ROE BEUS LETTERS 
 
 to his Wije and Others 
 
 A.H. Heinemann
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 FKIF.DRICII FROKBKL. 
 
 Born at ( )berweissbach, April 21, 1782. 
 
 Died at Maricnthal, June 21. 1852.
 
 EDITED 
 
 WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES AND ADDITIONAL MATTER 
 
 \o 
 
 ARNOLD H V ,HEINEMANN 
 
 IO MILK STREET 
 1893
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY LEE AND SHEPARD 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 FROEBBL LETTERS
 
 Ed. - Psych. 
 Library 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 
 Froebel's strong and gentle nature, i. Best appreciated by 
 women, 2. His wife's devotion, 3. Late demand for his letters, 
 4. Difficulties in his style, 5. Necessity of notes, 6. Beginnings 
 with education, 7. He looks to women, 8, 9. His glowing 
 appeal, 10. Von Arnswald's reminiscences, n. Dry bread as 
 penance, 12. Health with plain fare, 13, 14. The place of gym- 
 nastics, 15. No need of vacations, 16. School life, 17. Anni- 
 versary of battle of Leipzig, 18. The first kindergarten, 19. A 
 street scene, 20. Philanthropy under difficulties, 21, 22. The aim 
 in training, 23, 24. Original idea of the kindergarten, 25, 26. 
 Disciples sometimes at fault, 27. Von Arnswald loyal, 28. 
 Froebel's poverty, 29, 30. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 To Von Arnswald, 31. Self-education, 32. Educational Asso- 
 ciations, 33, 34. Invitation to fathers, 35, 36. Infant education, 
 37. Educational unions, 38. Their object and influence, 39, 40. 
 Discussion by villagers, 41, 42. Harmony of home and school, 43. 
 Man's development, 44. Conformity to nature, 45. Other edu- 
 cators, 46.* Other systems, 47. Spontaneous activity, 48. The 
 five stages, 49, 50. Froebel and the clergy, 51. Discovery of 
 the kindergarten, 52. Froebel and the public school, 53. The 
 public unenlightened, 54. Froebel's system grows slowly, 55. 
 Faults of teachers, 56. To maintain individuality, 57. Ideality 
 of Froebel, 58. Self observation, 59, 60. 
 
 iii
 
 IV CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Sand for moulding shapes, 61. Kindergarten in miniature, 62. 
 Training children's maids, 63. Education of mothers, 64. A 
 Luther kindergarten, 65. A festival, 66. A reformation, 67. 
 What is in a name, 68. Kindergartens for all, 69. No exclusive 
 name, 70. The love of song, 71. Training of nurses, 72. A 
 model nurse and teacher, 73, 74. A specimen of Froebel's daily 
 work, 75, 76. Institution for orphans, 77, 78. Combining 
 schools, 79. Honor to Schiller, 80. Necessity of a head, 81. 
 Objections to the training school, 82. Mothers' Songs, 83. A 
 matron wanted, 84. Endowments, 85, 86. The State hostile, 87. 
 Seeking a location, 88. Normal or practice schools, 89. Duties 
 of matron and teacher, 90. Jean Paul on crying, 91. Small 
 beginnings, 92. Make a friend of authority, 93. Training young 
 infants, 94. A true Christmas, 95, 96. Deep public interest, 97. 
 Successful festival, 98. Through darkness and light, 99. A golden 
 text, 100. Harmony of school and home, 101. Rhythm and 
 tact, 102. No nonsense words to be used, 103, 104. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The sand-bath, moulding sand, 105. Practice in forms, 106. 
 Froebel's self-devotion, 107. His enthusiasm, 108. Mothers to 
 instruct the maids, 109. Mothers' classes, no. Institutions for 
 maids, in. The kindergarten a reformation, 112. Luther at 
 Wart burg, 113. Froebel's sympathetic attention, 114. Grades of 
 teachers, 115. The children carry home joy, 1 1 6. Orphanages 
 not established, 117. The kindergarten a German idea. The 
 zither, 118. Reality of ideas, 119. Posture, light, and air, 120. 
 Children in training-schools, 121. State interference baneful, 122. 
 Jean Paul's " Levana," 123. Froebel's industry, 124. Develop- 
 ment of children, 125. Froebel not an egotist, 126. Babies not 
 to be frightened nor excited, 127, 128. No forcing, 129. Chil- 
 dren to reform parents, 130. Froebel's great festival came to 
 naught, 131. Another disappointment, 132. The idealist seeks 
 new paths, 133. Infant education to be early, 134. Without 
 haste, without rest. Luise Levin, 135. No words without sense,
 
 CONTENTS V 
 
 136. Talks for babes, 137. Memory by association, 138. Words 
 and ideas, 139. " You " and " Me," 140. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Aristotle and Cicero on the Powers of Man, 141, 142. Garve 
 on Conscious Dignity, 143. Herder, Rousseau, Kant, Claudius, 144. 
 Origin of the name Kindergarten, 145, 146. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Froebel at Hamburg in 1850, 147. Diesterweg, 148. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Frau Luise Froebel. Personal reminiscences, 149, 150. The 
 musical kindergarten, 151. Intimate union of pupils, 152. Frau 
 Froebel as a guest, 153. She visits schools, 154. A tactless 
 teacher, 153. Beauty in leaves and blossoms, 156. Easy steps 
 toward botany, 157, 158. No wanton destruction, 159. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A sketch of Froebel written for the I loth anniversary of his 
 birth, 160. Religious education, 161. Let us live for our chil- 
 dren, 162. Dawning of his ideas, 163. Marriage in poverty, 164. 
 His wife's self-denial, 165. Her courage and resignation, 166. 
 Growth of his system, 167. Beauty of Keilhau, 1 68. The home 
 of his second wife, 169. Her association with his family, 170. 
 Reverence for her master, 171. He follows high ideals, 172. 
 Admiration for his Mutter Lieder, 173. She becomes a normal 
 pupil, 174. Then his assistant, 175. Life at Liebenstein, 176. 
 They drift into marriage, 177. The monarchy suppresses kinder- 
 gartens, 178, 179. The blow is fatal to Froebel, 180. Frau 
 Froebel in widowhood, 181, 182.
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL 
 
 HIS STRONG AND GENTLE NATURE 
 
 THE man who yields his entire being to his idea, 
 sacrificing every selfish interest to his spiritual tenden- 
 cies of loving service to his altruistic ideals ; the in- 
 spired enthusiast, whose every thought and word and 
 deed bear the imprint of his devotion to his mission, 
 he is a being whom no one susceptible of great and 
 noble sentiments can approach without admiration 
 and awe. 
 
 Such a man was Friedrich Froebel. Look at his face 
 and you will find him such. What power and deter- 
 mination are manifest in these features! Yet how 
 strangely is this force of character coupled with a ten- 
 der desire of loving and being loved, expressed in the 
 almost womanly forms of the mouth and chin. And 
 look into those genial eyes, expressive of unselfish 
 devotion and ever ardent enthusiasm ! No doubt, this 
 man was the incarnate union of unusual vigor with a 
 love almost motherly, a union requisite to constitute 
 a man an ingenious educator of youth and a friend of
 
 APPRECIATED BEST BY WOMEN 
 
 childhood. To receive and to return love, is to the 
 child an essential condition of full growth and of the 
 enjoyment of life and happiness. Froebel had an 
 instinctive feeling of this happiness of the child stand- 
 ing before him, and found the full satisfaction of his 
 desire of love in this communion of his mind with the 
 mind of childhood. 
 
 This trait of character was the key that opened the 
 character of womankind in general to the understand- 
 ing of Froebel, and made him the most sagacious inter- 
 preter of the wants and the vocation of woman. This is 
 the explanation of the remarkable fact that the mys- 
 teries of the Froebel education have attracted few male 
 students, and that there is rarely found a true woman 
 who, on being introduced to the principles of the Kin- 
 dergarten, does not understand them, and begin to 
 practise them with an enthusiasm akin to that of 
 Froebel himself. 
 
 And this Froebel enthusiasm is not transient. If 
 you doubt its persistence, look at Frau Luise Froebel, 
 the widow of the Kindergartener. Upwards of forty 
 years have passed since her husband was taken away 
 from her, yet the ardor of her enthusiasm has not 
 cooled in the least. She continues as she was when 
 walking by his side, a living piece of his own self, in 
 whose soul we can recognize and study the soul of 
 Friedrich Froebel.
 
 HIS WIFE S DEVOTION 3 
 
 I have no hesitation in saying that Frau Luise Froe- 
 bel is the spiritual creature of Friedrich Froebel. He 
 made her what she is : he implanted in her those 
 remarkable principles and traits of character that 
 distinguish her and elevate her above the common 
 crowd. There is in her a depth of perception, a 
 wealth of sentiment, a loving and never withhold- 
 ing, never weakening sympathy for all that is good 
 and elevating, chiefly for such things as concern 
 the development of the good and beautiful in man, 
 such as we know to have characterized Froebel him- 
 self. For all which constitutes the real life and 
 genius of Frau Froebel, she is indebted to his teaching 
 and his influence. His genius pervades her as the 
 creative spirit giving life to her soul. 
 
 True to her mission, Frau Froebel has always tried 
 to live and act according to the principles of her late 
 husband, and to carry out his wishes and bequests. 
 Among the latter the wish to have his correspondence 
 published, was one of the most prominent, repeated 
 with great emphasis when he lay on his deathbed. In 
 his letters, he said, he had expressed his ideas with 
 greater clearness and fulness than in his works. But 
 for nearly forty years Frau Froebel had never been 
 able to find anybody willing to study the letters and 
 edit them. It is well known that the style of the writ- 
 ings of Froebel is exceedingly involved and difficult to
 
 4 LATE DEMAND FOR HIS LETTERS 
 
 understand. It is not an easy task to prepare them for 
 publication. And there was another circumstance ren- 
 dering it difficult for literary men to undertake the 
 labor of publishing the letters, namely, this, that until 
 quite rec< ntly there was no demand for the writings of 
 Froebel, and, consequently, no publisher could be found 
 to bring them out. 
 
 This difficulty was experienced by the editor of the 
 correspondence published in this volume. When Frau 
 Froebel proposed the matter, this correspondence was 
 prepared, but no publisher could be induced to under- 
 take its publication. The manuscript has been lying 
 for years until at last a more congenial spirit seems to 
 be prepared for its reception. 
 
 The reader will see for himself that this correspond- 
 ence renders the ideas of Froebel in some places 
 clearer and more intelligible than they appear in his 
 more voluminous writings. The want of a clear and 
 succinct treatise of the entire system of Froebel had 
 been felt by all those who had studied his writings 
 in past times. When the assembly of teachers and 
 friends met at Liebenstein in 1851 at the special call 
 of Froebel, in order to examine and report upon his 
 system, they passed a resolution requesting him to 
 write down and publish a complete handbook of his 
 system, of which only single chapters and disconnected 
 parts were known. Froebel had promised to fulfil the
 
 DIFFICULTIES IN HIS STYLE 5 
 
 wish, if his old friend and assistant, Middendorff, would 
 help him in writing the book. But Middendorff was 
 not able at that time to offer the needed assistance. 
 The consequence was, that the book was never written. 
 So much greater is the necessity of studying the 
 letters which Froebel wrote to friends. 
 
 The letters offered in this volume have not been 
 printed before. They have been prepared from the 
 original letters by Froebel. It would be impossible to 
 prepare an exact translation of these, as of any of the let- 
 ters written by Froebel, and then expect to find readers 
 for them. The difficulty of understanding Froebel in 
 the original is so great, that there are only few who 
 will attempt to decipher his meaning, and the difficulty 
 would be greater in an exact translation. Anything 
 approaching a literal translation has not, therefore, 
 been attempted in this volume. What is here published 
 is the sense or meaning of what Froebel said, as near 
 and faithful to the original text as the subject-mat- 
 ter will allow. It is the Froebel letters set forth in an 
 English dress, fitting the original as closely as possible. 
 
 Personal remarks which neither added to the history 
 nor assisted the understanding of the Froebel system, 
 have been omitted. The same is to be said of remarks 
 of a purely local value. But when it is added that Frau 
 Froebel has herself looked over the German manuscript 
 and approved of it, the reader will feel assured that he
 
 6 NECESSITY OF ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 
 
 holds the true original Froebel in hand, although the 
 dress has been modernized. 
 
 The notes added to the letters tend to assist the 
 teacher or mother in drawing practical lessons from the 
 theories enunciated by Froebel, and to give informa- 
 tion upon historical and local points not generally 
 known in this country. The publisher to whom the 
 manuscript was first submitted, suggested that such 
 notes would increase the chances of selling the book, 
 because they would assist the general public in under- 
 standing Froebel, and be chiefly interesting to Kinder- 
 garteners and mothers. And since some of these 
 notes were published in the Kindergarten Magazine, 
 many Kindergarteners have written to the editor, 
 stating that the notes were of great use to them. 
 For these reasons the notes are printed again in this 
 book. 
 
