you can never again re- 
 duce him to Oriental servitude. So no 
 sketch of the kindergarten is complete with- 
 out a hint at least of the inevitable out- 
 growth which, some years ago, grouped its 
 forms around the name of the new education. 
 
 In the old system, to the well-known 
 formula of reading, writing, and ciphering 
 were added, at about the age of eight, the 
 deeper abstractions of grammar and history 
 and geography in such form that what was 
 already narrowed into mere intellectual de- 
 velopment was further narrowed into one 
 department of the intellect — memory. At 
 about twelve years of age he was asked to 
 write a composition — on Spring, perhaps! 
 To compose, classify, arrange, and express 
 ideas ? Where had his previous training 
 led up to this ? 
 
 In the new education, while the little one 
 
154 
 
 is yet busy with liis toys, lie groups around 
 the Legend of Hiawatha the early history of 
 his couutry, its geography, knowledge of 
 the wild forest and of the teeming life of 
 lake and river, of hunting, of primitive agri- 
 culture, and of the customs of life among 
 the Indians. Its wild yet simple names 
 come more easily to him than his own 
 tongue. 
 
 The wild heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, the 
 fire - fly, Wah - wah - taysee, the Big Sea- 
 Water, Gitche-Gumee, the Laughing Water, 
 Miune-ha-ha, are names which appeal to the 
 instinctive poetry in a child's nature, and 
 are rehearsed even by a three-year-old out 
 of pure x>leasure in the sound of them. 
 Later on, the leaf-buds gathered in February, 
 or the seeds planted in April, may be devel- 
 oped into a study of forms of growth in 
 many lands ; of comparative methods of cul- 
 tivation ; of commerce and manufactures as 
 impelling forces of civilization ; of different 
 kinds of civilization as induced by differing 
 natural agencies. And this habit of con- 
 tinuity — of gravitatiug towards a centre 
 while yet moving outward along different 
 lines of thought, has an influence insensible 
 but inevitable. It induces calmness, bal- 
 ance, logic. And all this and more may 
 
155 
 
 grow out of an exercise whicli is primarily 
 only a language lesson, but which gives the 
 child a grasp of the two main stays of edu- 
 cation — power of thought and power of ex- 
 pression. For, let ns put it as we may, let 
 us assure ourselves (as we ought) of the 
 value of certain branches, of the all-impor- 
 tance of this, of the absolute necessity of that 
 — it yet remains indisputable that the most 
 potent evidence of culture in any man or 
 woman among us is the ability to think 
 clearly and the power to express thought 
 in the English language, and nothing is so 
 abominably and disgracefully neglected 
 from the priuiary-school straight through 
 the university. 
 
 By the time the child is twelve years old 
 he may never have opened an English gram- 
 mar, but he has well begun '^ the art of speak- 
 ing and writing tlie English language cor- 
 rectly ;" and Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, 
 Irving, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, are 
 as open for his picking as a field of daisies. 
 He may not know that " a noun is the name 
 of any person, place, or thing." But he has 
 a live interest in jyersons : Stanley and Ken- 
 nan, Gladstone and Bismarck, Washington 
 and Cresar. His knowledge of places is not 
 limited to a list of capes or capitals. He 
 
15G 
 
 kuows tlie geography aud climate (or cli- 
 mates) of Russia, and wliat is going on there, 
 and that Brazil is a live country struggling 
 for a live government. Aud his study of 
 things embodies the concrete foundations of 
 science and mathematics, so when he is set 
 dovrn to write a composition he has some 
 facility in the grouping of ideas, some skill 
 in the use of words. From the beginning, 
 when he handled a live cat in his study of 
 comparative physiology, and wrote in his 
 own words what he saw and felt, he has 
 been slowly led to enlarge his vocabu- 
 lary through his own perceptions and 
 thought, aud by a study of the best words 
 of others. 
 
 You may think my sketch of the old edu- 
 cation unnecessary at the present time. I 
 think I am not wrong in saying that,*in 
 raauy of our representative schools, gram- 
 mar is the same old deadening grind; geog- 
 raphy is yet more political than physical 
 or structural; history is learned so many 
 pages at a lesson by students fourteen, fif- 
 teen, and sixteen years old ; three-fourths of 
 the arithmetic taught is a mass of unneces- 
 sary rubbish which wears by its monotony 
 while it plants no new principle, develops 
 no faculty, and is worse than useless in the 
 
world of business men and Avouien.* Tlio 
 students stultify growth with over -study 
 until physical tone is permanently lost, men- 
 tal development hindered by the close push 
 and jostle of tumultuous ideas, and morality 
 stifled by the mad prostration of our chil- 
 dren before a car of Juggernaut called one 
 hundred per cent. Allow me to ask what 
 we are to do with the statement made by 
 Dr. Andrews, of Brown University, that our 
 boys and girls are two years behind the 
 average of the same age in Germany ? If 
 we cannot refute it, then let us clear out 
 the dead brush which clogs their path, and 
 wastes two beautiful years. I saj', let us; 
 for it is a cause which belongs to women. 
 And particular!}", let no woman who is a 
 mother ever lose the courage of her convic- 
 tidtos ; for the saying "Many mickles make a 
 mnckle" is everlastingly true. In the hope 
 and heart-throb of only one individual every 
 great movement is first conceived ; but out 
 of the live and unified wills of many it is 
 finally born into open life and action. 
 
 Concerning the practical part of your 
 
 * Aud ait, mnsic, science, and literature are not even 
 dreamed of as essential aud inherent elements of a 
 balanced scheme of education. 
 
work, let me give you a few hints out of 
 my own experience in connection with the 
 Froebel Academy. In the first place, I 
 would advise you to elect a board of trus- 
 tees out of your best business men and most 
 intelligent women. There is no spur to a 
 work equal to a good board. Second, be- 
 come incorporated as soon as possible ; for 
 to be engrafted on the law gives a sense of 
 permanence which cannot be obtained in 
 any other way. 
 
 Third, engage no teacher, whatever her 
 recommendations, without iuterviewiug her 
 personally. And, in this case, consider care- 
 fully the power of personal influence upon 
 children as exerted by character, physical 
 health and temperamental moods. Take at 
 any time a good, common - sense, large- 
 hearted teacher of the most old-fashioned 
 type rather than a young woman who has 
 made herself hysterical by superimposing 
 the study of the kindergarten upon an al- 
 ready overtaxed brain. 
 
 Fourth, as an element of growth, establish 
 a system of correspondence with and exam- 
 ination of other schools. You caunot stop 
 with a kindergarten. You must grow with 
 the children. So examine frankly the lines 
 of study in the best institutions everyw^here, 
 
159 
 
 that you ma}^ establish yourselves for the 
 time to come. 
 
 Fifth, I would recommeutl a careful study 
 of kiudergarteu theory. While the material 
 part of the system is, iu a limited seuse, 
 well known, it is not generally conceived 
 that the theory — the philosophy of child- 
 nature — is the essential part of it. The 
 kiudergartner who is skilled only in the 
 material part of her profession is one who 
 plays scattered melodies, deftly and grace- 
 fully, perhaps ; but she lacks the motive 
 power which should group the rich harmonic 
 chords of child-nature. I have said some- 
 where before, and I take pleasure in repeat- 
 ing it, that the kindergarten is not a system 
 of materials, but a system of principles. And 
 we mothers usually look into it at the 
 Avrong end. We enter a strange country 
 without a guide. If we could only master a 
 few principles, when we entered a kinder- 
 garten — whether we saw game, or story, or 
 occupation, or gift — it would be intelligible 
 to us as taking its place in the scheme we 
 have in mind. Or, if it did not, we should 
 be in a position to inquire. Why not ? and 
 perhaps add a new principle to our list, or 
 even be bold enough to doubt if what we 
 see represents any principle at all. 
 
160 
 
 I may here, since I am talking to motliers, 
 say a word in their j)rivate ear. In every 
 movement in which men and women are as- 
 sociated, while the men give us material 
 success added to the indispensable elements 
 of integrity and jndgment, yet the scope of 
 the work is narrow and cramped or broad 
 and expansive according to the impulse of 
 the women. Money does not count for every- 
 thing. The real thing which tells in any 
 public enterprise is that intelligent and gen- 
 uine sympathy which shows itself in per- 
 sonal co-operation with its work, and thought- 
 ful consideration of the plans proposed. And, 
 as a rule, the proportion in which a man 
 shows this sympathy indicates the height at 
 which his wife keeps the thermometer. 
 
 Again, be independent. Criticize the kin- 
 dergarten. Ask if the lines of its drawing 
 are too fine and restricted, if certain com- 
 binations of color try the eyes, if the use of 
 the piano is good, if too large a class is irri- 
 tating to children of sensitive nerves, if the 
 family grouping of six or eight is better. 
 Anything in the shape of a question is good 
 for the kindergarten and good for you. 
 
 And, in the name of all patriotism, have 
 the spirit of a champion for your city. The 
 signal for the great race of educational re- 
 
161 
 
 form has soniuled clearly through all the 
 country. These two cities, Brooklyn and 
 New York, like lazy young athletes, seem to 
 be almost deaf to the cries of their backers ; 
 Philadelphia is following on the heels of 
 steady Boston ; the lithe young West has 
 outstripped us from the start. Where are 
 the men and women who will see to it that 
 Jamaica comes in on the home-run ? 
 
 Finally, since there is but one answer to 
 the question, Can any good thing come out 
 of Nazareth ? and that is. Come and see, let 
 me ask you to visit your kindergarten fre- 
 quently. But I beg of you to look with 
 open and candid eyes. Do not come warped 
 with in-ejudice in favor of something old, 
 neither ready to be swept away by some- 
 thing new. Let us all think only and purely 
 and clearly of the " Little Child" who leads 
 us; and let us do humbly and reverently 
 our part towards refulfilling that old proph- 
 ecy which, like all truth, repeats itself 
 through successive ages in new and living- 
 forms. 
 11 
 
THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE MOTH- 
 ER'S WORK.* / 
 
 BY MRS. ELIZABETH POWELL* BOND. 
 
 " The Lord cauuot be everywhere, so He 
 made motliers." 
 
 This statement, attributed to a Jewish 
 rabbi, although it be a poetic rather thau a 
 scientific statement, conveys to us the scope 
 of the mother's calling. She stands, in very 
 truth, the handmaid of the Lord, called to 
 His holy of holies to work out His law of 
 creation. Alas, that this holy office should 
 ever be degraded ! Alas, that the ignorance 
 and thoughtlessness of the world should rob 
 this sacred service of its sanctity, and make 
 it to be held of less account than the har- 
 vest of grain or the return from orchard and 
 vineyard I 
 
 A thoughtful woman once said to me: 
 " I wonder that any woman dares to be- 
 
 * A paper read before the Kindergarten Department 
 of the National Association of Teachers at Saratoga. 
 
come a motber, tbat sbe dares to tbink Uiat 
 her cbild will tbauk ber for the gift of life." 
 It is a fearful responsibility^ indeed, to create 
 auotber V>eing, wbo must accept life witb all 
 its limitations and possibilities, its weeping 
 and its gladness, its failnres and its suc- 
 cesses. Tbe woman may well pause where 
 "angels wonld fear to tread!" To dwell 
 upon the responsibility alone wonld pre- 
 clude motherhood. But since she is ap- 
 pointed of the Lord to stand in His creative 
 place, this law of her being asserts itself 
 above the crushing sense of responsibility ; 
 and love, hope, and faith find fruition in 
 ber child. 
 
 In Longfellow's noble drama Michael An- 
 gelo says : 
 
 "In every block of marble 
 I see a statue— see it as distinctly 
 As if it stood before me shaped and perfect 
 In attitude and action. I have only 
 To hew away the stone walls that imprison 
 The lovely apparition, and reveal it 
 To other eyes as mine already see it." 
 
 Very difterent from tbe creative work of 
 the sculptor is tbat of tbe motber. Tbe 
 beautiful, jjassive marble stands before him 
 absolutely subject to bis strokes. He may 
 carve to-day a rude outline of the '^ lovely 
 
appaiitiou," and then may turn away for 
 mouths aud years, and still the unfinished 
 statue waits patiently the return of his shap- 
 ing hand, of his unerring mallet, that shall 
 transform it from the block of stone to the 
 almost animate image of a god. The ex- 
 pectant mother, having placed her own life 
 in the balance, receives into her arms her 
 tiny babe. More helpless it is, this minia- 
 ture man or woman, than the young creat- 
 ures whose bodies bound their needs and 
 capabilities ; but passive like marble it never 
 is. The very elements of marble she could 
 lay bare before her. But in her arms is this 
 living, breathing statuette, whose being is 
 all a mystery to her, and which she has yet 
 undertaken to work upon as the sculptor 
 works upon his clay. The fashioning hand 
 of law has already touched it. In the si- 
 lence and darkness of its pre-natal life un- 
 seen and incalculable forces have wrought 
 upon it. The unwritten law of the mother's 
 being and of the father's being have worked 
 together or against each other in moulding 
 their child. And they have brought forth 
 a new creature whose like is not to be found 
 " in all the wide earth's ample round." The 
 mother knows not absolutely the law of her 
 
165 
 
 she foresee the product of these unknown 
 forces acting on each other. Not less mys- 
 terious, then, than the "Man ^yith the Iron 
 Mask" is this helpless, silent little creature, 
 who for a whole year has '' no language but 
 a cry " in which to plead for the righting of 
 its wrongs, or a gracious smile betokening 
 ease or response to looks of love. 
 
 The creative work of the mother has been 
 accomplished, and now she must devote her- 
 self to the nurture and guidance of her child. 
 And let me say that I shall allow myself the 
 privilege of considering my theme from the 
 stand-point of ideal motherhood as I conceive 
 it ; for is it not best to keep our faces turned 
 towards the ideal ? And not for one moment 
 do I enter into judgment upon the over- 
 burdened mother whose life must be a con- 
 tinual struggle against poverty, or that other 
 mother whose fate is still more sad in find- 
 ing the greatest obstacle to her work in the 
 father of her child. But let that mother 
 give thanks morning and evening whose 
 creative work of motherhood has been ac- 
 complished in an atmosphere of sustaining 
 sympathy, and whose physical strength has 
 never been taxed at the expense of her child. 
 That mother begins her work of nurture 
 and guidance with every human advantage. 
 
166 
 
 While the law of heredity cannot be formu- 
 lated, indeed seems to be past finding out, 
 we cannot doubt that that child is best 
 equipped for life whose inheritance is a 
 harmonions, well-balanced nature, whose 
 chances for i)hy8ical health are good, and 
 who takes his i)lace in the world, not with 
 the hesitancy and timidity of an unhidden 
 guest, but with the happy assurance that he 
 comes to his own place — a X3lace that waits 
 for him and no other. 
 
 The first years of the child's life must be 
 given largely to his physical nurture. Good 
 teeth, good stomach, sound flesh, stout mus- 
 cles, steadj^ nerves — these .are the instru- 
 ments of this J) resent life, and it is of the 
 utmost importance that these he secured to 
 the child. And they do not come in a hap- 
 hazard, matter-of-course way. They need 
 the direct, personal supervision of the moth- 
 er. She may have the help of paid service 
 in doing some of the details of this work, 
 but she must herself give her mind to it, to 
 select the food best suited to the body\s 
 growth, and to provide it at proper and 
 regular intervals; to make the dress suita- 
 ble for the best protection of the body and 
 the development of the muscles ; to secure 
 healthful, nerve-strengthening sleep. She 
 
can buy for money the service of cook, par- 
 lor-maifl, or seamstress; she can delegate to 
 the childless, for the time being, her society 
 duties, and she can iutermit for a brief sea- 
 son her own intellectual pursuits, rather 
 than trust to hired service her baby's physi- 
 cal nurture. Is it a hard thing to require 
 of the mother that she shall devote herself 
 so closely to her child? Let her remeniber 
 that motherhood is her business now! She 
 has had lier school-life, she has had society, 
 she has had literature, she has had wifehood 
 — now she is a mother, pledged by the sa- 
 creduess and the infinite import of this new 
 calling to self-abnegation, to the highest good 
 of the child to whom she stands as creat )r 
 and providence! And, besides, how short 
 is the time of this close devotion of the 
 mother ! Only a few years, and so qnickly 
 flown, and the self- dependent life of the 
 child begins, and then the mother may go 
 back to her queenship in society, all the 
 more a queen ; or she may take np her books, 
 or her pen, enlarged and enriched in natnre 
 by the deep experiences of motherhood. 
 
 But it is not to the physical needs alone 
 that the mother must so closely devote her- 
 self The spirit begins to assert itself almost 
 with the first breath, an 1 along with the work 
 
168 
 
 of unrtiire rimst be taken up the work of guid- 
 ance. At this point a fatal mistake is often 
 made. TLie very helplessness of the baby 
 so appeals to the mother's tenderness and 
 pity that she is thrown off her guard, and 
 sometimes forgets that a most important 
 part of her office is to train this daily unfold- 
 ing human plantlet — to control this "small 
 despot," as Emerson names the baby, and of 
 Avhom he graphically says that he '' asks so 
 little that all nature and all reason are ou 
 his side. His ignorance is more charming 
 than all knowledge, and his little sins more 
 bewitching than any virtue. . . . The small 
 enchanter nothing can withstand — no sen- 
 iority of age, no gravity of character; un- 
 cles, aunts, grandsires, grandames — all fall 
 an easy prey ; he conforms to nobody ; all 
 caper, and make mouths, and babble, and 
 chirrup to him. On the strongest shouldei'S 
 he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled 
 heads." The little sins of the little baby 
 are bewitching indeed, as Emerson declares ; 
 but the mother must protect herself against 
 their enchantment, for they are insidious, 
 and, growing with the growth of the baby, 
 soon cease to be little sins, and change to 
 fixed habits that endanger the peace of the 
 child and all connected with him. I have 
 
heard a mother mourn that her boy of twelve 
 could uot be depeuded upou. She could not 
 trust him to do au errand that required 
 prompt execution, and all attempts to direct 
 his study or his play, or to engage him in 
 regular work, were utter failures. It was 
 plain to see that this mother had never taken 
 up the leadership — that she had always du- 
 tifully followed the cry of the infant, the 
 wilfid outbursts of the little hoy ; and now 
 she was absolutely helpless before this un- 
 disciplined, self - asserting child of twelve. 
 If the year-old baby has acquired the leader- 
 ship, alas for the mother, and alas, too, for 
 the baby! She will never overtake him or 
 outrank him in authority. She must begin 
 almost with the first cry of her little one to 
 assert herself as its guide — to decide upon 
 the general course of its develoj)meut. She 
 need not make a procrustean programme of 
 action, but she should work to an elastic 
 plan that will suit itself to the hour's needs. 
 She must begin very early gently to prac- 
 tise him in self-control, in regularity of ac- 
 tion. The superabundant egoism of this 
 "royal guest," who feels that " all the earth 
 is his, and all the fulness thereof," must be 
 brought face to face with the egoism of 
 other royal guests, and so made to know 
 
its limitatious. To do all this — aud this is 
 the fav-reachiiig work of the mother during 
 the infaucy of her child — requires that moth- 
 er-love have in it an element of heroism, of 
 Spartan, firmness, that shall carry her calmly 
 and triumphantly through the storms of in- 
 fant passion that may burst without warn- 
 ing upon her ; that shall enable her to sacri- 
 fice the child's momentary jdeasure to his 
 future good. A bright woman, not herself 
 a mother, however, was once heard to say: 
 '^ I believe aunts are a great deal better for 
 children than their mothers, because the 
 mother always wishes to let the child have 
 his own way, while the aunt does not con- 
 sider this in the least." 
 