 Friedrich Froebel's letters published in this volume 
 give a good picture of his condition in those years, of 
 his schemes and hopes, his theories and practical plans. 
 " I consider it very desirable," says J. Barop in a letter 
 addressed to Von Arnswald, " that the materials which 
 can show us the life and labors of Friedrich Froebel, 
 should be collected. I agree that too much must not 
 be expected to result from such a collection all at once. 
 More time must elapse before he can be entirely under- 
 stood and appreciated. But a time will come, when an
 
 impartial critic will recognize the ideas that filled the 
 whole of his soul, that pushed him onward, that did not 
 suffer him to rest and keep quiet, that constituted the 
 meaning and scope of his endeavors. We can surely 
 say of him : ' The zeal of thine house hath eaten me 
 up.' As a certain distance is necessary for the eye of 
 the body to produce an image of a thing fully cogniza- 
 ble, thus there are phases in the history of mankind 
 which render a space of time of a greater or less dura- 
 tion necessary for the eye of the mind to properly 
 recognize their profounder meaning, their essential 
 substance, and to distinguish in the man who is the 
 representative of the phase, the essential from the non- 
 essential, and, I might say, the divine from the human 
 in him." 
 
 The correspondence here published contains some 
 important material by which the understanding of the 
 spirit and principles of Froebel will be rendered easier. 
 It gives the history of a period of transition through 
 which the educational principles of Froebel were pass- 
 ing at the time. After he had been convinced by ex- 
 perience that education, in order to be fully efficacious, 
 must begin much earlier than at school age, he made 
 great efforts to convince the people of the same idea 
 and engage their sympathies in carrying it out. In 
 order to effect this he endeavored to found general edu- 
 cational unions in which fathers were to be enrolled as
 
 8 FROEBEL LOOKS TO WOMEN 
 
 the heads and rulers of families. These tendencies 
 are explained in Letters i to 3. 
 
 But the responses he received from fathers did not 
 satisfy him. Neither did the results of a Kindergarten, 
 where the children were too old already for a funda- 
 mental training. The education of man, he now saw 
 clearly, must begin earlier yet. It must begin at his 
 birth, or, to be quite correct, it ought to begin years pre- 
 vious to his birth. Such an education must necessarily 
 be self-education of a kind that can hardly be expected 
 in man, that is, in the fathers. It is naturally and 
 almost exclusively found within the power of woman to 
 thus educate herself. And it is, consequently, not the 
 fathers but the mothers, or woman, that ought to have 
 the main voice and influence in the education of man. 
 
 Froebel looked upon woman as the true natural edu- 
 cator of man. But during the years when this corre- 
 spondence was written, the conviction that education 
 was the true vocation of woman, grew to the intensity 
 of a faith in Froebel's mind, dominating his whole 
 being. This faith proclaimed that woman had not a 
 holier, if, in fact, she had any other vocation than that 
 of the education of man. Thus, in the second part of 
 this correspondence, he speaks no longer of educational 
 unions, but of the training of woman in normal schools 
 for her sublime educational mission. 
 
 The suggestion of educational unions of the lay popu-
 
 WOMAN THE APPOINTED TEACHER 9 
 
 lation intending to study and promote the ends of the 
 education of the rising generation in the particular in- 
 terests of every locality, was not lost upon the world, 
 however. There are now many so-called general educa- 
 tional societies in Germany which have the above end in 
 view. Their members are not only fathers, but, on the 
 contrary, it is the fair sex that supplies the majority of 
 members. Altogether, since Froebel wrote his appeals 
 to woman to turn to her natural calling, and devote her 
 energies and concentrate her interests upon education, 
 this advice has been taken by many in the fatherland 
 of Froebel. It is not so much on general problems, 
 such as equal suffrage, prohibition, etc., but on educa- 
 tional questions, that women will unite in Germany 
 in forming societies. These societies are different from 
 the National Educational Union of America. The lat- 
 ter is composed of teachers, and represents the interests 
 of that class of people whose business is school-teaching. 
 That is not what Froebel intended in his educational 
 union. He had no particular desire to advance the 
 interests of public-school teachers. His aim was the 
 advancement of the interests of early childhood, or 
 the advance of the education of man in general. And 
 that is what the Allgemeine Erziehungsvereine (general 
 educational unions) in Germany intend doing. 
 
 Such unions seem also needed in this country. 
 They would not antagonize but might work in harmony
 
 io FROEBEL'S GLOWING APPEAL 
 
 with the Teachers' unions. But their great aim should 
 be to study and advance the interests of education as 
 indicated by local conditions. 
 
 With the conviction that the true vocation of woman 
 is the education of man in its entire bearing, Froebel 
 stepped out of and beyond the narrow boundaries en- 
 closing the Kindergarten and school, and began looking 
 upon the whole life of man as the realm in which to 
 render effective the art of the education of man. And 
 it was for the realization of this ideal that he proceeded 
 to call for the co-operation of woman. Thenceforward 
 he devoted himself with the greatest enthusiasm to the 
 task of persuading and preparing woman for this her 
 great mission in life. It is to the realization of this 
 end that the letters concluding this correspondence are 
 devoted. Among them are found most remarkable 
 utterances in which the genius of Froebel rose to a 
 sublimity of poetical conception and a prophetic fore- 
 sight without a parallel in any of his other writings. It 
 is proposed that the letters containing these appeals to 
 woman shall appear in another volume to be published 
 shortly. It was the same idea of the preparation of 
 woman for her grand vocation as the educator of man 
 which Froebel attempted to realize in his normal 
 courses for young ladies, started at Keilhau and carried 
 out more completely at Marienthal. The lectures which 
 Froebel gave at these courses will be published as soon
 
 VON ARNSWALD S REMINISCENCES II 
 
 as they can be made ready. The aim and end of 
 Froebel in his normal courses was to enable his fair 
 pupils to comprehend and realize the principles of their 
 own educational duties. And, it may be added, that in 
 the pursuit of this high ideal he found at Marienthal, 
 during the closing years of his life, a greater satisfaction, 
 with peace of mind and a restful spirit, than had fallen 
 to his lot at any previous period of his life. 
 
 The gentleman to whom Froebel addressed these 
 letters, is called Colonel Hermann von Arnswald. 
 He resides at Eisenach, second capital of the grand 
 duchy of Saxe Weimar, in Thuringia, Germany. The 
 colonel had passed three years of his school time at the 
 "Allgemeine Deutsche Erziehungs-Anstalt " * at Keilhau 
 at the time when the school was still under the head 
 mastership of Friedrich Froebel himself. Regarding 
 the value of these letters he writes : " Whether the 
 letters are worth publication or not, they cannot fail to 
 serve all those who have not the leisure to dive into 
 the pedagogical works of Froebel, by giving them a 
 short, clear, and warm conception of the ideas which the 
 great educator entertained concerning child-training 
 and which he labored to realize in life." 
 
 Speaking of Keilhau, the colonel says : " One morn- 
 ing at five o'clock I was seated in a carriage by the side 
 of my parents for a day's trip through the charming 
 forest dales up toward the secluded valley of Keilhau, 
 
 * Public German Educational Establishment.
 
 12 DRY BREAD AS A PUNISHMENT 
 
 where we arrived about 5 P.M. Three strong, well-set 
 men welcomed us, Froebel, Langethal, and Midden- 
 dorff. Froebel took me directly to the boys, with whom 
 I was soon at home, so soon and so thoroughly, in fact, 
 that my mother felt quite sad to see how cheerful 
 her boy was at parting when tears filled her own 
 eyes. 
 
 " In the domestic life of the institution strict order 
 had to be observed. Every pupil was supplied with 
 the necessary facilities for the cleansing of the body 
 and clothes. New-comers were minutely examined 
 every morning before breakfast to ascertain their per- 
 sonal cleanliness. Whoever was found negligent in this 
 respect, had his allowance of milk for breakfast stopped, 
 receiving nothing but a piece of bread. In fact, there 
 were hardly any other penalties than reductions in the 
 regular meals. Whoever deserved punishment, found 
 at dinner or supper a piece of bread on his plate, which 
 meant to say that he had to pass by all other dishes 
 without tasting of them. It was exceedingly rare that 
 any punishment had to be inflicted. But, on the other 
 hand, it was an inevitable rule that the penalty followed 
 in the footsteps of the evil deed, as the following occur- 
 rence may prove. Large dishes of strawberries were 
 standing ready for supper, when I, passing through the 
 room, yielded to the temptation of tasting a strawberry. 
 Froebel had seen me ; and when we took our seats for
 
 BETTER HEALTH WITH PLAIN FARE 13 
 
 supper, I found on my plate the ominous piece of 
 bread." 
 
 In explanation of this mode of punishment by giving 
 dry bread at meals, or withholding cooked meats, 
 chiefly relishes and sweets, it may be said that such 
 penalties were all the fashion during the first half of 
 this century, and that, as far as the editor's own ex- 
 perience goes, these punishments were not known to 
 have a deleterious influence upon the pupils' health. 
 Insufficiency of nourishment was carefully avoided, of 
 course. But a reduction or simplification of meals, as 
 frequently practised in those days, was certainly less 
 injurious to the growing child than the modern fashion 
 of overloading and stimulating the system by too 
 great an excitation of the appetite, by too rich relishes, 
 and too great an amount of food in general. It is ow- 
 ing to this latter fashion of the present day that this 
 nation has been entitled the " dyspeptic's paradise." 
 
 Herr von Arnswald continues his reminiscences of 
 Keilhau as follows : "Whoever spoiled anything, had to 
 see that it was repaired. A boy having broken a window 
 by carelessness or in mischief, had to take the frame 
 on his back and carry it, in whatever weather might be, 
 to Blankenburg, a distance of four miles, and bring it 
 back repaired." German window-frames are not made 
 like ours, that is, not of two parts sliding up and down. 
 They are commonly made of four parts swinging on
 
 14 NO ILLNESS : NO DOCTORS 
 
 hinges ; two parts, or wings on each side ; which fit into 
 each other and close by hooks in the centre. Such a 
 part, or wing of a window (to be carried by a boy), was, 
 therefore, less than half the size of an American half- 
 window, and contained four small panes, each measuring 
 about one-twelfth of a common American windowpane. 
 
 " I do not remember," says Von Arnswald, " ever to 
 have heard any angry discussion, scolding, or an ex- 
 change of bad names. Improper conduct was invari- 
 ably punished, but a look was sufficient to pass the 
 sentence. There were no fines, no pupil having or 
 needing any money. 
 
 " During the three years I passed at the institution, 
 no medical man ever set foot in it. Small injuries 
 occurred now and then in the gymnasium, which were 
 always cured by the boys' mutual helpfulness. One 
 day when I was at the top of the climbing-rope, my 
 strength gave out, and I slid down rapidly, holding with 
 both hands and feet to the rope. My hands were 
 burned so badly that I was unable to dress without 
 help during four weeks. My neighbor in the bedroom 
 dressed my hands attentively, but nobody else spoke 
 about or seemed to notice the mishap." 
 
 It is not the editor's intention to recommend an 
 imitation of this treatment of the wounded boy : even a 
 Froebel, in his preoccupation, may go too far in his 
 heroic treatment of, or his neglect of, accident or disease.
 
 THE PLACE OF GYMNASTICS 1$ 
 
 " In the life of the institution, implicit obedience was 
 blended with individual liberty. Oh, there was a fresh, 
 cheerful life during intervals and hours of recreation. 
 We played, built huts, laid out new paths, etc. Gym- 
 nastic exercises, however, were never performed at those 
 times, but only in regular lessons with strict order and 
 under command." 
 
 This rule of having regular gymnastic exercises only 
 in lessons, with strict order and under the superintend- 
 ence and guidance of a master, is not peculiar to the 
 Froebel institution, but the rule in all German schools. 
 Regular gymnastic exercise is not considered there as 
 a time of recreation, but as a training of the body by 
 masters who have made the gymnastic art their study. 
 Such a teacher of gymnastics must understand anatomy 
 and physiology, chiefly the physiology of the growing 
 body. He must know which parts of the body to 
 exercise, and which to treat with care in girls or in boys. 
 He ought to be able to treat certain forms of disease 
 and malformation. He ought to be able to diagnose 
 incipient deformities and to arrest their development 
 by judicious exercise, and by similar exercises to 
 treat deformities already developed. He ought to 
 know the times when to exercise and when to rest the 
 body. 
 
 Physical culture is frequently carried to an injurious 
 extent, owing to want of such knowledge. Public-school
 
 l6 NO NEED OF VACATIONS 
 
 teachers are frequently taught gymnastics to be prac- 
 tised in the intervals between lessons at school. This 
 does not seem commendable. When the system is 
 overstrained by intellectual exercises, it is in need of 
 relaxation, but not of the continuation of the strain in 
 another direction. Intervals between lessons ought to 
 be filled up by play, that is, by free and easy action of 
 muscles and senses, but not by any compulsory atten- 
 tion to gymnastics. It is this principle to which the 
 colonel refers in the above remark upon gymnastics. 
 
 "A most remarkable feature of the school was this," 
 continues the colonel, " that there were no vacations. 
 No pupil ever went home for a while and then re- 
 turned. But a tramp through the woods, extending 
 over several days at a time, was repeatedly made during 
 the summer season." 
 
 This feature, that there were no holidays, is a remark- 
 able proof of the fact that Froebel's school was differ- 
 ent from all the schools of his time and of ours. The 
 fact was a practical proof of the principle that the 
 pupils of a school ought never to be in need of holidays, 
 or of a cessation of school work. Such a necessity 
 results from the fact that the pupils are overtasked 
 and that their health of body is weakened by school 
 work ; or from the fact, not less injurious, that the pupils 
 do not like going to school, and that the school duties 
 are unpleasant, if ncft hateful to them. In a school so
 
 SCHOOL LIFE. FESTIVALS, ETC. 17 
 
 well managed as that of Froebel, all the work and life 
 is naturally delightful to the pupils ; it calls forth all 
 their interests and energies in the most healthful man- 
 ner, and strengthens their bodies and minds instead of 
 weakening them. If that be the case, there is no need 
 of any holidays for the pupils, because they do not re- 
 quire either relaxation or recuperation. But teachers 
 are frequently in need of both relaxation and recupera- 
 tion, and ought to have them whenever they are needed ; 
 which may be even more frequently than is the case at 
 present. In order to enable all the teachers to take 
 the necessary care of their health, some means would 
 have to be found to continue the pupils in active school 
 work during the absence of their regular teachers. 
 
 Regarding their tramps through the woods, the colonel 
 continues, saying : " We wandered very often to the 
 Greifenstein near Blankenburg. There we had coffee 
 and cakes, and the birthdays of both teachers and 
 pupils were gleefully remembered on such occasions. 
 Those were the only times when coffee was exception- 
 ally given in the place of milk. During the common 
 every-day life, there was never any other drink served 
 but milk or water. Of wine, punch, beer, or similar 
 drinks, not a drop ever passed our lips. 
 
 " There were other festivals in the open air, most of 
 them of a patriotic nature. Of such was, for instance, 
 the celebration of the i8th of October." This date is
 
 1 8 ANNIVERSARY OF LEIPZIG 
 
 the anniversary of the battle at Leipzig, fought by 
 Napoleon I. against the united armies of the Prussians, 
 Austrians, and Russians, in 1813 ; the loss of which 
 compelled Napoleon to withdraw his armies from 
 Germany and confine himself to France. The Germans 
 call this contest the " battle of the nations," which 
 delivered Germany from French dominion. The an- 
 niversary of the battle was celebrated in Germany every 
 year until, after the war of 1870-71, the day of Sedan 
 was substituted for that of Leipzig. 
 
 "At the celebration of the i8th October," says Von 
 Arnswald, " the national sentiment was powerfully de- 
 veloped. On a high mountain-top a big fire was made 
 in the evening, and when the flames raised their golden 
 tongues skyward, popular and patriotic songs were 
 sung, and we listened to the inspiring words of our 
 teachers, every one of whom had fought through the 
 wars of deliverance as volunteer, and who had been 
 faithful comrades in the service of the great fatherland. 
 
 "We also enjoyed many a pleasant outing during the 
 winter. There were frequent sleigh-drives and hours 
 on the ice. I remember several occasions when we 
 were called out of bed to enjoy a splendid sleigh-drive in 
 a clear moon-lit winter night. But I do not remember 
 ever having heard anything of colds being caught on 
 such occasions. As a rule, our winter evenings were 
 passed in doing manual work and in making music.
 
 THE FIRST KINDERGARTEN IQ 
 
 " A truly elevating celebration was the Christmas 
 festival. On Christmas Eve we were treated to a poppy 
 soup, which made us sleep very soundly; and at five in 
 the morning on Christmas Day we received our presents. 
 There was, first, a short religious service, followed by 
 the presentation of gifts, after which we were taken to 
 church. 
 
 " I lived at the Froebel school in Keilhau for three 
 years. At the end of the time I went home to the 
 house of my parents, healthy in soul and body. After 
 a life so natural and so completely secluded from all 
 the injurious impressions of the outside world, as I 
 have above described in a few words, there could 
 not possibly have been another result than perfect 
 health." 
 
 Colonel von Arnswald has also been kind enough to 
 favor me with a description of the first Kindergarten 
 that ever was, namely, the first institution of the kind 
 founded by Froebel himself at Blankenburg in the 
 valley of the river Schwarza, near Rudolstadt, Thurin- 
 gia. The place is known for its silver mines, and is at 
 present a well-frequented summer resort. The colonel 
 says : " It was in the middle of the third decade of the 
 century that I passed three years of my childhood in 
 perfect happiness at Keilhau. But I will not speak of 
 them this time, because my mind is occupied with an- 
 other remembrance of an event that happened in 1839,
 
 2O AN AMUSING SCENE 
 
 when my desire for roving led me to Keilhau to look 
 once more upon my dearly beloved teachers. 
 
 " I found the nest empty : they had all wandered 
 into the mountains, like myself. So I continued my 
 tramp toward Blankenburg, where Froebel and Midden- 
 dorff were at the time trying to carry out their idea of 
 the Kindergarten. 
 
 "Arriving at the place, I found my Middendorff 
 seated by the pump in the market-place, surrounded by 
 a crowd of little children. Going near them I saw that 
 he was engaged in mending the jacket of a boy. By 
 his side sat a little girl busy with thread and needle 
 upon another piece of clothing ; one boy had his feet 
 in a bucket of water, washing them carefully ; other 
 girls and boys were standing around, attentively looking 
 upon the strange picture of real life before them, and 
 waiting for something to turn up to interest them per- 
 sonally. 
 
 "Our meeting was of the most cordial kind, but 
 Middendorff did not interrupt the business in which 
 he was engaged. ' Come, children,' he cried, ' let us 
 go into the garden ; ' and with loud cries of joy the 
 crowd of little men followed the splendid-looking, tall 
 man, with willing feet running all around him. 
 
 " The garden was not a garden, however, but a barn 
 with a small room and an entrance hall. In the en- 
 trance Middendorff welcomed the children, and played
 
 PHILANTHROPY UNDER DIFFICULTIES 21 
 
 with them an all-round game, ending in the flight of the 
 little ones into the room, where every one of them sat 
 down in his place on the bench and took hold of his 
 gift box. 
 
 " During the time when the little ones were thus liv- 
 ing individually, I was able to converse at pleasure with 
 my beloved teacher, and at the same time pay attention 
 to the individual life of the children. There was no 
 waiting until languor appeared. They were all very 
 busy with their blocks, when, after half an hour's 
 time, the summons was spoken, ' Come, children, let us 
 sing and spring!' And when the game was finished, 
 the little people went away full of joy and life, every 
 one passing by his dear old friend and teacher, and giv- 
 ing him his little hand for a grateful good-by." 
 
 This gives a pretty clear view of what the first Kin- 
 dergarten was like. Froebel and his shadow, Midden- 
 dorff, understood their end and the conditions around 
 them perfectly, and accommodated themselves to them, 
 as the picture of Middendorff and his little crowd at 
 the pump on the market-place shows, where he acted as 
 patching tailor for one boy, and superintended the ac- 
 tivity of a girl patching for herself, and a boy washing 
 his feet. " Froebel and Middendorff," says Von Arns- 
 wald, " had the greatest difficulty in persuading the in- 
 habitants of Blankenburg to merely allow them to have 
 any intercourse with the little children," for the farmer,
 
 22 THEY WOULD NOT HAVE HIM 
 
 like other people, thinks that teaching a child to play 
 means as much as making it a sluggard and a loafer. 
 Yet they persisted and succeeded. Still, the inhabit- 
 ants thought they had done the two educators a favor 
 in allowing them to spend their time upon the children, 
 and were far from thinking that a Kindergartener should 
 be paid. Thus Froebel was compelled to discontinue 
 the institution. 
 
 " I shall never forget this image of the first Kinder- 
 garten so lovable and cheerful," adds the colonel. "I 
 preserved it all in my memory, and used it as a pattern, 
 when, in time, I had occasion to establish an educa- 
 tional garden in my own home. 
 
 " It was about the middle of the fifth decade of the 
 century when I founded my own home, and had occa- 
 sion to have a Kindergarten. I sent an announcement 
 of my engagement to my old paternal friend, and 
 was greatly pleased when this letter gave occasion 
 for a longer correspondence upon the foundation of 
 family associations, and of normal schools for female 
 educators. 
 
 " During those years I also had the great joy of hav- 
 ing my old friend repeatedly with me as my guest. It 
 seemed strange to me that Froebel should be rarely 
 able to properly control his overflowing current of 
 thought when speaking to assemblies in public, and 
 that he should have such a ponderous style in writing,
 
 THE TRUE AIM IN TRAINING 23 
 
 when I had occasion to notice, that, in friendly private 
 intercourse, he spoke clearly and to the point, his lan- 
 guage mirroring his clear mind and open heart ; and 
 truly wonderful was it to see how rapidly he was able 
 to gain the attachment and love of the little folks." 
 
 Concerning the subsequent development of the Kin- 
 dergarten, Herr von Arnswald holds peculiar views, 
 which may be here reproduced because they come from 
 an old pupil and intimate friend of Froebel's. " It is 
 true I have not paid great attention to the development 
 of Kindergartens," says he, " but it would seem to me 
 that there is a tendency to transform them into prepar- 
 atory institutes for the public school. I am acting in 
 the spirit of Froebel, I think, if I call a ' Halt ! ' to all 
 these endeavors, and direct the attention of both parents 
 and educators to the original idea of the Kindergarten. 
 
 " Froebel did not pursue any other end than to in- 
 crease the joy of parents in their children, and to 
 provide a condition of the life of childhood that renders 
 it pure and beautiful. That a child when watched over 
 and cared for sympathetically, will develop more 
 rapidly, may be an effect, but it is not the end of the 
 Kindergarten. 
 
 " The gifts and games were offered by Froebel for 
 the purpose of satisfying and directing the spontaneous 
 impulse to work, but not as a sort of nourishment to 
 feed the mind of the child. He preferred open pasture
 
 24 THE FAMILY AS A KINDERGARTEN 
 
 to stable feeding. In other words, the direction, ' Come, 
 let us live for our children,' does not mean that we 
 shall teach children by playing, but that we shall play 
 with them in a sensible way. 
 
 " According to this view, the original idea of the 
 Kindergarten can and should be realized in every fam- 
 ily. It is not enough for parents, that have neither 
 sense nor inclination to assimilate the principle of the 
 Froebel system, to send their children to the Kinder- 
 garten for no other purpose than that of keeping the 
 little ones from home. If everybody would surely re- 
 joice to see the creches, or children's refuges, transformed 
 into Kindergartens, the reverse of this process, that is, 
 the transformation of the Kindergarten into children's 
 refuges with the appearance of schools, would surely be 
 a crime against the nature of the child. 
 
 " The parents and relatives of children are responsi- 
 ble if the growth of the Kindergarten is like that of a 
 hothouse, which would dry up the natural fertility of the 
 ground, that is, of the life in the family ; a result such as 
 we see already growing out of the present unsatisfactory 
 relation between school and home. 
 
 " It is this deterioration of the life of the family 
 which causes the complaints which are everywhere 
 heard of the want of discipline and order in youth. 
 So long as the school alone is expected to undertake 
 the whole education of youth, the arrogance of a false
 
 ORIGINAL IDEA OF THE KINDERGARTEN 2$ 
 
 science will increase, and the authority of parents, 
 masters, and teachers will be paralyzed. 
 
 " The foundation of education must be laid in early 
 childhood. Thence onward through the Kindergarten, 
 elementary and high school, technical schools and col- 
 leges, the parents or guardians of children must go 
 hand in hand with the school. In order to do this, it 
 is particularly necessary for parents and educators to 
 observe and direct the impulse of activity in youth. 
 A child accustomed to be helpful at home will readily 
 understand that knowledge ought to be well balanced 
 by an ability to act. If that end be reached, will and 
 power, fortified by knowledge, elevated by the fear of 
 God, and moved by love and gratitude for parents and 
 teachers, will grow strong in the child, and produce a 
 character of which we can truly be proud. 
 
 " From all these considerations, I think I am en- 
 titled to conclude that the original idea of the Kinder- 
 garten can and must be rooted in the family, and must 
 likewise be realized in every individual. The little 
 man must grow to be a full man, firmly rooted in the 
 life of the universe, as a plant is rooted in the ground, 
 and holding his head upward in the light which is sup- 
 plied by the force of self-evolution. 
 