 This brings me to the second part of my 
 theme — the help that the mother may find 
 in her work from the well-conducted kinder- 
 garten. At the age of three the time of 
 babyhood may be said to have passed and 
 the period of childhood begun. Tlie little 
 one has acconiplislied two most difficult 
 things : he has mastered his feeble, stum- 
 bling feet and brought them to a firm step; 
 he has broken the silence of his first year's 
 life and now speaks the speech of father 
 and mother, literally reproducing the words, 
 well or ill spoken, that he hears about him. 
 
171 
 
 He is keenly alive at every poiut. His eyes 
 are quick to see the wonders aud the glories 
 about him, his ears catch every uew souud, 
 his bauds grasp every instruaieut that af- 
 fords expression to bis activity. It is to be 
 hoped that good physical habits have been 
 established, aud it is also to be hoped that 
 the devoted mother has been able so to 
 shape the gradually unfolding mental pow- 
 ers that they have acquired right directions 
 of growth. Now he is ready to begin in 
 earnest his systematic training for life. 
 Since he is not to live an isolated life, but 
 must take his place with his fellows, to work 
 as one force among many forces, his educa- 
 tion can best go on from this point, in the 
 society of his peers, along witli other little 
 ones who have reached the same degree of 
 development. Now the kindergarten opens 
 its doors to him, to co-operate with the moth- 
 er, to supplement her work, to lead him gen- 
 tly and safely along the pathway in which 
 mother -love and wisdom have started his 
 footsteps. Let me quote from Mr. Hailmann, 
 who says that " the kindergarten is not a 
 mere ingenious contrivance, invented for 
 the purjiose of amusing little children in- 
 structively and of relieving the indolent or 
 over-burdened mothers of troublesome em- 
 
bryo sufferers, but a i^Zrt/i of education tbat 
 bas its roots far down in cbild-nature, and 
 tbat sbelters beneatb its braucbes strong, 
 ripe men and women. It is not a mere cun- 
 ning insertion between tbe nursery and tbe 
 scbool, intended to train up tbe raw material 
 for tbe wisdom-factories, but a full scheme 
 of education tbat is to lead tbe buman being 
 from birtb to maturity on tbe road of a wise 
 and useful activity to tbe goal of true bap- 
 piness." 
 
 Now, for a few bours eacb day, tbe motber 
 trusts her little one to tbe guidance of tbe 
 kindergartner, wbo must be a w^oman of 
 gentle and also beroic nature, profoundly 
 tutored in tbe pbilosophj^ of education. Sbe 
 greets tbe cbild witb smiling face and with 
 tbat courtesy wbicb sbe wisbes sbould grace 
 bis intercourse witb otbers. Sbe takes bim 
 out of bis isolation and leads bim into a cir- 
 cle of little ones, bis peers — a new experience 
 to bim — and sbe teacbes bim bow to live 
 witb tbem. He finds bimself witb ten or 
 twenty otber cbildren, all wisbiug tbe best 
 place, or tbe sweetest flower, or to cboose 
 tbe morning song. She gently and patient- 
 ly sbows bim bow to give up bis own wisb 
 when otbers sbould bave tbe cboice (a les- 
 son, is it not, in citizensbip in a republic?). 
 
and not ouly to surrender his own wish, 
 but to enter heartily into the joy of his 
 fellows iii choosing. She teaches him in a 
 thousand ways that 
 
 "All are needed by each one ; 
 Nothing is fair or good alone." 
 
 She makes song the medium of many les- 
 sons to him. By the happy aid of the imagi- 
 nation he flies with the bird as he sings, he 
 nestles under the protecting branches of the 
 trees, he gathers nuts with the squirrels, he 
 grinds the flour with the miller, he mows the 
 grass with the farmer, or he drives the nails 
 with the carpenter. He learns the colors and 
 odors of flowers. He grows to be hail-fellow 
 with caterpillars and turtles. He is brought 
 close to the heart of nature through this lov- 
 ing faniiliaritj' with her varied forms, and all 
 the years of his life will thereby be enriched 
 and gladdened. And these songs will be so 
 nuiny seed-grains in his soul, to mature in 
 due season as they sing themselves over and 
 over to him, and fructify in forms that we 
 cannot foretell. He is trained to move with 
 music. This not only cultivates ease and 
 grace of bodily movement, but it directly ex- 
 ercises the will-power to hold the action of 
 the muscles to the time of the music. The 
 
174 
 
 baud, that woiRlerful instrument of human 
 activity, is from the beginning restrained 
 from destructiveness and trained to service. 
 The needle, the pencil, and the modelling- 
 knife are the tools with which the hand is 
 directed by the mind towards definite results. 
 The eye becomes skilled in the comparison 
 and measurement of objects. To-day's oc- 
 cupations are the natural successors of yes- 
 terday's achievements, and are carefully 
 chosen as preparatory to the work for to- 
 morrow. It is only in thus associating with 
 other children that the moral nature can be 
 harmoniously developed. It is this associa- 
 tion with others that calls out selfishness or 
 generosity, that trains him to be just to their 
 claims, that strengthens him in self-restraint, 
 that stimulates his helpfulness. 
 
 In this brief outline I have indicated the 
 threefold nature of the kindergartner's work 
 with the child as supplemental to the moth- 
 er's work. It is directed towards his 
 healthful physical development; in accord- 
 ance with the laws of mind it directs his 
 mental growth, and his moral nature is care- 
 fully stimulated and nurtured. As illustra- 
 tive of my subject, let me add a few notes 
 that I have been privileged to select from a 
 kindergartner's note-book, a record kept only 
 
175 
 
 for her own use, but kindly placed at my 
 service : 
 
 *'This morning M grew quite angry 
 
 over bis w^ork because be could not do it at 
 once; almost frantic — twitcbed and kicked, 
 stiffening bis limbs. I told bim to go into 
 the dressing-room by bimself, and to come 
 back to us just as soon as be was over bis 
 bad feelings. He came out in about two 
 minutes, smiling, and went to work as if 
 nothing bad happened." 
 
 *' Was so pleased to-day to see what con- 
 trol S had over his eyelids under trying 
 
 circumstances. He, with others, had been 
 requested to close them on account of too 
 nuich noise from that quarter. Just then, 
 or soon after, Miss E came in with a tur- 
 tle, wiiich she allow^ed to crawl over the 
 floor, much to the children's delight. They 
 
 made demonstrations, so that S knew 
 
 that something unusual was going on in the 
 room, but be did not move bis eyelids." 
 
 "A little boy brought bis drawing-book 
 to me to have me rub out some poor work 
 be bad done; said, as be banded it to me, in 
 a wise and apologetic way, ' that his eyes 
 were a little out of sight when he did that.' " 
 
 " During the morning sing to-day, when 
 
176 
 
 all were assembled, two turtles, a large and 
 a small one, were brought iu for tbe chil- 
 dren to look at. The turtles crawled about, 
 going towards some children. Not one was 
 frightened ; but all were delighted, and 
 laughed aloud." 
 
 '' Was talking to K alone on Friday 
 
 about telling the truth and owning when 
 he had done wrong, instead of denying it, as 
 he usually does. To-day he was put to the 
 test, and conquered himself by confessing 
 promptly when questioned." 
 
 To these notes of the kindergartner let 
 me add, also, some of the points of the replies 
 which I have received to mj^ personal inquiry 
 of mothers, " What help have you had from 
 the kindergarten in your work with your 
 children ?" — "The love of flowers instilled 
 into the children." "Tbe lessons in man- 
 ners, the habits of punctuality and regular-" 
 ity." "The happiness of the children." 
 "The habit of working or playing to a plan, 
 the concentration of the mind upon one 
 thing at a time, the habits of order." " The 
 exactness of the children in measuring lines 
 with the eye." " Their knowledge of birds." 
 " The ease with which the little girls nse a 
 needle." " The ability to occupy themselves 
 
177 
 
 at home in kiudergcarteii ways." " The cul- 
 tivation of generosity." " The practice of 
 apj)ealing to the child's reason, which makes 
 it easj'' to govern him." These replies are 
 from mothers who have had one, two, or 
 three children carried through the four years' 
 course of kindergarten training. It seems 
 to me they cover every point claimed for this 
 training. No criticism has reached me di- 
 rectly from mothers, but I have heard in one 
 or two instances of this complaint: "Since 
 my child has been in the kindergarten he is 
 a great deal more troublesome." I learned 
 that this complaint was made of children 
 who had been alone up to the kindergarten 
 age, and probably their association with 
 other children had brought out some traits 
 which the mother had had no chance to dis- 
 cover before. It may be that they were onlj'^ 
 confirmations of the need of the child to be 
 trained to live with his fellows. 
 
 But I think it probable that there are 
 some children too delicately organized to 
 bear the excitement of a large kindergarten, 
 who could not endure the nervous strain of 
 three hours in the stimulating society of a 
 large number of children. And there is still 
 another point that must give some solicitude 
 to conscientious mothers. Little ones care- 
 12 
 
fully inirtni'od at home are exposed to the 
 danger of contamiuatiou wheu tliej' associate 
 with childreu from homes in which vulgar 
 influences prevail. However great the care 
 of the kiudergartner to protect from this 
 danger, the rough word will sometimes reach 
 the unaccustomed ear, and the rude action 
 startle the gentle child, or be reproduced by 
 the very susceptible one. But in my opinion 
 the risk is overbalanced by the greater dan- 
 ger that threatens the children who must be 
 reared in isolation. 
 
 One word is to be said of the help which 
 the mother may gain to herself from her re- 
 lation to the wise kiudergartner. If she be 
 a thoughtless, undisciplined mother — and 
 there are such in every stratum of society — 
 the life of her cliild in the kindergarten may 
 be the "new birth" to herself; it may be 
 a revelation undreamed-of of the sacred- 
 uess of her work as mother. If she be an 
 ideal mother, she has now the co-operation 
 of one whose consecration to the develop- 
 ment of child-nature makes her second only 
 to the mother herself in her interest in the 
 child, and from the two standpoints of 
 mother and kiudergartner they cau study 
 the perplexing j)roblems that are sure to 
 arise iu the course of the child's develop- 
 
179 
 
 ment. The kiudergartner is likely to have 
 this advantage over the mother, that her 
 traiuiug has led her to look deei)ly iuto the 
 philosophy of education, and so to look with 
 a larger charity upon the child, and to see 
 in what the mother grieves over as naughti- 
 ness only the crudity which time will cor- 
 rect. On the other hand, the kiudergartner 
 may discover reall^^ evil tendencies which 
 had escaped the mother, and which call for 
 their combined efforts to overcome. Tims 
 she will find in the kiudergartner consoler 
 and counsellor; indeed, each will support 
 the other in their united work to secure for 
 the child a harmonious development of his 
 nature, to direct his outlook upward and his 
 footsteps forward towards ideal manhood or 
 womanhood. 
 
 And the mother, as handmaid of the Lord, 
 finds in the consecrated kiudergartner a fel- 
 low-worker in the garden of the Lord. 
 
OUTGROWTHS OF KINDERGARTEN 
 TRAINII^G.* 
 
 BY MRS. A. Bf LONGSTREET. 
 
 In our discussion of the kiudergarteu, we 
 have dealt with theories aud methods, with 
 principles aud practice, with the actual pres- 
 ent workings of the Froebel idea. You will 
 pardon me, therefore, and I trust that you 
 will not think that I go too far afield, if I 
 devote the time you have so kindly allotted 
 me to a consideration of the value of the 
 Froebelian training in after years. I wish 
 especially to speak of the economic, aesthetic, 
 and moral uses to girls and women of hand- 
 work. 
 
 The influence of the mind over the body 
 has always been acknowledged; but the 
 power of the body over the mind has until 
 very recently been unconsidered or largely 
 underrated. Brain power and physical force 
 in human beings ought to balance each 
 
 * An address read before aWoman's Club in the course 
 of an educational discussion. 
 
other; and in properly developed men and 
 •women they do. That women are less ro- 
 bust than men is as easily accounted for as 
 that one hand is usually stronger and more 
 dexterous than the other. A child may be 
 born with more power in one hand than in 
 the other, but this is merely a marked proof 
 of heredity, and not common. As a proof of 
 the influence of training, or of mind over 
 matter, we notice that when a person uses 
 to a great extent the strength and skill of 
 the right hand, the left foot is larger than 
 the right, and can be depended upon longer 
 as a support than its fellow. This develop- 
 ment, which is Nature's method of preserv- 
 ing a balance of power and poise of person, 
 may be called physical equilibrium, and 
 there is a similar relation between the braiu 
 and the hands. 
 
 Superior force, skill or orderliness in hand- 
 icraft is sure to be attended by a well-fur- 
 nished and orderly mind. Not that the intel- 
 lect always has had or even needs a regular 
 school training ; but it has had self-direction 
 by some systematic method that may have 
 been original with itself. That such meth- 
 odical improvement is possible by means of 
 self- teaching and self-guidance cannot be 
 denied by any one who has had the good- 
 
18'J 
 
 fortune to draw ont and discover tlie 
 thoughts, opinions, and attainments of some 
 master -mechanic who has had practically 
 no schooling. In such a man will be found 
 a mine of valuable intelligence and original 
 thought ; and it is undoubtedly true that 
 had this self-instructed man acquired his 
 education by less diflQcult and devious ways, 
 he would have reached tlie heigbt of ftxme, 
 or, better still, have attained the perfection 
 of usefulness to his kind. 
 
 The value of hand-training for women has 
 only lately come to be recognized ; but the 
 discovery is arousing a deep and broad en- 
 thusiasm that expresses itself in many ways 
 and in all grades of life, from the child who 
 is to become the future bread-winner up to 
 the rich woman of society. Little girls, 
 grown girls, and matrons are finding pleas- 
 ure, health, and usefulness in hand-training. 
 The colleges have opened a vista of the 
 highest possibilities in the development of 
 the brain forces of woman. They have pre- 
 pared her to enter well-equipped into almost 
 any field of intellectual and administrative 
 Avork ; and, to keep her physically in good 
 condition, gymnasiums, directed by profes- 
 sors of health-culture, have been provided. 
 This college training fits women for profes- 
 
sions that require disciplined and well-stored 
 miuds, but it provides them uo especial hand 
 culture, if iustrumental music and the rep- 
 resentative and plastic arts be excepted. 
 Among the professions for which woman's 
 colleges are fitting her are analytical chem- 
 istry, landscape gardening, and agriculture, 
 the practice of medicine, various branches 
 of literary work, conveyancing, notarial 
 work, etc., not to mention the higher grades 
 of teaching. But this traininf^, even with 
 the aid of skilfully directed gymnastics, has 
 not set her upon firm feet and given her 
 perfect health and that robust endurance 
 which a wise combination of handicraft with 
 brain discipline is sure to produce. 
 
 But, not considering the uses of hand- 
 training in strengthening the muscles and 
 maintaining the health, we must reflect that 
 it opens up to woman many remunerative 
 occupations that have hitherto been closed 
 to her, or at least deemed wholly unsuited 
 to her strength. lb is now freely admitted 
 by the highest authorities on female educa- 
 tion (although but lately strenuously denied 
 by them) that the term "higher education," 
 as apj)lied to women, means a well-rounded 
 development of every force that goes to 
 make up her personality. The education of 
 
the Lands, ej^es, and feet ; the pose and flexi- 
 bility of the body, which includes its full 
 perfection of form, grace, and color, and the 
 method of breathing and of motion are now 
 intimately associated with the ordinary pro- 
 cesses of intellectual growth ; and mechani- 
 cal skill, in one or in many crafts, is made a 
 strong aid to the acquirement of knowledge. 
 Indeed, wliile learning to do one thing with 
 the hands, we acquire much skill in many 
 other occupations or amusements, not to 
 mention the fact that we gain an exact 
 knowledge of cost, value, weight, endurance, 
 flexibilitj^, adaptability, and dimensions of 
 things, and many useful and interesting 
 facts regarding objects hitherto imconsid- 
 ered or greatly neglected. 
 
 It is the far-off and mysterious that has 
 too much engrossed the interest of clever 
 women hitherto ; but they are now begin- 
 ning to apply their imagination and their 
 manual skill to practical matters. Handi- 
 craft trains the muscles and the perceptive 
 faculties of women to a delicate manipula- 
 tive proficiency that j)roves of immense 
 value to the industries geuerallj^ and to her 
 own talents in i^articular. A little later, 
 training of the hands will become an indis- 
 pensable necessity to all competitive work- 
 
185 
 
 ers, both iu the arts aud in industrial pur- 
 suits. Indeed, these two are drawing very 
 near together, since tlie crafts are now be- 
 ing taken up by persons of the finest in- 
 herited gifts and largest intellectual acquire- 
 ments. No matter what a person's natural 
 talents may be, an intelligent training of 
 the hands has become absolutely necessary 
 to the performance of all skilled work, as 
 well as to the attainment of proficiency in 
 things only aesthetic or ornamental. Theo- 
 retic information and a dependence upon 
 memory will no longer serve a manipulator 
 in work of any importance. Since the im- 
 mense value of habitual hand-training and 
 the application of the hands to the develop- 
 ment of all plans and theories has been rec- 
 ognized by scholars, and even by many who 
 have hitherto led lives of luxurious ease, a 
 wonderful amount of interest has been 
 evinced in every industry, aud many useful 
 branches of handicraft that have heretofore 
 been overlooked by the learned and the peo- 
 ple of leisure are now being taken up with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 The good of all this practical earnestness 
 is so extensive and wide-spread that it is 
 difficult to name any one benefit as being 
 more desirable than another. But one thing 
 
is certain, and that h that the universal 
 training of the hands to practical work, 
 and the acquirement of education as much 
 through the sense of touch and a master's 
 guidance of the muscular or physical powers 
 as through the studying of many books, in- 
 crease the dignity of all mechanical labor 
 and add to the growing respect for excel- 
 lence in every constructive effort. 
 