 " His home and family are to the child his universe 
 narrowly limited. In it humanity and patriotism must 
 take root and sprout forth, and in it the young plant
 
 26 IT MEANS MORE THAN PLAY 
 
 must be supported and nursed until it has grown strong 
 enough to be able to withstand the storm and stress 
 without outward support." 
 
 Colonel von Arnswald had many and good oppor- 
 tunities to become thoroughly acquainted with Friedrich 
 Froebel, his principles, modes of thought, manner of 
 expression, and final aims and ends. For that reason 
 the views of the colonel have been published. Be- 
 sides, Herr von Arnswald does not stand alone with 
 these views. There are numbers of people who have 
 studied the Froebel material only, his games, occupa- 
 tions, and gifts, but have not followed his philosophy. 
 Thus they have learned a great deal, and their chil- 
 dren, or wards and pupils, have been wonderfully 
 benefited by such knowledge in their education and 
 development ; nevertheless, he or she whose knowl- 
 edge of Froebelism is confined to the play-school 
 practice, has not mastered the whole of Froebel ; that is 
 to say, the principle or science of the system remains 
 hidden beyond his mental horizon. 
 
 Froebel had clearly seen that to the child play is 
 real work, serving to develop and educate the growing 
 being. His Kindergarten practice was not intended to 
 be a mere collection of toys " to render the life of child- 
 hood pure and joyful, and to increase the joy which 
 parents feel in their children ; " he intended the 
 Kindergarten to be the first step in an educational
 
 DISCIPLES SOMETIMES AT FAULT 2/ 
 
 path which should lead the child to as perfect a de- 
 velopment of his nature as was possible. It is true he 
 considered the family the "mother-school," not only 
 the fundamental but the most important and most 
 effective part of the education of man ; and it was the 
 greatest, yea, we may almost say, the sole object of 
 the closing years of his life to educate woman to be the 
 teacher, the true mother of man. 
 
 So far Colonel von Arnswald is correct. But Froe- 
 bel went a long way farther in his ideas and intentions. 
 He wanted all the more advanced stages of education, 
 more particularly those of school life, to be in full 
 harmony with, and based upon, the same principles 
 which he had practically embodied in his Kindergarten 
 method. It was his intention to make the Kinder- 
 garten not only a, but the sole, " preparatory institution 
 for the public school." The colonel is not correct in 
 pronouncing against such a tendency. It goes without 
 saying, that Froebel knew perfectly well that his great 
 end could never be reached unless the public school 
 should change its system to a great extent by adopting 
 a good deal of the fundamental principle of the Kinder- 
 garten. But he also believed in the final victory of his 
 ideal : that is to say, that the public school would 
 recognize and introduce his principle so far as its more 
 purely intellectual pursuits would allow. 
 
 It is a fact that many of the old pupils of Froebel
 
 28 VON ARNSWALD A LOYAL FRIEND 
 
 failed to understand the fundamental principle of the 
 great Kindergartener. In the case of the colonel, such 
 a misconception is intelligible, from the fact that he was 
 a pupil of Froebel's at a time when the latter was as 
 yet working in the old rut of the common-school prac- 
 tice ; that is, before his Kindergarten ideas had been 
 matured. Froebel was known to him as a common- 
 school master of advanced ideas, who was deeply inter- 
 ested in improving the mother school or family life. 
 Of the Kindergarten principle, little Hermann knew 
 nothing. And when in later years he became ac- 
 quainted with the Kindergarten he probably never 
 understood or was led to understand it. He says in 
 his letter introducing the above views, that " it may 
 seem bold for a man not versed in educational matters 
 to pronounce on them, but it cannot be denied that the 
 talent of education is imbibed at our mother's breasts ; 
 and that an educator need not do anything but observe 
 without prejudice, and learn from the spirit of education, 
 rooted in the family, and thence becoming visible in 
 every stratum of mankind." These remarks prove that 
 our friend the colonel does not fully realize the needs 
 and the duties of an educator, although his intercourse 
 with Froebel doubtless greatly helped him in that 
 respect. And we have every reason to be grateful to 
 the colonel, first, for having given occasion to Froebel 
 to write these letters ; secondly, for the kindness with
 
 HIS STRUGGLE WITH POVERTY 29 
 
 which he consented to have them published ; and thirdly, 
 for his splendid descriptions of the Keilhau school and 
 the Blankenburg Kindergarten. For these things, the 
 name of Hermann von Arnswald will remain connected 
 with and remembered in the history of Froebel's career. 
 
 One of the letters addressed by Froebel to Von 
 Arnswald was omitted because it contained nothing to 
 elucidate the ideas or history of the system. But as it 
 shows the condition in which Froebel's worldly circum- 
 stances were at that time, an extract from it may here 
 be inserted, because it shows how intense was the strug- 
 gle which he had to fight all his life. The letter is 
 dated from Keilhau, November 20, 1847. Von Arns- 
 wald had ordered the first three gifts which Froebel 
 sends with this letter. " I am deep in your debt for 
 many a kindness, and ought not to have drawn on you 
 for the small amount," writes Froebel. " But, in the 
 first place, it would seem mean to try to pay off my 
 large debt in this way, for I hope a more suitable 
 opportunity will offer for the discharge of my obliga- 
 tions to you ; and, in the second place, I have to freely 
 confess, that, at the present moment, I am not able to 
 act otherwise in this business." 
 
 Froebel did not have the gifts in stock when Von 
 Arnswald ordered them, and had to have them made. 
 The above words seem to imply that he did not pos- 
 sess the few cents to pay for them, and was there-
 
 3O CONTINUED ALL HIS LIFE 
 
 fore compelled to collect from his friend the price, 
 in order to be able to discharge his own debt for them. 
 Truly, Friedrich Froebel was " a man of sorrows and 
 acquainted with grief," when considered in the light of 
 worldly business and outward success. But he had his 
 reward in his own soul. His great enthusiasm elevated 
 him above all the sorrows and privations of the life of 
 the body. In spite of all his struggles he was never 
 unhappy. The serenity of the life of his soul was 
 never overcast. He had chosen the one thing needful, 
 and had never occasion to repent of his choice. 
 
 FROEBEL'S HOUSE OF BIRTH. 
 From a photo taken by Frau Froebel ten years ago.
 
 FROEBEL'S LETTERS 
 
 A PATERNAL LETTER. 
 LETTER I. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, Feb. 6, 1845. 
 
 MY DEAR, FAITHFUL HERMANN, I repeat my warm- 
 est, most cordial thanks for my reception and the 
 numerous proofs of your unchanged filial faithfulness, 
 which you gave me so unmistakably during the short 
 time of my sojourn at Eisenach. The experience of 
 my life has taught me that such sentiments produce 
 their own reward in blossoms and fruits of life ; for 
 which reason I am entertaining the joyful hope that 
 your children and grandchildren will follow you in sim- 
 ilar sentiments and similar deeds. Thus they will 
 form the living garland that will surround you and your 
 bride in peace and joy. 
 
 Be firm in these sentiments ! They are the inexhaust- 
 ible fountain from which issues the clear current of a 
 life, blessed in itself, and, consequently, also bestowing 
 blessings upon its surroundings. Your present life 
 furnishes already proof of this, as is evident from what 
 you tell me of your activity and your aims, which carry 
 
 3*
 
 32 SLF EDUCATION 
 
 the conviction to my mind that your whole life will prove 
 you to be what I wish a pupil, or a son of mine to be, 
 namely, a mind of single purpose, patient, truthfully 
 resigned to the will of God, always active in realizing 
 true humanity at home and abroad, in his family as in 
 his calling, in social as in public life. 
 
 As long as we live we continue pupils of experience, 
 and of Providence, which is self-education. As we 
 grow more and more conscious of this condition, our 
 liberty and self-determination increase. In the same 
 harmony with the Educator of the world and of mankind 
 we should attempt to educate our surroundings. 1 I 
 rejoice greatly to see in your work that we agree in this 
 thought. You know that it is not necessary to make 
 education a special calling before carrying out this ideal ; 
 I even think that he who is not connected with the edu- 
 cational calling, frequently does comparatively the 
 greater service. The reason for this seeming anomaly 
 may be found in the circumstance that natural educa- 
 tion does not require a great variety of accomplish- 
 ments, but rather a unity and thoroughness of life ; not 
 a knowledge of many things, but the performance of 
 that which has been recognized as good ; in a word, 
 not precept but example. 
 
 Every man of sound mind can be educated up to this 
 standard. It is only necessary to develop the senses, 
 i.e., the perceptive faculty, and to form the inward sense, 
 i.e., the intuitive faculty correspondingly. Exercise 
 the body in a manner to render the members and 
 organs fit to act at all times. Or, make the body a 
 useful instrument and a practical tool of the mind, 
 
 1 See notes at end of chapter.
 
 FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD 33 
 
 which is to be developed so as to constitute a pure dis- 
 position and a strong character, or a firm will readily 
 manifesting itself in action. 2 Such a firm will and 
 the ability of ready action do not postulate an exten- 
 sive scholarship but merely thoroughness. Anybody is 
 capable of thoroughness within his or her limited sphere 
 of life, and upon any level of mental faculties, and in 
 any calling. It is only requisite to understand this con- 
 dition. Let us then assist men to gain the conscious- 
 ness of their own ability to act, and impart to them a 
 conviction of the universal need of education. 3 
 
 It is this end I want to reach by " educational 
 associations," to be spread all over the country, all of 
 them being organically connected with one another. I 
 rejoice that you are interested in the idea and will lend 
 it your active co-operation, and I hope you will succeed 
 in establishing such a society, for which reason I enclose 
 draft of an invitation to form an association, explain- 
 ing the principles and purposes to be held in view.* 
 
 I shall be happy to supply every additional explana- 
 tion you may desire. I have also mentioned the mat- 
 ter to some public-spirited gentlemen at Gotha and 
 Rudolstadt, who have promised their active co-opera- 
 tion. With us, at Keilhau, the matter is already past 
 the stage of suggestion and in course of practical exe- 
 cution. Our pastor, a very enlightened and active gen- 
 tleman, is a great help and support to us. 4 
 
 I should have wished you had been here on Shrove 
 Tuesday to enjoy our carnival. It would have been 
 a vivid recollection of your school-days at Keilhau 
 which you might have lived over again in part, for the 
 
 * The draft is printed at the end of this letter.
 
 34 EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 former spirit is still ruling among us. The pupils, 
 great and small, had arranged masked processions, 
 which were exceedingly well executed. Their pleasure 
 was heightened by the assistance of some grown-up 
 ladies and gentlemen. A male quartette gave us a 
 number of comic songs, each of them being performed 
 in costumes in keeping with the contents of the song. 
 Among the rest there were some travellers' or wan- 
 derers' songs in which the singers appeared in tourists' 
 clothes, and travelled, or marched to the sounds of the 
 songs. There were some masks not known to anybody 
 which aroused a deal of curiosity, increased by the fact 
 that they all professed to be members of the "order of 
 mutes." Delphic priests in ancient Greek costume 
 made their appearance, and vouchsafed some oracular 
 prophecies of a nature as amusing as they were star- 
 tling. A postman came with a big mail-bag from which 
 he distributed not only letters but also presents of great 
 variety, creating a deal of enjoyment and surprise. 
 Having been encored, he came a second time, playing 
 his part as naturally and artistically to the end as he 
 had commenced. It is a matter of course and need 
 hardly be mentioned, that the closing and the crowning 
 part of the festival consisted of an enjoyable dance. 
 
 I wish you and your bride could some day be with us 
 on such a day of genial glee. 
 
 Your paternal friend, 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.
 
 FROEBEL S INVITATION TO FATHERS 35 
 
 GENERAL EDUCATIONAL UNION 
 
 INVITATION AS DRAFTED BY FROEBEL AND ADDRESSED 
 BY HIM TO FATHERS 5 
 
 Great and important are the ideas that agitate our 
 period. And this ideal agitation is more widespread 
 than was any similar movement in any previous age. 
 It is the issue of this agitation which will determine the 
 happiness and peace of millions of men. No class and 
 no condition of people will be exempt ; the high and 
 the lowly, dwellers in cities and farmers, the scholar 
 and the uneducated, each and all will be affected by 
 the issue. 
 
 An inquiry into the cause and tendency of this agita- 
 tion pervading all conditions of life, demonstrates a sin- 
 gle and uniform solution, viz. : education in general, and 
 in particular the education of children in their first years 
 of life preceding the age at which they can be received 
 at the public school, is the true solution found. 
 
 Listen to the voices of the most thoughtful men, ex- 
 perienced fathers and careful mothers, in every condi- 
 tion of life, and you will hear them say that their 
 continued observation and thought have forced on 
 them the same conclusion, namely, the education of 
 youth cannot, must not, continue as it is at present. 
 
 This feeling of unrest has induced many experiments 
 in the educational field. But a survey of all the means 
 already proposed as improvements, of all the ways 
 already trod, fails to find anything that has really 
 approached near to the desired goal.
 