 Many a girl graduate has hitherto pre- 
 ferred selling pins across a counter to per- 
 forming useful mechanical labor. She has 
 considered it beneath her to work with her 
 hands. For her benetit let me say that a 
 college of carpenters for University women 
 has been established in Cambridge, Eng- 
 land, and that its instructors are so pressed 
 for space at the benches, wheels, and lathes 
 that no student is allowed to spend more 
 than half a day in each week at wood-work- 
 ing unless she rises early to obtaiu an addi- 
 tional hour on Saturday morning, this extra 
 time being invariably seized with eagerness. 
 Many women are mentally equipped to do 
 excellent industrial work. They need only 
 opportunity and practice, which can be had 
 if they set themselves properly about it. 
 
 Of course, the jirejudice against manual 
 labor on the part of man or woman who has 
 
acquired a so-called "edacatiou" will die 
 bard aud slowly in many proud and stub- 
 born minds. But tbis need not disbearteu 
 US, wben we reflect tbat it is not many cen- 
 turies since tbe practice or even tbe knowl- 
 edge of penmansbip was deemed beneath 
 tbe notice of tbe bigb-born, being consid- 
 ered in tbe ligbt of a trade. Scribes were 
 employed to write and to read writing, and 
 tbey ranked witb otber craftsmen, tbougb 
 not so bigb as metal-workers, wood-car\^- 
 ers, and tbe like. Frequently tbe same man 
 pursued tbe two vocations of barber and of 
 writer or scribe. Comparing tbe estimate 
 once placed upon a man wbo could write, 
 and tbe pity and even contempt now felt 
 for tbose wbo cannot pen tbeir own names, 
 it is easy to perceive tbat tbe time may not 
 be far distant wben a woman will be as 
 proud of carving aud mounting a dressing- 
 table or easy cbair, as sbe now is of having 
 embroidered and made up a tea-cosy or a 
 sofa-pillow. 
 
 In tbe first i)lace, band culture, besides 
 making women better scholars, cleverer 
 thinkers, and keener logicians, and develop- 
 ing their physique, evolves an additional 
 sense — a sense that but for this training 
 would be wholly lost to the individual aud 
 
to the world. It calls into more perfect use 
 both the toucli and tlie sight, the latter rec- 
 ogniziug niaii}^ hitherto uuobserved qualities 
 iu objects, aud the former becomiug quicker 
 and more sensitive to mechanical faults, aud 
 gaining a constructive impulse. 
 
 Girls manifest very early a tendency to 
 construct things, but this iucliuation, out- 
 side the making of the doll's wardrobe, paper 
 flowers, aud similar trifles, has been dis- 
 couraged hitherto. Now here comes in one 
 of the most important economic beuelits of 
 tbe kindergarten training. Girls, as well as 
 boys, weave, build, balance, mould ; learn to 
 use simple tools; to estimate form, size, 
 height, distance, by the eye, and to acquire 
 a beautiful dexterity and precision of the 
 hand. But the value of even this natural 
 method of rousing, quickening, and develop- 
 ing a girl's best mental and mechanical fac- 
 ulties, as well as her physical graces and 
 forces, is too commonly under-estimated by 
 unobservant or ignorant mothers. To create 
 a taste, or encourage a talent for construction, 
 is in the highest sense economic ; for with 
 this faculty well and practically trained, the 
 girl graduate is prepared for self-support 
 and ready to maintain an honorable inde- 
 pendence, provided she has only a small 
 
cliance to acquire practical proficiency. It 
 was a recognition of this fact in some coun- 
 tries which led the wealthiest and most ex- 
 alted to endow their sons and daughters 
 with trades. The old Duke Maximilian, of 
 Bavaria, set a fine example, which, unhai^pily, 
 the world has been slow to follow. He ed- 
 ucated his five sons and daughters, not to 
 become amateurs, but to be practically able 
 to earn their bread should fortune fail them ; 
 and if we may judge by their portraits, their 
 childhood, spent alternately in the work-shop 
 and in the school-room, must have been a 
 happy one. Tltere was less routine in their 
 lives than there would have been if books 
 only had been their companions ; and phy- 
 siologists say that monotony is deadening 
 to the perceptive faculties and to hope, and 
 hurtful to the functions and growth of the 
 body. 
 
 When a woman reflects that it is custom 
 that makes her right-handed, and that a left- 
 handed person is quite rare, her mind con- 
 tinues the reasoning aud informs her that 
 she is capable of far greater dexterity with 
 her hands than was born with her. She is 
 right-handed because the habit of her an- 
 cestors and the watchful care of her mother 
 her remote forefathers held 
 
1^0 
 
 their swords or spears iu the right haud, and 
 the habit of right - haudedness has been 
 transmitted to the present day. It is said, 
 however, that sucli ailments as curvatnre of 
 the spine, uneven shoulders, or uneqnal hips 
 are seldom found in persons who use both 
 hands with equal skill. This is explained 
 by the fact that when we use the right hand 
 while standing, the body is poised naturally 
 upon the left foot, and if this band is ex- 
 ceptionall}^ skilled, the other is j>roportion- 
 ately incapable ; hence, in such cases the 
 body seldom rests evenly upon both feet, 
 and the bones adjust themselves to an ha- 
 bitual one-sided, out-of-plumb attitude. Con- 
 sidering that the body is thus easily per- 
 verted and misshapen, those who have the 
 care of children cannot lay too much stress 
 upon handicraft as a means of health and 
 fine development, even though they may not 
 perceive the effect such training has upon 
 the mind. 
 
 In Sweden the training of the hands has 
 been so successful that educators of other 
 lands have gone thither to learn the methods 
 practised. In the language of this sturdy 
 Swedish race, handicraft is called "sIojmI," 
 which means clever, cunning, handy. In 
 England, and in eastern American cities, the 
 
191 
 
 introduction of manual culture into tbe fam- 
 ily school - rooms of the rich has already 
 proved of especial advantage to girls, who 
 are taught to use one hand as skilfully as 
 the other. Tbe women of the family re- 
 ceive instruction with the children, and 
 among the good things the system produces 
 are accuracy, industry, forethought, perse- 
 verance (it being a fixed principle that what- 
 ever is begun shall be completed), orderli- 
 ness, sympathy with workers in all crafts, 
 a marked development of mental ax)titudes 
 and physical powers, and a noticeable lessen- 
 ing of recurring ailments. Morally, the sys- 
 tem creates a fondness for work in general 
 — honest, good work — and a feeling of com- 
 radeship with others who strive to create 
 anything in art or industry. Far more po- 
 tent than words is work done along kindred 
 lines to efface the suspicion, hatred, and 
 envy subsisting between employer and em- 
 ployed, the rich and tiie poor. 
 
 Outside the moral uses of a physical edu- 
 cation tending to definite results, the learner 
 takes keen delight in noting the growth of 
 the dexterity of her own hands ; and this 
 satisfaction is felt, whether the purpose of 
 training is the learning of a useful trade or 
 merely the satisfaction of creating something. 
 
192 
 
 Adepts iu any Hue of band- work are always 
 ready to become instructors, and tbeirs is 
 tbe way to fortune. It is tbe untrained, 
 unskilled woman wbo falls in competitive 
 struggles, as it is "tbe woman witbout fac- 
 ulty" wbo is, to quote anotber apt New- 
 England pbrase, "tbe sbiftless bouse-keeper " 
 and tbe domestic sloven. 
 
 Tbe wood - worker designs and draws a 
 pattern of tbe object sbe intends to make, 
 and tbe effect of tbis process upon ber mind 
 is to enlarge ber grasp of a fact tbat is yet 
 to be, and to establisb a correct relation of 
 tbings. It is an expression of ber tbougbts 
 and an interpreter of ber purposes, for tbe 
 drawing takes tbe place of descriptive lan- 
 guage, and is far clearer and more erapbatic. 
 Since statesmen declare tbat upon woman 
 must we depend to reconstruct from tbe 
 present cbaotic social conditions sometbing 
 wortby of our age, woman berself cannot 
 too early ponder bow sbe may so train tbe 
 taste, tbe impulses and tbe scientific forces 
 of wbicb sbe is possessed as to make berself 
 capable of wortby work. By occupying ber- 
 self witb broad actualities sbe escapes tlie 
 influence of tbat impractical sentimentalism 
 wliicb iu tbe past bas destroyed ber bigb- 
 est possibilities. Sentimentality is to every- 
 
193 
 
 day life what superstition and ignorant 
 prejudice are to character, \Ybile sentiment 
 is like truth, and may be preserved through 
 every phase of honorable endeavor. 
 