 36 FROEBEL'S INVITATION TO FATHERS 
 
 We must not rest, not stand idle, then. The philan- 
 thropist, the father of the home circle, the mother of 
 the family, cannot forego the help so much needed in 
 every way. They wht to protect their children and 
 children's children from the diseases of the time, which 
 are wont to assume new appearances from year to year, 
 and will return regularly in ever-increasing intensity, 
 demanding more victims every time they reappear. 
 
 Do you look for help ? for deliverance ? You need 
 not look far. Help is near, as it will be always and 
 everywhere in times of universal uneasiness. All you 
 need do, is to look for relief in the right direction. In 
 order to recognize the direction which our efforts ought 
 to take, we must not close our eyes to the fact that our 
 shortcomings in educational, as in any other social con- 
 cerns, are mostly produced by our isolation, and by that 
 scattering of our efforts, which renders it impossible for 
 the individual to follow the road leading to a necessary 
 reform. 
 
 But why not travel that road in the society of others ? 
 What we have hitherto failed to achieve because of our 
 isolation and the wasting of our strength in individual 
 efforts, we shall be much better prepared to accom- 
 plish in union. 
 
 There are already unions, or societies of all sorts, 
 associating for united action professional people and 
 laymen, men of every condition and calling and of 
 every degree of education. There is not a single 
 union, or society, but is founded upon the principle of 
 obviating the scattering of individual efforts by a union 
 of forces. The losses which this scattering of the 
 strength of individuals produces, are not anywhere so
 
 INFANT EDUCATION 37 
 
 great and so lasting in their injurious effects as in the 
 educational field. And yet, there is no concern of life, 
 in the prosecution and the results of which every 
 human being is so intensely interested, as in the educa- 
 tion of the growing generation. That is why everybody 
 ought to do his utmost to make sure of the best educa- 
 tional results possible, by associating with others for 
 the furtherance of the common knowledge of the proper 
 means, and for their joint application. 
 
 There are educational societies in many places con- 
 stituted to advance some particular line of education. 
 But there are no associations having in view the entire 
 series of the successive stages of the education of the 
 growing generations of every age, beginning with the 
 education of the infant in the cradle, and following 
 the period of growth in every direction. Such associa- 
 tions have hardly been proposed anywhere, although 
 they would result in blessings without measure 
 for the individual as well as for the whole of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Such an association for the improvement of the means 
 and methods of education is, however, the most impor- 
 tant and most pressing need of life. You need only 
 look upon the manifold discords and the clashing 
 interests in domestic as in public life, in order to see 
 how deficient the preparation of man is for his place in 
 society. Join hands in order to assist one another and 
 to make united efforts for the purpose of producing a 
 universal improvement of education. The most urgent 
 improvement needed is that of infant education. The 
 training and development of early childhood is the basis 
 all subsequent education must stand upon, and ought
 
 38 EDUCATIONAL UNIONS 
 
 to be made the starting-point of the labors of the educa- 
 tional union. 
 
 There is hardly a neighborhood where two or three 
 individuals could not be found who have suffered them- 
 selves, in their own families or among their immediate 
 friends, from the present condition of education, its 
 methods and results. These ought to unite in the first 
 instance. If they know what they are about and what 
 ought to be done, the beneficent result of such a union 
 of endeavors will soon attract others to associate with 
 the union. 
 
 There ought to be meetings not less frequent than 
 once a week, for this is the most important public busi- 
 ness that can concern any man. New events and sub- 
 jects demanding the attention of the union will offer 
 every week ; and it will not only be useful, but essential, 
 never to delay agreeing upon the common objects to be 
 pursued, and to immediately carry them out by joint 
 endeavors as far as circumstances permit for the time. 
 
 The permanent objects of the unions ought to be the 
 following : 
 
 1. Means of instruction should be provided, teaching 
 the general requirements of the education of infancy, 
 childhood, and youth, and pointing out the ways and 
 means to satisfy these requirements. 
 
 2. Instruction upon the general requirements must 
 be supplemented by reference to the particular local re- 
 quirements of education, and to the ways and means 
 actually available for their satisfaction. 
 
 3. Defects of the local means must be pointed out 
 and discussed in a free exchange of views, of advice, 
 and instruction, obtained from our own experience and
 
 OBJECTS OF UNIONS 39 
 
 that of others as well as from study and the directions 
 of practical educators. 
 
 4. The knowledge obtained must be used for the 
 purpose of finding out the ways and means to remove 
 the defects of any and all educational institutions with- 
 in cognizance. Every member of the union must be 
 obliged to lend a hand in the practical work of carry- 
 ing out whatever may be considered necessary to im- 
 prove education. 
 
 5. The improvements of education ought to begin in 
 the home circle, starting with the groundwork necessary 
 for every education, namely, the careful development 
 of children previous to their reception into the public 
 school. 
 
 6. When Kindergarten training is not within reach, 
 the union ought to devise means for procuring the 
 necessary help for the introduction of such training 
 into the family circle or otherwise. 
 
 7. It would evidently require more wealth than is 
 possessed by the majority of people to provide Kinder- 
 garten training within the family, unless, as is but rarely 
 the case, the mother is able to give it herself. But the 
 united action of an educational union might be found 
 equal to the task. At any rate, there is no other way 
 than union by which education can be made what it 
 ought to be, and can ripen those blessed fruits which 
 otherwise can never be matured. What cannot be ac- 
 complished by the isolated individual may, in some 
 way or other, be carried out as a problem of general 
 co-operation, to be solved by and for all the people. 
 
 Even if the unions were, for a time, to confine them- 
 selves to the groundwork of education, which is Kin-
 
 4O INFLUENCE OF UNIONS 
 
 dergarten training within the family, the results obtained 
 would be great and of striking beneficence. They 
 would show themselves, first, in the domestic circle, the 
 family, and among the children. Thence they would 
 soon spread to public life, first showing fruits in the 
 life and intercourse of youths, of girls and boys, young 
 ladies and gentlemen ; whence they would reach out 
 into social and civil life, proving that education properly 
 handled is the most important concern of life, the 
 most powerful means for the moral, the civil, and the 
 political development of the nation. 
 
 Under the influence of the unions a more thoughtful 
 system of education will gradually develop, and a great 
 many defects of domestic and public education will dis- 
 appear ; childhood and youth will be relieved of the in- 
 cubus now weighing it down and curtailing its full 
 natural development, and our unselfish endeavors to 
 benefit childhood will have brought to the whole world 
 lasting fruits of salvation. 
 
 By the same means, a system of education worthy of 
 the people, and embracing not only the public school, 
 but all education, domestic and public, elementary and 
 college schools, may in time develop ; by which all that 
 is great and noble in man will be cultivated among us, 
 and a perfection hitherto unknown, of all the people 
 and of each individual, will be achieved. 6
 
 FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD 4! 
 
 DISCUSSION BY VILLAGERS. 
 LETTER 2. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, Feb. 17, 1845. 
 
 MY DEAR HERMANN : The success of our endeav- 
 ors in every direction depends greatly upon conditions 
 and public opinion. That is why I am going to send 
 you information upon some facts which have transpired 
 here in reference to the Educational Union ; for such 
 knowledge may assist you in the steps you are taking 
 for the purpose of awakening an interest in the matter 
 at the city of Eisenach. 
 
 Our pastor, who approved my plan from the start, 
 obtained the co-operation of some more people whom 
 we met last Friday at the pastor's residence at Eichfeld. 
 The villagers present displayed so much of clear 
 thought and insight, and of firm good-will, that I was 
 greatly rejoiced. Since then quite a number of other in- 
 habitants of our valley have promised their co-operation, 
 and will be present at next Friday's meeting, when I shall 
 state the task before us and the end to be held in view. 
 
 Another pastor sent word from Rudolstadt promising 
 me the establishment of an Educational Union there, 
 immediately after the publication of my invitation, which 
 will be made within a week. 
 
 The invitation has already been printed in the " Di- 
 daskalia " * at Frankfort-on-Main. That paper submits 
 the idea to the public scrutiny of an extensive circle 
 of readers whose interest and criticism have already 
 evolved some lively discussion in that city. 7 
 
 I also subjoin an extract from a letter upon my edu- 
 
 * A periodical devoted to miscellaneous information.
 
 42 FROEBEL S SYSTEM 
 
 cational principles, printed in the Allgemeiner Anzeiger 
 der Deutschen [" Public Advertiser of the Germans "] 
 of February 12, 1845. Yours, etc., 
 
 F. FROEBEL. 
 
 > 
 
 The extract is as follows : 
 
 "You recommend Froebel's Institutes as the best 
 guaranties of a successful education, and I am glad to 
 see you take a practical interest in the instructive en- 
 terprises of the aspiring man. I was at his place my- 
 self, and the enthusiastic educator made me acquainted 
 with the ends of his labors and the arrangements he 
 has made at Blankenburg and Keilhau for the realiza- 
 tion of his purposes. I believe that it would be a mis- 
 take to consider his system as in opposition to our 
 public-school system. The Kindergarten is intended 
 to prepare for the public school and to assist it. By 
 means of live games and a gradual unfolding of the 
 natural activity, the system strives during the years pre- 
 ceding school age to arouse the higher consciousness 
 of the child and develop it. This will furnish to the 
 pupil of the public school a rich store of interests and 
 activities for filling his intervals between lessons and 
 his spare times in general, with occupations calculated 
 to cultivate the mind and bring enjoyment. In mathe- 
 matics, for example, Froebel labors to arouse the sense 
 of form and number at an early age. He has invented 
 means and forms for showing, rather than abstractly 
 teaching, mathematical relations, and these forms are 
 practical and ingenious, and artistically beautiful 
 enough to be admired even by artists. These forms 
 awaken and develop the faculty of perceiving positive
 
 HOME AND SCHOOL IN HARMONY 43 
 
 arithmetical truths, and of sketching figures clearly rep- 
 resenting important relations of size and form, facul- 
 ties which will help to remove every difficulty of stating 
 and demonstrating theorems in language. But to make 
 the system truly and thoroughly effective, it is necessary 
 chiefly in places where Kindergartens have not yet 
 been established, that the family, more prominently 
 parents and relatives, should join the teachers, and 
 that, above all, mothers, and women in general, should 
 contribute their experience and help by careful super- 
 vision and quickening guidance at home and within 
 the family. By such a harmonious co-operation of the 
 home with the school in all classes and disciplines, the 
 religious sentiments and doctrines could be implanted 
 in the rising generation in a more sympathetic and yet 
 a profounder manner, proving the word of the poet, 
 
 " To the science of good, though the wise maybe blind, 
 Yet the practice is plain for the childlike mind." 8 
 
 LETTER 3. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, May 30, 1845. 
 
 You ask, what the intention of the Educational Union 
 is, and what foundation they have to rest upon. 
 
 The purpose of the Union is to accustom men to 
 co-operate with each other in a conscious and mutually 
 profitable manner. Such a custom is best started in 
 infancy, of course, but, if neglected at the proper time, 
 it may still be produced at any subsequent time. Man 
 should develop in harmony, peace, and joy, within him- 
 self and with those around him, in accordance with 
 human nature and destiny ; and this should continue
 
 44 MAN S DEVELOPMENT 
 
 through all stages of development, and in all the vari- 
 ous circumstances of life, in the family and school, in 
 domestic and public life. Such a method must act in 
 every direction, and be in harmony with the present 
 stage of the development of mankind. 
 
 The above purpose is founded upon the following 
 convictions : (i) As the destiny of a man is expressed 
 in his being, so his conscience recognizes the idea of 
 the harmony between the human mind and the world 
 around him, and endeavors to realize this harmony at 
 every stage of development. 9 
 
 (2) The harmony, its conception, and the endeavor 
 to realize it, has its source in the origin of all things, 
 in God the Creator and Father of men. This convic- 
 tion we must obtain in order to be able to act inde- 
 pendently, that is, in freedom. 
 
 (3) This harmony is objectively represented in 
 nature, which demonstrates it clearly and openly. 
 
 (4) It is just as clearly shown in whatever has hap- 
 pened to the human race in its mental and social evo- 
 lution, in the religious history of the individual as in 
 that of all mankind. This knowledge can be best 
 inculcated by developing the inner sense of man. 
 
 For these reasons the office of education, of educators 
 and pupils, and also of the educational unions, consists 
 above all in helping everybody to observe his own 
 life, 10 and to act it out according to his being and its 
 demands. In such a life the personality is purified 
 and viewed in the mirror of the experiences of others, 
 as in the reasonable lives of individual man and man- 
 kind, in the mirror of nature, of history, and of revela- 
 tion. FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.
 
 NOTES 
 
 CONFORMITY TO NATURE. 
 
 1 WE are pupils of experience, and as our education 
 progresses in the school of Nature, says Froebel, we 
 grow more and more conscious of the fact, and learn to 
 conform to it. In the same way, continues Froebel, 
 we ought to conform to Nature in our attempts at 
 educating others : or, conformity to Nature is the end, 
 and ought to be the conscious aim of education. 
 
 If that be so, are not animals or savages the best 
 educated creatures ? They are not ; and for the reason 
 that there are two ways of conforming to nature, namely, 
 first, that of submission to nature, and secondly, that 
 of compelling nature to submit to us. The animal and 
 the savage will conform to Nature by unconditional 
 submission ; while self-conscious man, by understand- 
 ing Nature and rendering her forces subservient to his 
 wants, forces her to submit to his intelligence. The 
 latter conformity is superior to the former. In fact, it 
 is this conformity between man and Nature, or the 
 dominion of man over Nature, which characterizes true 
 humanity. It is this conscious conformity to Nature 
 which Froebel describes as the " full harmony with the 
 educator of the world and of mankind," which is to 
 constitute the basis of " our attempts at educating our 
 surroundings." 
 
 45
 
 46 FROEBEL AND OTHER EDUCATORS 
 
 2 The ultimate aim of all education here stated by 
 Froebel, namely, the due development of the body, the 
 purity and strength of the character, and firmness of 
 will, is the same as that demanded by every kind of 
 educational theory, and commonly expressed in the old 
 adage of "a sound mind in a sound body," where the 
 "sound mind" is understood to include the ethical 
 will and the unity of volition and action. 
 
 In order to mark a difference between Froebel and 
 other educators, I would suggest that Froebel, if he had 
 invented the above adage, would probably have said 
 " a sound mind through a sound body." 
 
 It follows from the words of Froebel to which this 
 note applies, that he agrees with the rest of educators 
 so far as the ultimate end of education is concerned. 
 But he differs with them in the road or method by 
 which he proposes to reach the end. Here is the differ- 
 ence in a nutshell : Common educational science 
 labors to raise practical ability upon a foundation of 
 intellectual knowledge. But Froebel labors to make 
 knowledge grow out of practical ability. Develop 
 senses and muscles by manual training, he says, in 
 order to inculcate sense, will, and knowledge. 
 
 The system of Froebel must abhor the mathematical 
 method of holding up before the pupil's eye and con- 
 sciousness, when he starts on his way to cognition, the 
 knowledge which he is intended to reach at the end of 
 the way. Mathematics does so by stating a theorem or 
 proposition, and then proceeding to prove it. The prop- 
 osition is a beacon intended to guide the pupil in his 
 efforts to reach the goal. He sees it, but he does not 
 understand it. The light is altogether too powerful
 
 COMPARISON WITH OTHER SYSTEMS 47 
 
 for his young power of sight. And although after wad- 
 ing through the demonstration, he may learn to say 
 " quod erat demonstrandum " with a belief of knowing 
 something, in nine cases out of ten he has no compre- 
 hension of what it is that he thinks he knows how to 
 demonstrate. It was on account of this unnatural 
 method that Hegel is reported to have pronounced 
 mathematics an absurd discipline, and that Robert 
 Lowe once said that mathematics made people credu- 
 lous and superstitious ; that is, unable to distinguish 
 between fact and phrase. 
 
 Froebel wants mathematics taught by leading the 
 pupil step by step from one practical construction to 
 another, until the proposition to be taught appears as a 
 natural step in a series of natural developments. After 
 a proposition has thus been evolved and practically 
 understood as a fact, it may then be demonstrated in 
 the common theoretical way of Euclid's system, and be 
 fully understood by the pupil whose ability of logical 
 deduction will then be greatly improved by it. It is 
 true, Froebel did not leave us a course of geometry, 
 or any other branch of mathematics sufficiently elabo- 
 rated according to his principle, to be of service in 
 the elementary school, but he clearly explained his 
 fundamental idea of it. Some useful treatises on 
 such a Froebelian system on evolutionary principles 
 have been published ; e.g., I. C. Hug, " Mathematics 
 of the Lower School,'' Zurich, 1854. E. Zizman, 
 " System of Geometrical Forms," Jena, 1852. Dr. 
 F. A. W. Diesterweg, " Lessons on Form," Leipzig 
 1845. 
 
 As man's knowledge and science never precede
 
 48 SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY 
 
 experience but are always secondary to it, knowledge 
 always growing out of, or following upon experience, 
 so in the child experience precedes knowledge, as 
 the intellect is secondary to sensation. That is why 
 Froebel wants to educate the mind by the activity of 
 the senses and the muscles, chiefly the hand. The 
 present school education intends to inculcate a deal of 
 knowledge which the pupils are neither expected nor 
 prepared to learn by their own experience ; i.e., by the 
 activity of their own senses and muscles. That is why 
 they hardly ever succeed in making this knowledge 
 their own, although their memories may retain it ; it 
 hangs upon their mind as a mantle will hang on the 
 body ; though owned, it is not a part of the body. 
 Froebel's education, on the contrary, appeals from 
 the first start to the working energy of the child 
 by exciting its spontaneous activity. By causing the 
 individual faculties and powers to manifest themselves, 
 the method discovers the natural talents, and by 
 practising them, teaches the child how to control 
 them. 
 
 Psychology teaches that all our knowledge is the 
 result of experience. Our knowledge of the world is 
 the result of sensation and perception of objective 
 things and events ; our consciousness of our own 
 powers is the result of experiencing our own actions. 
 It is through perception and action, that is, through 
 spontaneous activity that all education must begin, 
 that the first elements of knowledge ought to be 
 imparted to the child. The course, according to 
 Froebel, may be said to pass through five stages as 
 follows.
 
 FROEBEL'S FIVE STAGES 49 
 
 
 
 In the first stage the senses must be practised. The 
 greatest attention must be devoted to the sense of 
 touch. The education of this stage is given to the 
 baby in the mother's arms during the first year of 
 life. 
 
 In the second stage the activity of the child is to be 
 directed and developed. The infant is active from the 
 impulse to prove by the sense of touch the impressions 
 received by the eye and ear. This tendency is com- 
 monly called curiosity, or the desire of knowledge. 
 The educator must direct the infantile activity in a 
 manner to connect the perceptions gained with the 
 nearest, the simplest, and most direct cause and effect, 
 without attempting to inculcate remote connections of 
 causality, or ultimate principles ; that is, to say, you are 
 to confine yourself to naming the facts, but refrain 
 from much preaching. This is the education of the 
 nursery, and usually extends over the second and third 
 years of life, occasionally taking in the fourth or even 
 the fifth year. 
 
 The third stage is that of the Kindergarten proper. 
 It ought to be a continuation and a more comprehensive 
 evolution of the activity of the second stage. The im- 
 pulse to action is now more powerful than the want 
 to extend the sensations of touch. The child wants to 
 externalize its powers. This want is at first fully satis- 
 fied by imitating the actions of others. This object is 
 served by the games and occupations. Imitation must 
 be guided so as to achieve correct results, but with a 
 look to the spontaneous action of the imagination, 
 which must find food in the acts of imitation. This 
 stage ought not to be entirely devoted to the imitative
 
 5O FROEBEL'S FIVE STAGES 
 
 and creative activities, but memory must receive 
 a share of attention. Memorizing little pieces of 
 poetry and prose will be found of exceeding advan- 
 tage to the little ones. The Kindergarten, as it 
 is at present, is hardly suitable for children above 
 seven. 
 
 The fourth stage is that of the elementary and gram- 
 mar schools. Knowledge of an abstract kind is growing 
 more important, and certain mechanical abilities must 
 be acquired. Manual activity is still of the utmost 
 importance, but its extent diminishes as the pupil 
 advances in age. Object-lessons ought to be handled 
 in a way to give the pupils occasions for manual 
 action : forming, construction, and drawing must occupy 
 a good deal of time. 
 
 The fifth stage comprehends every kind of higher 
 education. Knowledge and ability now appear sepa- 
 rated, but only theoretically ; practically, the ability to 
 do always remains the proper test of the full assimila- 
 tion of knowledge. In this way knowledge will be- 
 come the basis upon which stands the conscious ability 
 to do ; or, sound knowledge will produce a will leading 
 with certainty to action. The more comprehensive and 
 profound the knowledge is, the more secure will be its 
 control of the will and conduct. 
 
 In a scheme of education like the above, action or 
 ability manifested will not only be the beginning and 
 the end, but also the guiding method of education. 
 There is no other method so well adapted to accom- 
 plish this end as that of Froebel. True, the method is 
 not yet perfect, and the difficulty to introduce it into 
 the higher stages of education is very great. But the
 
 FROEBEL AND THE CLERGY 51 
 
 principle is broad, as it demands to educate the child 
 in accordance with the educational methods of nature. 
 And we may be sure that a careful and diligent study 
 of the nature of childhood will in time point out a way 
 to apply the method to the entire problem of the 
 education of man. 
 
 8 Froebel's enthusiasm has carried him a little too 
 far, it seems, in this estimate he makes of people in 
 general. Thoroughness, in the first place, is an attri- 
 bute not so easy of acquisition by the uneducated as 
 Froebel supposes. And even if a man has a thorough 
 knowledge of his business and the duties devolving on 
 him as a man of business, he is not for that reason 
 able to educate his children properly. It would not be 
 wise, it seems, to persuade everybody that he or she is 
 fully capable of educating their little family properly. 
 Let them feel that they are deficient in their educa- 
 tional capacities, and they will not only be disposed 
 to look elsewhere for instruction and help on the sub- 
 ject, but also be the sooner convinced of the universal 
 need of education. 
 
 4 Froebel was of a devout disposition, and always 
 loved to interest the clergy in his work. The fact that 
 the father of Froebel was a clergyman, in whom he 
 had learned to hold the whole clergy in very high 
 esteem, was probably the reason why he thought he 
 had won a great deal when he had succeeded in inter- 
 esting a pastor in his plans. And if we take the fact 
 into account, that the education of the people in the 
 highest sense of the word is, or ought to be, the very 
 field and proper occupation of the clergy, it is evident 
 that it was but natural to strive for their co-operation.
 
 52 DISCOVERY OF THE KINDERGARTEN 
 
 6 Froebel held woman in high esteem, and considered 
 education the vocation par excellence to which woman 
 ought to devote her energy. But when he penned this 
 " Invitation to Fathers," woman had not yet demon- 
 strated her capacity for public agitation, or advanced 
 her claim to sit in the councils of men. He could not 
 forestal the future by assigning to woman an occu- 
 pation which had until that time been the exclusive 
 prerogative of man. That is why he called upon the 
 fathers to discuss and provide for the spread of educa- 
 tion, but proclaimed that woman ought to be the 
 practical educator. 
 
 6 Froebel's experience as a teacher had convinced 
 him that the unsatisfactory results of the present school 
 education were produced to a greater extent by the 
 deficiencies of the education preceding school-life than 
 by the methods employed in the school itself. He had 
 tried for many years to reform and improve upon the 
 latter, but had never succeeded to his own satisfaction. 
 So he had found, he thought, that the defects in the 
 development of the minds of his pupils were caused 
 by their having been erroneously educated before 
 they came to his school. He, therefore, turned 
 his back upon the school, and considered how 
 to educate children previous to sending them to 
 school. On this road he discovered the Kinder- 
 garten. 
 
 But if the Kindergarten is to be a thorough cure of 
 whatever ails education, it ought to be in harmony with 
 the school and the home, and both the school and the 
 home must be managed on principles that are in full 
 agreement with those of the Kindergarten. How can
 
 FROEBEL AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL 53 
 
 such a harmony be brought about ? That is the great 
 question which is now demanding solution. 
 
 Froebel could not hope to win the co-operation of 
 the public school. The German schools are govern- 
 ment institutions, and governments are not in the habit 
 of adopting reforms unless compelled to accept them. 
 After a reform or a new system has proved its power 
 of life, that is, after it has become a success, govern- 
 ments may accept it, but not before. Froebel knew 
 that he had no chance in that direction. So he turned 
 to the people, and proposed the general educational 
 unions. He did not live to see them established. But 
 his disciples took up the idea, and established " Gen- 
 eral Educational Unions " in many places after his 
 death. 
 
 The purpose of these unions, according to Froebel, 
 was : ist, Discussion of educational matters among 
 people of all classes and of every degree of scholar- 
 ship, must enlighten them upon the general results to 
 be expected of school and home education ; and more 
 particularly upon the local educational needs. 
 
 2d, Discussion within the union must impart a 
 knowledge of the shortcomings of the educational insti- 
 tutions of a neighborhood, so that everybody may see 
 the points at which the local institutions fail to satisfy 
 the expectations which the people at large are entitled 
 to have. 
 
 3d, Means to realize just expectations are to be 
 devised by the union, and after the proper means 
 have been discovered, the united action of all the mem- 
 bers of the union must enforce them. Very few schools 
 and teachers, families and parents there are, that could
 
 54 THE PUBLIC LACKING IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 long resist a pressure exercised by a large union of 
 public-spirited citizens. 
 