 It is the nobly developed woman Avho ap- 
 plies the beautiful to the useful and makes 
 of duty a grace. She is capable of making- 
 industry a ijleasure, even though it be of 
 necessity remunerative industry. And when 
 skilful and conscientious industries come to 
 be recognized as a part of woman's higher 
 education, her symmetrical and thorough 
 training will become a powerful agent to 
 advance the interests of the civilized races. 
 
 In the j)ast the different classes of the 
 people have voiced their demands for ad- 
 vance or change in varying tone and speech, 
 now reasonable and just, now unreasonable 
 and intolerant ; and the popular cry may 
 soon become, "Down Avith idle men and 
 women !" Even admitting that the material 
 interests of the race do not demand industry, 
 the interests of morality and physical well- 
 being do, for the person of elegant leisure is 
 no longer happy when unoccupied. A cer- 
 tain well-known woman, born to a life of 
 great luxury, who has never, perhaps, made 
 her own toilet unaided, recently conceived 
 the idea of providing more comfortable and 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 more healthy homes for the mechanics in 
 her father's employ ; and she drew the phins 
 for the new buildings and personally super- 
 intended their erection. Slie was herself a 
 skilled mechanic, using a spokeshave at the 
 bench in preference to swinging dumb-bells 
 in a gymnasium, and explaining this prefer- 
 ence by saying that in wielding tools in the 
 work - shop she was doing something for 
 others as well as benefiting her own health 
 and strength. She is personally attended, 
 from habit, and because service to her af- 
 fords an occupation for a human being for 
 whom it is now too late to provide another 
 mode of gaining a livelihood. 
 
 The usefulness of linear drawing as a part 
 of handicraft is beyond computatiou. The 
 masters of this branch of the delineating art 
 prove that a pencil brings the mind and the 
 eyes into the closest intimacy, and compels 
 the hand to become an intelligent agent of 
 both. Bacon said, "Education is the culti- 
 vation of a just and legitimate familiarity 
 betwixt thought and things." This ac- 
 quaintance is first established by creating a 
 picture of an object in the mind, then repre- 
 senting it by a drawing, and lastly produc- 
 ing it as a substantial fact. A German 
 writer avers that the first and strongest 
 
105 
 
 reason why ^Yomall is not logical is because 
 she does not create solid objects, while an 
 American author denies her a talent for bus- 
 iness on the ground, as he epigrammatically 
 expresses it, that she is incapable of seeing 
 all around a thing at once. When her hands 
 are trained to produce objects of perfect and 
 symujetrical shape, she will have been made 
 capable of seeing every side of a thing from 
 the beginuiug, and in consequence the prin- 
 cipal one of her alleged and doubtless real 
 disabilities will have been effaced. 
 
 These are two of many reasons why the 
 hands of woman should be trained to the use 
 of tools, and to manufacture solid articles of 
 utility and beauty. She has been too long 
 restrained by silly prejudice from emj^loying 
 the chisel, saw, and hammer, and now that 
 these implements have lately been placed 
 in her hands by University authorities, she 
 has at once seized upon them as liberators 
 from an enforced inactivity, and from that 
 womanish helplessness which, for centuries, 
 has received from men both sneers of con- 
 tempt and smiles of approval. She has had 
 the reputation of being unable even to 
 sharpen a pencil i^roperly, and many a wom- 
 an has had her temper tried and her patience 
 exhausted by waiting for days for a man to 
 
196 
 
 drive a few niucb-ueedetl uails. Certainly 
 only boy or man was once entitled to wield 
 that distinguishing instrument, the hammer; 
 and yet, curiouslj^ enough, the flimsy excuses 
 for postponing its use, even when the occa- 
 sion was most urgent, hinted at the con- 
 cealed willingness of men to divide the 
 honor of handling tools with womankind so 
 soon as popular sentiment should justify 
 such a departure. Such is the tyranny of 
 prejudice. 
 
 It is but a brief time since three young 
 Swiss women came by special arrangement 
 to this country to make the most delicate 
 and expensive grade of files, their accuracy 
 and dexterity, it is said, being far superior 
 to that of any male file-makers known in 
 the craft. It is likely, of course, that work 
 demanding endurance and excess of strength 
 in bone and sinew will always be performed 
 by men, though we cannot tell what vigor 
 may in time come to women, since statistics 
 have proved that the frames of women who 
 are well placed in life are increasing in size, 
 csijecially in height, quite beyond those of 
 men. In families where all circumstances 
 both of inheritance and surroundings are 
 equal, nature does not account for this stead- 
 ily increasing disproportion. In plants an 
 
197 
 
 excess of unrtnre and exceptional opportun- 
 ities for growth produce beautiful but frail 
 leafage and blossom, and so impair the re- 
 productive force as to leave the cultivator 
 with uncertain chances of succession ; and 
 this same condition is to be observed in the 
 growth of the human species, for it is by no 
 means the overgrown person who is the 
 most vigorous and best fitted to endure con- 
 tinued strains with impunity. In explana- 
 tion of the increasing difference of size be- 
 tween men and women, the scientist states 
 that boys are set to work while there is still 
 time for a wholesome use of their expanding 
 energies, while the Hebes and Junos of the 
 family are like the over-nurtured hot-house 
 plant that grows to abnormal heights. 
 
 Fitting and systematic exercise provided 
 by active industrial work is expected to 
 remedy this unpleasant disproportion of 
 size between the sexes. It will not only 
 lighten the burdens hitherto borne by men, 
 but it will beautify women and make them 
 happier, more companionable, and more en- 
 during. Hand training has, and will doubt- 
 less long continue to have, many opponents 
 among women by whom inherited prejudices 
 and weaknesses are cherished along with 
 their follies of sentimentality. They con- 
 
sider themselves beiugs whom men are only 
 to happy to support in idleness, and they 
 reject all hand-craft, outside of sewing and 
 culinary work, as unfeminine and, indeed, 
 offensive to their delicate sensibilities. Wom- 
 en who have never experienced the pleasure 
 to be derived from the use of tools can have 
 no conception of the fjiscinatiou it affords, 
 to say nothing of its practical value. When 
 they have once laid aside their narrow and 
 even sinful ideas regarding the delicacy and 
 refinement of idleness, they will not willing- 
 ly continue in a state of helpless inactivity. 
 While it is chivalric in man to permit 
 woman to believe that to support her in use- 
 lessness is the happiness of his life, still, when 
 he makes the acquaintance of an active, 
 healthy, wholesome-minded, intellectual, and 
 practical woman, he seeks and enjoys her 
 society on every occasion. He thinks and 
 speaks of an evenly-educated woman — that 
 is, she whose hands obey a sensible head — 
 as "a comrade," "a sensible woman;" and 
 there is no likelihood of other than a worthj'^ 
 friendship and a noble comijanionship sub- 
 sisting between good men and such women. 
 It is the idle and imperfectly educated wom- 
 an who most frequently has to regret the 
 trickery of unscrupulous and selfish persons, 
 
and uot she who lias been made self-support- 
 ing, and who is perfectly aware that she 
 holds the power of self-sustainmeut in her 
 finely furnished brain, and her liands, train- 
 ed to skilled and definite work. Ordinarily 
 manual education among the daughters of 
 prosperous parents does not look to estab- 
 lishing them in a trade, although the con- 
 sciousness that they have been fitted for one 
 aftbrds them a permanent feeling of security 
 against dependence, should poverty overtake 
 them. 
 
 Let us keep in mind that the education 
 of the hands, begun in the kindergarten, and 
 continued in practical ways, enlarges and 
 quickens the mind, and is the most satis- 
 factory of mental and physical gymnastics. 
 It is more highly beneficial to the bones 
 and muscles, by restraining any tendency 
 to overgrowth, by producing stability of 
 structure and by developing steadiness of 
 nerve, than is fencing, riding, or swimming, 
 excellent as these exercises are. Of course, 
 these exercises aud accomplishments are to 
 be desired; but they are beyond many a 
 girl's reach, while manual training is not, 
 and the dexterity she is able to acquire in 
 hand-work will be found of service to her 
 entire person if she chooses to make it so. 
 
If a girl sits awkwardly, stands ungraceful- 
 ly, or is badly poised (which is always pro- 
 ductive of ungainly attitudes), it is her own 
 fault, and within herself lies the remedy. 
 
 Tlie lack of manual dexterity, in a gen- 
 eral sense, is the special characteristic of 
 savages, and the absence of this skill in 
 woman will continue to rank her as the in- 
 ferior of man when she should be his com- 
 panion and friend, and his equal in practical 
 usefulness. Is not he who lays the corner- 
 stone equal to the person who completes the 
 pinnacle? Though differing in the variety 
 of their skill, the two are equal in the pow- 
 er and value of their dexterity, judgment, 
 and that clear vision that has been trained 
 to see the end from the beginning. 
 