 4th, The greatest attention is to be devoted to the 
 education of childhood under school age. Where insti- 
 tutions for this education are lacking, the union must 
 provide them. Where there are such institutions, the 
 union must make it their particular business to see that 
 they are well conducted. The parents themselves, 
 chiefly the mothers, must be taught the importance of 
 this method of education, and must learn how to manage 
 it in their homes. 
 
 What a man does not know, he does not desire to 
 have. So it is with education : a man must know 
 what education is, in order to feel a great desire for it. At 
 the time of Froebel, the common people understood too 
 little of education to have a great desire for it. For that 
 reason he proposed to establish the educational unions, 
 where the value of education should be taught by dis- 
 cussing it, in order to give to the people a greater desire 
 to educate their children properly. 
 
 As it was in Germany at the time when Froebel wrote 
 this invitation, and as it may be there yet, so it is to a 
 great extent in this country at present. The public 
 school system of the land was established by men of 
 superior parts, who were able and willing to accord to 
 education their full appreciation. But the great masses 
 of the people do not know enough of education to have 
 a great desire for it, as is shown by the present need of 
 compulsory education laws. If the people desired edu- 
 cation, there would be no need of compelling them to 
 send their children to school. 
 
 This absence of a strong desire for education indi-
 
 FROEBEL'S SYSTEM A SLOW GROWTH 55 
 
 cates that educational unions similar to those proposed 
 by Froebel are as much needed in this country as they 
 were at the time of Froebel in Germany. In every 
 school district there ought to be such a union for the 
 purpose of discussing the value and the needs of edu- 
 cation, in order to enlighten the inhabitants upon the 
 subject ; and further, after the needs and defects of the 
 local homes and educational institutions have been 
 recognized and remedies been pointed out, to labor for 
 the adoption of these remedies with a uniform purpose 
 and united strength. 
 
 7 This letter shows how active Froebel was in the 
 propagation of his ideas and method, and that the 
 smallest successes filled him with great expectations. 
 But his hopes were rarely fulfilled. Although general 
 educational unions were started at a few places for the 
 support of the Froebel system, they did not do any 
 noticeable work while Froebel was among the living, 
 and he hardly ever mentioned them again during the 
 last years of his life. 
 
 8 This estimate of the work of Froebel printed in 
 the " Allgemeiner Anzeiger der Deutschen" is more 
 benevolent than correct. It looks upon the Kinder- 
 garten method as perfect, which, if it were, would justify 
 the conclusion that it was not in opposition to the com- 
 mon school system. But at the time when the above 
 estimate was made, the Kindergarten method was less 
 perfect than it is now ; and even now it is hardly far 
 enough developed to be available in the common 
 school. It is a move in the right direction, but it has 
 not yet gone far enough to enable teachers of higher 
 schools to steadily continue in the right path. That is
 
 56 FAULTS OF COMMON TEACHERS 
 
 why common school teachers are seldom able to take 
 the Froebel method for a permanent guide in the class- 
 room. A great deal, however, has already been achieved 
 since the great principles of the method have become 
 known, and the teachers strive here and there to act in 
 agreement with them. 
 
 The Froebel method assists the free development of 
 every individual force. It will guide and protect by in- 
 citing to action and directing it. Its great office is to 
 observe, watch, guide, and purify individual action. 
 The games and occupations serve to incite, exercise, 
 and strengthen. But the means of incitement ought 
 not to put upon the individual anything foreign or be- 
 yond his capacity. The idiosyncrasies of every indi- 
 vidual must be respected and provided with the 
 best conditions for their free and complete develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The common school teacher too often expects all 
 his pupils to think like himself, and will mark as wrong 
 whatever differs from his views. He has explained 
 
 or possibly not explained his own opinions, and 
 pronounces every other view a mistake, because 
 
 well, because he is not able to understand any 
 other ideas but his own. Thus the children have to 
 suffer in their moral sense of right and in their intel- 
 lectual development through the incapacity of their 
 instructor. 
 
 But is it not more frequently the entire system of the 
 common school that compels the teacher to make such 
 mistakes ? The school authorities make certain rules 
 for the education of all the children attending the com- 
 mon schools ; no attention is paid to individual pecu-
 
 TO MAINTAIN INDIVIDUALITY 57 
 
 liarities or local requirements. A certain quantity of 
 matter is ordered to be taught in a certain time, no 
 matter whether the average capacity of the classes of 
 the year is good, bad, or medium. Even the school- 
 books are selected by the Boards, no matter whether 
 the books agree with, or run directly counter to, the 
 capacities and methods of the teachers. Such uniform 
 regulations from above destroy the individuality of 
 teachers and of pupils at the same time. Under such 
 a government there is no room for Froebel princi- 
 ples. 
 
 This system of prescribing methods cannot but end 
 in automatism in the schoolroom. It is more desirable 
 that every teacher should have a distinctly pronounced 
 individuality, and should have been trained to recog- 
 nize and foster the individuality of every pupil under 
 his charge. That is what Froebel demands of every 
 disciple of his, since a teacher is utterly unable to 
 carry out the principles of the master unless he can 
 reproduce them in his own way. 
 
 It is a common complaint that children who have 
 passed through a Kindergarten do not, by any means, 
 make the best pupils of the common school. They 
 have been trained to comprehend in the natural way, 
 that is, by means of their senses and of their muscular 
 activity. In the public school no appeal is made either 
 to their senses or their creative power, but almost 
 exclusively to memory. Therefore, they will lag behind 
 all such as have a good memory a memory which 
 has not been left behind in the development of their pro- 
 ductive energies. In order to bring about a change, 
 both the public school and the Kindergarten must
 
 58 IDEALITY IN HIS STATEMENTS 
 
 modify their methods. Object-lessons and manual 
 activities must enter into every branch of the instruc- 
 tion given in the public school, and the Kindergarten 
 must begin to pay considerable attention to the devel- 
 opment of the memory. If these things are done, it 
 will be easier to assign to the Kindergarten a place in 
 the public school system. 
 
 9 The deeper Froebel dives into the ultimate causes 
 of things, the more difficult it is to keep pace with 
 his ideas. Thus it is with the expression "the 
 harmony between the human mind and the world 
 around him." What Froebel meant to say by it, was 
 made clear to my mind by an extract from a letter 
 written by Barop to Froebel, on April 26, 1845. Barop 
 says : " Everybody is interested in education. Every 
 man's consciousness contains the conditions and de- 
 mands of education. That is just why an agreement 
 among all men, a joint activity alone can truly and 
 completely realize it. The mutual influences which the 
 educational unions produce, will establish a commu- 
 nity of interest between parents and teachers, between 
 teachers and the united body of parents, and between 
 all these elements and the whole of childhood ; and in 
 this way alone a complete and satisfactory educational 
 result will be obtained." 
 
 This sentiment of Barop's Froebel had read about a 
 month before he wrote the letter to which this note re- 
 fers. On the sheet of paper upon which Froebel had 
 transcribed these words from Barop's letter were sev- 
 eral scraps of Froebel's handwriting, showing that he 
 was attempting to change the phrases and give to the 
 sentiment a wording expressive of the manner in which
 
 SELF-OBSERVATION 59 
 
 it had affected FroebePs mind. He had evidently 
 thought a great deal about it, and at last found the form 
 to which this note refers. Froebel's " world around the 
 man " I consequently identify with Barop's " parents 
 and teachers." In a similar way I generally manage 
 to penetrate the meaning of Froebel's sentences 
 by substituting real things for his abstract gener- 
 alities. 
 
 10 Froebel was uncommonly great in what he loves 
 to call " Selbstbeachtung" (self-observation). His 
 autobiographical sketches are full of descriptions of 
 his own inner life, his feeling and thinking; and it 
 is likely that his study of self assisted him greatly in 
 obtaining his profound insight into the conditions of 
 the psychological evolution of the infant, the child, 
 and youth. Nevertheless, there can be hardly a doubt 
 that his educational genius was a natural gift. Before 
 he had ever thought of being a teacher, Gottlieb Anton 
 Gruner gave him a class to teach, and was greatly as- 
 tonished at the remarkable educational talent he dis- 
 played in the first lesson he ever gave. He was what 
 his widow likes to call a " teacher by the grace of 
 God." 
 
 Froebel's principle of self-observation is the same 
 as the old Delphic injunction, " Know thyself ! " It is 
 a good principle, but few there are that can live up to 
 it. Goethe says: " Within himself nobody will learn 
 to know himself, for there he will use a measure of his 
 own make which is now too small and now too large. 
 A man never knows himself except in other men. Life 
 alone will teach a man what he is." But even this rule 
 does not hold good except with men of unusually great
 
 6o 
 
 THE GENERAL EDUCATIONAL UNION 
 
 powers like Goethe. Men of mediocre gifts hardly 
 ever learn to know their own selves. Nevertheless, 
 self-observation is highly commendable, and, if duly 
 practised, would in the end lead men to really know 
 themselves. 
 
 FROEREL'S SCHOOL AT KEILHAU.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SCHEMES AND PROPOSALS FOR FOUNDING 
 
 KINDERGARTENS, A NORMAL SCHOOL, 
 
 AND AN ORPHAN ASYLUM. 
 
 LETTER 4. VON ARNSWALD TO FROEBEL. 
 SAND FOR MOULDING SHAPES. 
 
 EISENACH, May 13, 1847. 
 
 DEAR, FATHERLY FRIEND : Yesterday I was engaged 
 in studying your Sunday paper when an idea struck me 
 which I feel prompted to communicate to you. I 
 thought, might not a plane of sand be made a useful 
 and entertaining game ? By a plane of sand I mean a 
 low, shallow box of wood filled with pure sand. It 
 would be a Kindergarten in miniature. The children 
 might play in it with their cubes and building-blocks. 
 I think it would give the child particular pleasure to 
 have the forms and figures and sticks laid out in the 
 sand before its eyes. Sand is a material adaptable to 
 any use. A few drops of water mixed with it would 
 enable the child to form mountains and valleys in it, 
 and so on." 
 
 I have good news for you to-day. I found a true 
 children's friend, a well-educated young man devoted 
 
 11 See notes at end of chapter. 
 
 61
 
 62 KINDERGARTEN IN MINIATURE 
 
 to the calling of educator with heart and soul. He was 
 head master of a Swiss school, and is at present in a 
 similar position at a girls' school. His name is Dr. 
 Mai. He is enthusiastically in favor of your plan of 
 founding a General Educational Union. He will surely 
 go to see you, in summer, if not before. He will also 
 labor for establishing a school for little children, and 
 connect with it a normal school for nurses according to 
 your plan." 
 
 I have also seen Mr. Kapp. He knows your system 
 already, and would be very glad to quit his position at 
 the public school, in order to devote himself to your 
 mode of education to the full extent of his power. 
 
 There is here already a " Ladies' Association," where 
 young girls are taught domestic occupations. There is 
 a so-called creche for little children. It ought not to be 
 very difficult to unite the two institutions in one after 
 your design. 
 
 HERMANN VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 LETTER 5. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, June, 1847. 
 
 MY DEAR HERMANN Your report concerning Mr. 
 Kapp has afforded me great pleasure. He would be 
 glad to resign his position of public-school teacher, 
 you say, in order to devote his full strength to the 
 Kindergarten. I feel sure he will never repent of his 
 resolve, as I never yet found anybody who had repented 
 of the resolve to devote himself (or herself) to this 
 method of educating children, according to the laws of 
 life and development. For whoever will do so deliber-
 
 TRAINING CHILDREN'S MAIDS 63 
 
 ately and with a devoted soul, will realize a gain double 
 or many times his stake by receiving his own self back 
 as a perfect whole. 13 
 
 Concerning educational institutions for children's 
 maids, I would say that I should have had one going 
 long ago but for the obstacles offered by society in 
 general, the greatest of which is the low esteem in 
 which such maids are held. Even after having gradu- 
 ated from such an institution, a girl will prefer a situa- 
 tion as cook or house-maid to that of nursery maid, 
 because the former are esteemed so much higher and 
 paid so much better, that accepting a place with chil- 
 dren would be considered a drop in position. 
 
 If you have not seen such cases, you will never 
 believe them possible. But here they are, first, among 
 the servants themselves, who look upon their period of 
 nursery time as their novitiate of service, to be short- 
 ened as much as possible. This contempt felt by the 
 servants themselves, is the natural consequence of the 
 second factor in the dilemma, which is the disrespect 
 with which mothers will treat their children's maids. 
 Not until this erroneous conduct on the part of the 
 mothers has undergone a complete change, is there 
 any possibility of improvement in the training of little 
 children intrusted to maids. 
 
 If mothers knew the importance of proper education 
 during the first years of the lives of their children, they 
 would surely be the first to demand that their nursery 
 maids should have the necessary educational qualifica- 
 tions, and would never be behindhand in esteeming and 
 treating the maids accordingly. It is a matter of course 
 that nursery maids should not hold a position subordi-
 
 64 MOTHERS MUST BE EDUCATED 
 
 nate to that of any other household servant, as they 
 generally do, for so long as this estimate determines the 
 relative positions of the servants, no change for the 
 better can be expected either in the maids or in their 
 little wards. 
 