 Through the teachings of Tolstoi and 
 others we are led to consider that the brains 
 in the hands should co-operate with those 
 in the head, and we are also brought to rec- 
 ognize the fact that the products of both 
 are alike good and honorable. There is a 
 fme, strong, and ever growing sentiment of 
 regard for labor, and a proportionate recog- 
 nition of its real and not its speculative 
 dignity ; and large-minded men and women 
 have concluded that nothing that is worth 
 doing can justly be considered beneath ac- 
 
complislimeut by auy grade of persons; ex- 
 pediency and fitness — not birth or fortune 
 — determining the choice of pursuits. To 
 be sure, this idea may be carried so far as 
 to become Utopian, as in some of the practi- 
 cal examples furnished by Tolstoi, and even 
 by Morris, and their followers. However, it 
 is by the light of glaring excesses that judi- 
 cious persons see how to choose a safe mid- 
 dle way to worthy and valuable results. 
 
 Since Lawrence Oliphant has proven to 
 the satisfaction of many conservative minds 
 that there is spirit in matter, and scientists 
 inform us that there is mind and definite in- 
 tention in vegetation, there can be less to 
 justify the drawing of a line of distinction 
 between hands that ought and hands that 
 ought not to perform manual work. This 
 expressed belief by respected authorities 
 in united mind and matter, will go far 
 towards smoothing tlie way for women to 
 serve themselves and otliers, in a wider 
 range of usefulness in fainily life. Man- 
 ual labor finely or even acceptably exe- 
 cuted — " art iu craft," as it is now called 
 when work is thoroughly well done — re- 
 moves from women the formerly prevalent 
 objection to her doing what was once called 
 menial work. 
 
As you know, it was Froebel, tlie master- 
 mind in kindergarten work for children, 
 wlio perceived in manual work — first, a pro- 
 tection for cliildren from the evil, and some- 
 times fatal, effects of idleness ; and second, 
 an aid to brain work in the training of the 
 eyes to see more clearly, the ears to hear 
 more acutely, and the hands to do accurate 
 work. The observing faculties and their 
 practical uses to the scholar, whether classi- 
 cal or scientific, were then tested, and the 
 result both astonished and delighted him. 
 He saw, though his countrymen perceived it 
 not, that his discovery was the much need- 
 ed element in hnman development, both 
 mental and physical. He insisted that hand- 
 training was boundless in its practical use- 
 fulness, establishing in the student the pow- 
 er to calculate results. He saw that the 
 habit of patient industry, and of conscien- 
 tionsly completing every task begun, and an 
 enlarged capacity for self -helpfulness and 
 for helping others must remove from youth 
 many of its strongest temptations. 
 
 Most children are happy in creating or 
 repairing domestic implements, and in add- 
 ing to the general convenience of the family. 
 Here the results of their manual skill are 
 apparent from the very beginning, whether 
 
203 
 
 the implement used be a needle or a saw. 
 With, scissors and paper, guided by a j)ur- 
 pose definitely pictured in the brain, and 
 perhaps transferred to paper by a pencil, 
 garment drafting and cutting is practised, 
 and it has grown to be one of the accom- 
 plishments of the domestic woman. The 
 most valuable of family service has been 
 the result of elementary work done during 
 kindergarten hand-training, not to mention 
 as an additional consequence a higher moral 
 development and a firmer and larger self- 
 respect in households that once had few an- 
 ticipations of anything better for themselves 
 than bread— just bread for to-day. They 
 had no to-morrow, and most of their yester- 
 days they were glad to forget, and did, 
 whenever the wretchedness of those yester- 
 days would let them. Even now, many a 
 mother fancies that her child in the kinder- 
 garten is only being diverted and safely 
 cared for, and she is duly thankful for this. 
 But because the little one is given no books 
 to study, and is required to commit nothing 
 to memory, as a lesson to be recited, she can- 
 not understand that its mind is being un- 
 folded, enriched, and inspired with an im- 
 pulse of perpetual inquiry, that, like the 
 pick in the hands of the miner, shall lay 
 
bare many a treasure of knowledge, and 
 bring wisdom and fortune in the days to 
 come. 
 
 This permanent effect of kindergarten 
 training is but one of several results of an 
 apparently insignificant beginning that, with 
 other inspirations, has made the minds of 
 earnest women alert and eager to do practi- 
 cal work with their own hands. They al- 
 ready feel the influence of manual training 
 upon their sympathies. They understand 
 more and more clearly the hardships and 
 difficulties of those whom they employ ; for 
 they are learning, through a practical sys- 
 tem of doing what others do, to realize the 
 disabilities, as well as to experience the 
 pleasures there are in the differing conditions 
 of the human family, the result being that 
 they are more willing to aid than to blame, 
 more ready to appreciate an endeavor than 
 to condemn a failure. 
 
 Hand-training, as taught at Naas, Swedeu, 
 includes only instruction in the use of the 
 knife, which is held in either hand, accord- 
 ing to convenience and the requirements 
 of the article made. It is amazing to learn 
 the wondrous possibilities of this simple 
 implement, for its use not only gives the 
 worker great manual dexterity, but also dis- 
 
205 
 
 cipliiies lier muscles aud enlarges her uuder- 
 stauding. 
 
 At tliis school more than a thousand per- 
 sons, representing many difltereut social 
 grades and many nationalities, have been 
 instructed, that they might become teach- 
 ers, either as benefactors of their fellows or 
 to gain a livelihood. Instruction aud lodg- 
 ing are free, each learner being obliged to -paj 
 only one Icroner (about twenty -five cents) 
 per day for her meals. The meals, of course, 
 are never sumptuous, but they are abun- 
 dant, wholesome, and cleanly. One hundred 
 wood models are provided for the students, 
 all representing articles of utility in the 
 home or uj>on the farm. 
 
 The basis of the industrial and creative 
 principle acquired by Avielding the knife, as 
 well as its artistic practical results, are in 
 reality an application of the laws of geome- 
 try. It goes without saying that this branch 
 of instruction is one that women, as a sex, 
 have always disliked. It has generally been 
 urged that a practical use of this depart- 
 ment of mathematics would always remain 
 quite outside the demands of an ordinary 
 woman's life ; but this has proved a mistake. 
 What girls have heretofore learned of geom- 
 etry at school was more or less compulsory, 
 
206 
 
 anil studied witli mental reservations, if not 
 with outspoken protests. Manual work, 
 however, with its foundation of geometry, 
 has proved an agreeable revelation to this 
 class of women, who perceive the meaning 
 of the science now that it is unveiled to 
 them. I remember, when a child, once in- 
 quiring of a master in mathematics why, 
 when adding figures, one should carry all 
 the tens to the next column, and the laconic 
 reply was, " Because it is the rule." In 
 this way girls have been instructed in ge- 
 ometry hy rule, and the ordinary feminine 
 mind took no interest in the study and could 
 perceive no reason for its being. 
 
 From Moscow we obtain a second and 
 more advanced practical system of manual 
 training, this system being now used by 
 technical and scientific teachers in the best 
 schools in America. This fact should be a 
 little humiliating to a people who, more than 
 any other, lay claim to a national habit of 
 whittling. For notwithstanding the good- 
 natured ridicule that has been heaped upon 
 this American habit, the fact remains that 
 many of our most important inventions date 
 from an expression in wood of a man's 
 thought. But although an endless variety 
 of conveniences and labor - saving imple- 
 
nients, not to mention contrivances that 
 have enriched the world, have owed their 
 origin to practical skill with the jack-knife, 
 this useful tool has only lately been placed 
 in the hands of women. Indeed, it was con- 
 sidered as inappropriate as a thimble and 
 needle would be in the grasp of a boy. It 
 was to this sharp division of implements be- 
 tween the sexes that the tailor owed an un- 
 deserved but universal contempt. Only 
 lately a resj^ected New England governor 
 announced, in protesting against a narrow- 
 ing under-estimate of certain kinds of use- 
 fulness, that he highly prized the practical 
 knowledge of the needle which he had ac- 
 quired when a child. He said that on many 
 occasions his sewing had been of the greatest 
 use to him, and hundreds of travellers could 
 tell a similar tale had they been so fortunate 
 as to have had a wise mother. Ruskin calls 
 attention to the fact that every one of the 
 great Italian painters and sculptors was ap- 
 prenticed to workers iu fine metals, and that 
 it was while making symmetrical objects 
 that their fingers were disciplined and their 
 hands made trustworthy aids to their brains, 
 in the production of those beautiful master- 
 pieces which hav^e won immortal fame. 
 According to the Swedish system of hand 
 
culture at home, there are eight stops or 
 class grades, aud each of them involves the 
 making of two articles, which mnst he per- 
 fected before others are attempted. In this 
 way much moral training is gained ; for the 
 worker, be she woman or child, is sure to 
 lose a part of her force of character when- 
 ever she permits herself to leave one task 
 uncompleted for the sake of attempting some 
 more attractive work. Not only are the 
 material and time lost that she has devoted 
 to the unfinished article, but her habit of 
 persistency is weakened and her power to 
 compel herself diminished. Perseverance is 
 claimed to be a masculine rather than a 
 feminine trait, although the assertion has 
 not been satisfactorily proven. If it be true 
 in isolated cases, there is an excuse for the 
 woman, and perhaps a justification ; for has 
 she not a hundred details in her every-day 
 duties to others that demand the use of her 
 hands and her sympathies? She has also 
 many minor but essential industries that 
 consume her time, as well as cares that ex- 
 haust her strength to such a degree that she 
 is unable to systematize her work or choose 
 her own hours for those useful and beautiful 
 arts which, by-the-bye, if added to the crafts, 
 bear profit as well as culture in their train. 
 
The tools ordinarily used by cabiuet- 
 makers are ignored by most persons who are 
 seeking merely to acquire manual dexterity 
 and have no intention of using their skill as 
 a means of livelihood ; but it has been 
 proved that hands which are capable of 
 turning out well-finished work with a knife 
 will find all the less difficulty in mastering 
 the use of every sort of carpenter's tools. As 
 a rule, a teacher must have made every 
 model that is offered the pupils to copy, and 
 this instructor is usually a woman. This 
 plan at once establishes confidence in the 
 mind of the feminine beginner, for she imme- 
 diately quotes, for her own encouragement, 
 " What woman has done, woman may do." 
 The woods in general use are chiefly red and 
 white j)ine, though for children's hands bass- 
 wood and cedar are preferred, because they 
 are softer and do not require as much 
 strength to work them properlj'. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that in classes of 
 students in hand-training the more thor- 
 oughly disciplined minds have an advantage 
 over less cultured ones, and in the same pro- 
 portion persons with trained hands acquire 
 book-learning more easily and remember 
 more clearly thau those whose hands are 
 untrained in mechanical ways. This has 
 
 11 
 
210 
 
 been said before, but it cannot be too 
 strongly empba.sized while there remains an 
 inequality or disproportion between brain 
 and manual culture. But the learuer must 
 not mistake information upon all sorts of 
 subjects for cultivation or mental discipline. 
 A knowledge that is confiued to unapplied 
 rules and abstract ideas and theories is not 
 education in its best sense. The task may 
 appear too easy to the inexperienced, but 
 the thoroughly trained declare that there is 
 true wisdom in making the first formal les- 
 son in handicraft, the shaping of a pointer 
 or flower-stick, or perhaps a pen-holder, or 
 some similar article of simple outline. The 
 average person believes herself instinctively 
 callable of so mnch industrial art, but let 
 her try to make a perfect specimen of one of 
 these articles, and she will then understand 
 why the simplest object is selected for the 
 rudimentary student. Whatever model is 
 chosen must be followed with exactness, 
 this rule being arbitrary after selection. 
 One or a score of the same article may be 
 made, but perfection must be attained be- 
 fore a second model is allowed the carver. 
 
 The next object presented to the learner 
 is a letter-opener, or leaf-cutter, or a netting- 
 needle. The third selection is a rolling-pin, 
 
a towel-roller, or perhaps a roniul ruler, and 
 a hoop-stick or clothes-peg. After these are 
 completed, handles for bread - kuives are 
 carved and their oriiameutatiou reproduced 
 from drawings that are either original or 
 copied. Then come picture-frames, more or 
 less elaborate, bread - boards for the table, 
 with an ornamental edge that matches the 
 knife, also salad forks aud spoons, and boxes 
 with dovetailed corners. The picture-frames 
 aud boxes are the first objects that require 
 the use of the cabinet-maker's square and 
 rule. These implements are used as a test, 
 however, and lesseu in no degree the disci- 
 pline which the eyes are receiving, the rule 
 being introduced to verify rather than guide 
 the vision, which has become almost accu- 
 rate. As there must be no uncertainty or 
 inaccuracj^ in work of this kind, the measure 
 is carefnlly applied. The process of produc- 
 ing perfect proportions trains the mental 
 faculties as well as the hands and muscles, 
 and, indeed, the entire body. We may be 
 sure that the womau who can make a box, 
 dovetail its corners, add its hinges, fit its 
 back, and perhaps cover and line it with 
 silk, will be able thereafter, with more dex- 
 terity and speed, to cut out a gown, adjust 
 it perfect]}", hangit gracefully, and complete 
 
it neatly — yes, aud wear it with greater 
 dignity aud elegance. 
 
 Of course, women as well as childreu stand 
 at a table or bench while they are working 
 at home with a knife. The boards for 
 boxes are procured somewhat smoothed, aud 
 sawed into proper but uot exact sizes. In 
 the college of carpentry for University wom- 
 en at Oxford, the beginuing of wood- work- 
 ing is also done with a knife, and the same 
 simple articles as in Sweden are perfectly 
 completed before an advance step is made. 
 After that, the bench, with the hammer, saw, 
 plane, lathe, spokeshave, brace and bit, 
 screw-driver, nails, gimlet, chisel, etc., etc., 
 becomes the scene of the student's labors, 
 but the strictest discii^line as to progress and 
 perception in regard to every object under- 
 taken is carefully maintained. All imper- 
 fect work is remade or destroyed, since it 
 would be an oifence to kee}) it, aud a great- 
 er one to give it away. Women who last 
 year made carved frames for Christmas gifts 
 will this year give carved chairs, brackets, 
 sideboard tops, mantels, consoles, picture 
 mouldings for a parlor, panels, to take the 
 place of hangings, the backs of upright 
 pianos, to be turned towards the middle of 
 the room. 
 
The principles of the hand- work, as tauglit 
 in Sweden, maintain that all articles made 
 ranst be usefnl. But when one's eyes have 
 become accustomed to beautiful objects, the 
 beautiful has become useful, in that it min- 
 isters to our higher senses, and stands in 
 relation to our perceptions somewhat as 
 perfectly prepared food does to a refined ap- 
 petite. It is not gluttony to require well- 
 cooked viands, nor is it worldliness to be 
 discontented with ugliness of outline, or 
 bad proi>orti(ms, in one's furnishings. When 
 the defects are unavoidable, the philosophic 
 mind accepts them, but it should never be 
 satisfied with them. To the many reasons 
 — mental, moral, physical, and material — 
 adduced in favor of hand-training and man- 
 ual dexterit}', may be added the homely fact 
 that the wear and tear on feminine temper 
 and patience involved in the waiting for 
 work to be done will be spared to women, 
 and they Avill, by virtue of their self-reliance 
 and all -accomplishing energy, bring good 
 cheer into the household for husband and 
 children. It may certainly be taken for 
 granted that the physical gain resulting 
 from active mechanical work will diminish 
 invalidism, and abrogate laziness. 
 
 An eminent authority on such subjects, a 
 
214 
 
 man of wide experience, close observation, 
 and generous conclusions, declares that 
 women, as a rule, waste more nerve force 
 and vitality in struggles with tlieir lot and 
 in passionate despair over really surmount- 
 able difficulties than they would expend in 
 an ordinary life of actual labor in such 
 mechanical work as comes within the range 
 of their strength and tastes. He adds that 
 a higher education, wholly acquired by 
 study, if it does not entirely destroy a 
 woman's potential motherhood, at least di- 
 minishes her chances of safety and of a 
 healthy posterity. He insists, also, that 
 the woman with dexterous hands, besides 
 having a more enduring body and a better 
 equipped intellect, is not troubled before 
 marriage with anxieties regarding her fut- 
 ure, since she knows that she is able to 
 support herself. 
 
 The present method ( beginning in the 
 kindergarten, and doubtless the fruit of the 
 Froebelian idea) of educating hands and 
 brains, by, through, and for each other, is a 
 happy change for girls ; and those wom- 
 en who desire a college education need no 
 longer be deterred by fears of a broken con- 
 stitution, and a morbid fntnre. Whether 
 trades should be taught in schools may be 
 
215 
 
 a question, but that the use of tbe body is 
 au impoitaut element in education cannot 
 be doubted. Already it is proved that the 
 general dexterity which the kindergarten 
 methods develop in children opens their 
 understanding to the arts, sciences, and 
 various branches of philosophy, and gives 
 them au interest in practical things and a 
 camaraderie with all craftsmen. By this 
 kindergarten impulse, also, they are provid- 
 ed with occupation at home, a lack of which 
 has distracted many a mother, and ruined 
 many a child. From the small maker of 
 doll's clothes to the artistic costumer, or the 
 accomplished needle-woman, there is an in- 
 evitable evolution, provided — and this is of 
 vital importance — that the mother insists 
 upon care and skill in the shaping, and per- 
 severance in the comjiletion of every garment 
 her little daughter undertakes to make. 
 The girl should never be rewarded for good 
 work, for the ability to bring her undertak- 
 ing to a satisfactory conclusion will be quite 
 reward enough. A reward is really a bribe 
 under another name, and a child should be 
 taught to scorn a reward for well-doing, as 
 a dishonorable gain. The kindergarten 
 teaches, both by precept and example, that 
 neither a girl nor a boy should be paid for 
 
216 
 
 doing anytliiug ivell. By implication, it 
 suggests aucl maintains the difference be- 
 tween wages and rewards — one being a just 
 recompense, while the other is an offered in- 
 dignity. The sound basis of morals which 
 the kindergarten constantly and silently 
 builds on grows broader and firmer as the 
 child develops throngh youth to maturity. 
 That self-respect which a woman feels when 
 she knows herself capable of meeting all the 
 emergencies of her station, has been, in a 
 proportionate degree, experienced by the 
 girl of tender years, as, little by little, her 
 brain was stored with useful knowledge in 
 orderly arrangement, and her hands made 
 skilful in arts and crafts as interesting as 
 pla}^, and yet as dignified as are the pursuits 
 of the full-grown man. 
 
 THE END. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 019 820 966