 There is little hope for improvement until the mothers 
 will begin to educate their own selves. Let them attend 
 Kindergartens and study the system themselves. Then 
 they will grow able to know what to expect of their 
 maids and how to judge of their capacities. Such 
 attendance and study ought also to be enjoined upon 
 young ladies of every rank of society, who ought to 
 thoroughly educate themselves in order to be equipped 
 for their future task of educating their children. 
 
 There will surely be no progress in our cause, nor, in 
 fact, in any line, unless this condition is fulfilled. For 
 every progress depends on that of education ; and no 
 education, least of all that of infancy, can get along with- 
 out the active co-operation of mothers who ought to 
 have a full comprehension of their true natural calling, 
 the care of childhood. But they are not as yet ac- 
 quainted even with the preliminaries of the education of 
 man, which ignorance causes them to expect that the 
 official educators of youth should make good again what 
 they, the mothers, have spoiled. 
 
 This evil we have to overcome, and I know of no 
 other means so thorough and certain to effect this pur- 
 pose as the Kindergarten. Let young women go there 
 and see the development of child-life going on before 
 their eyes, noticing and understanding the laws and 
 workings of it.' 4 Yours, etc., 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.
 
 A LUTHER KINDERGARTEN 65 
 
 LETTER 6. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 BRUNSWICK, Aug. 21, 1847. 
 
 I was at Marienberg where the eighth Kindergarten 
 was opened. It is a foundation by private people, and 
 was called u Luther Kindergarten." From there I went 
 to the village of Quetz on a visit to my friend and the 
 children's friend, pastor Hildenhagen, where I was busy 
 making preparations for a festival for little children and 
 youths, that is, for the people. It came off as proposed, 
 and was a decided success. Our Middendorff gave me 
 the pleasure of being present with Carl Froebel, my 
 nephew. 
 
 From Quetz I hastened to Magdeburg and here. I 
 shall go on to Hanover and Bremen, and on my way 
 home intend to see you at Eisenach. 
 
 A description of the Quetz festival to be published in 
 the Allg. Anz. d. D. I shall mail to you. 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 
 Description of the Children's Festival at Quetz. 
 
 On July 25th an attractive children's festival was 
 celebrated in the village of Quetz, near Zoerbig (near 
 Halle in Prussia). Pastor Hildenhagen is never weary 
 to work for the education of youth. He has founded 
 a Kindergarten for such as are not old enough to go to 
 the public school, and a young people's school for those 
 who have passed through the public school, both of 
 which institutions are exceedingly useful. 15 After 
 the completion of extensive improvements made at the 
 parish church, the sacred edifice was newly dedicated
 
 66 A CHILDREN'S FESTIVAL 
 
 on July 25th. In connection with this celebration a 
 children's festival had been prepared, at which Friedrich 
 Froebel, the originator of the Kindergarten, was himself 
 present and conducted the games. There was great 
 variety and constant change, all the children playing 
 together at one time, or a select number carrying 
 out another game ; now girls and boys separated in 
 groups, now all of them united in the same performance ; 
 and everything went off with an astonishing order and 
 unexpected skill. The old and the young, and young 
 and old, all felt the inciting influence of the exercises 
 full of interest and joyful harmony, as they witnessed 
 how every detail emanated from and reflected upon a 
 common centre ; watching the well-adapted changes 
 from rest to cheerful motion and vice versa ; the preva- 
 lence of an irreproachable order ; the singing of many 
 charming songs accompanying and describing the 
 games. All this created a lively interest in the festival 
 with all the adults of all classes that had met to witness 
 this remarkable display of the genuine humane feel- 
 ing that lives in all the classes and strata of the people, 
 and which is destined to be essentially strengthened 
 and developed by the Kindergartens. 
 
 LETTER 7. FROEBEL TO A CLERGYMAN. 
 
 KEILHAU, Sept., 1847. 
 To Councillor of the Consistory : 
 
 Deacon of at Eisenach. 
 
 RIGHT REVEREND SIR, You have turned your seri- 
 ous attention to the idea of an early and gradual evolu- 
 tion of the education of childhood, and to the ways and
 
 THE KINDERGARTEN A REFORMATION 67 
 
 means for a well-adapted primary training of children 
 and men. So it has not escaped your attention that 
 the Kindergartens, in their exhaustive connection with 
 the life and thought of the world, are the best means 
 for the successful propagation and unfolding of the 
 Reformation. 16 In this conviction you said you 
 considered it your interest to help us in our plan to 
 establish such an institution at Eisenach under the 
 name of "Luther Kindergarten," in commemoration 
 of the great work which Martin Luther achieved in the 
 advancement of the education of the people. 17 
 
 I rejoice greatly over this your thoughtful appreci- 
 ation of the far-reaching value of this system of edu- 
 cation as a foundation of true human culture. It does 
 really take up and cultivate everything by which a 
 Christian education according to Luther should promote 
 a true progress of the Reformation. Such progress will 
 be found in the training and culture of the individual 
 life of a child as part and member of the life of all. 
 
 Such a general culture can only be attained by an 
 education based on a constant attention to the mental 
 evolution of the individual, and of mankind as the mani- 
 festation, or revelation, of the Divine in the life of man. 
 This requires giving attention to emotions, to thought 
 and action, to the creative power of childhood, and 
 their laws and conditions. 
 
 An examination of these features of the evolutionary 
 method of the education of man, chiefly of the Kinder- 
 garten system, will induce you to approve of my idea, 
 that a continuation of the work of the Reformation will 
 be found in the general establishment of Kindergartens. 
 For this system is a general development of the human
 
 68 WHAT IS IN A NAME? 
 
 mind, as the Protestant principle is a development of 
 the religious sentiment in that profound and eternal 
 truth in which Luther himself found his inspiration. 
 
 Knowledge makes free, but it must be the right kind 
 of knowledge. This system of education will make 
 men free and able to realize the freedom of thought of 
 the Reformation. You cannot serve your religious 
 calling better than by assisting this scheme of founding 
 this " Luther Kindergarten " in Eisenach at the foot of 
 the Wartburg where Luther made the word of the Lord, 
 this most important basis of the Reformation, ready for 
 us in our own language. 18 Let this source of new 
 intellectual life, this fountain of a developing education 
 of man be established there, and the Wartburg will 
 cease to be nothing but a historical relic, a lifeless 
 German castle, but will be resuscitated to new life 
 and again become the starting-point of the reformatory 
 progress of the German mind. 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 
 LETTER 8. VON ARNSWALD TO FROEBEL. 1 ' 
 
 EISENACH, Sept. 20, 1847. 
 
 MY DEAREST PATERNAL FRIEND, I am constantly 
 thinking of the establishment of our Kindergarten. 
 But I am afraid your addition " in the spirit of Luther " 
 will be an obstacle. Why should the name of Luther 
 be requisite for the success of the holy cause of the 
 training of childhood ? 
 
 It is highly interesting to notice how clear Luther's 
 views were on the subject of education, how he felt in- 
 stinctively that its action was to bring a new heaven on
 
 KINDERGARTENS BELONG TO MANKIND 69 
 
 earth. But as regards the Kindergarten does it not 
 belong to all mankind ? It is generous on your part to 
 suppress every vainglorious feeling, and to be content 
 to have another name than yours connected with the 
 new institution ; and it is also in accordance with the 
 Christian faith that you consider yourself nothing but 
 a tool in the hand of God. But the Kindergarten is, 
 and will continue to be, an issue of the spiritual nature 
 of man that was consolidated into shape and form by 
 you for the benefit of the whole of mankind. 
 
 Are you not a second Columbus, a discoverer of a 
 new world within the boundaries of the Old World? 
 But look here, within this Old World there live Jews and 
 Roman Catholics and other believers. Will they be 
 satisfied to establish Kindergartens " in the spirit of 
 Luther " ? 
 
 HERMANN VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 LETTER 9. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, Sept., 1847. 
 
 I know the Kindergartens are to be institutions for 
 the educational development of whatever is called a 
 child in a purely human sense, independent of every 
 side issue. I never conceived them otherwise. And 
 that is why I wished to see them established under all 
 conditions wherever children are born and may be con- 
 ducted to a purely human development. 
 
 Speaking of a " Luther-Kindergarten " I did not in- 
 tend to keep children in it apart from any other denom- 
 inations. On the contrary, I should consider it in the 
 exact spirit of Christianity to make no distinctions
 
 7O NO EXCLUSIVE NAME 
 
 whatever. It would be in contradiction to all my past 
 activity to think of excluding Jews : at Frankfurt-on- 
 Main, for instance, I helped establish a Jewish Kinder- 
 garten before a Christian Kindergarten was thought 
 of. 
 
 I go farther than this. I want to educate children 
 for a life of purely human love. But this love depends 
 in every case, though not always with sufficient con- 
 sciousness, upon the recognition of the divine in hu- 
 man nature. Thus, true human love and real Christian 
 love are identical. By Christian love I want to signify 
 that love which is conscious of its origin as just named, 
 i.-e., the divine life in man which is the human soul or 
 the human spirit. 
 
 Let your establishment, then, be called Kindergarten 
 only. Any qualification is evil if it stands in the way 
 of the advancement of the cause. 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 
 LETTER 10. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, Oct. 30, 1847. 
 
 MY HIGHLY ESTEEMED FRIEND, Your reports upon 
 the continuous development of your dear baby give 
 me great joy. The steadier you are in your atten- 
 tion to her development, the more uniform your care for 
 her continues, the more genuine will be the joys with 
 which her unfoldment will bless you. I am experien- 
 cing much joy at present with little Reinhold Barop, 
 now twenty-three weeks old, who frequently comes with 
 his nurse to see me. Then I attend to him in order to 
 be taught by him. It is truly touching and delightful
 
 CHERISH THE LOVE OF SONG 7! 
 
 to watch how steadily the senses and limbs develop 
 upon the ball, through form, color, and motion ; and 
 how, above all, rhythmical movements of his arms, 
 united to word and sound, give him pleasure. The 
 little man is unconsciously adding to my sympathetic 
 pleasure at the joy which your own little one gives you. 
 Your educational notes are altogether instructive and 
 interesting to me, and I request you to continue them : 
 be sure that nothing of it shall be lost. 20 The lit- 
 tle girl of a neighbor of mine is supplying me with 
 daily demonstrations that song is an essential part of 
 child-life, for she never wearies, all day long, to repeat 
 her few cadences. 21 Let me urge on you to foster 
 every breath of song in your family ; children's song is 
 to the family what the song of birds is to the leafy 
 grove. 
 
 I enclose my draft of a prospectus of my institution 
 for the education of Kindergarteners, [Kinderpfleg- 
 erinnen, says Froebel], requesting you and your good 
 lady to look it over. 22 I know that my style is not 
 readily intelligible to all, so I would ask you to criticise 
 it freely and return the corrected copy. 23 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 
 PROSPECTUS OF AN INSTITUTION FOR THE TRAINING 
 OF NURSES AND EDUCATORS OF CHILDREN, AS PRO- 
 POSED BY FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 
 The institution intends to render generally accessi- 
 ble an education in agreement with the nature of the 
 child and of man, and satisfying the demands of the 
 age, and to show how such an education can be carried
 
 72 TRAINING CHILDREN'S NURSES 
 
 out in the family. This can only be done by preparing 
 young ladies for the business of nursing, developing 
 and educating a child from its birth until it can go to 
 school. The course will also qualify its pupils to pre- 
 pare children for the first grade of the elementary 
 course of the public school. The pupils of the institu- 
 tion will be duly qualified to manage all the educa- 
 tional labors of the house, the school and life, by de- 
 veloping the child as an individual personality, and as 
 a member of all mankind as well. 
 
 Education in the family isolates the child, but educa- 
 tion at school, in the society of many children, causes 
 the child to feel himself a member of human society. 
 The institution ought to prepare its pupils to fill posi- 
 tions in either employment. 
 
 This is accomplished readily, because family and 
 school education do not differ in the nature of the 
 knowledge required, but only as regards the quantity 
 of personal accomplishments to be acquired. The dif- 
 ferent grades must, therefore, be assigned different 
 branches but not different kinds of instruction. 
 
 The grades of child-servants, or child-attendants, 
 both of whom I had rather call child-nurses (see note 
 22), want chiefly practical exercises by which to acquire 
 the details of the system and their application, accord- 
 ing to the age and ability of the child and the domestic 
 surroundings. The grades of child-guides (Kinder- 
 garteners) need an insight into the whole system and 
 a comprehensive knowledge of its principles, from 
 which will naturally flow a more intense and spontaneous 
 professional activity. The institution is well prepared 
 to keep both these branches going side by side.
 
 A MODEL NURSE AND TEACHER 73 
 
 It is very desirable that young ladies entering the 
 institution should have had a good school education. 
 They ought to be upwards of fifteen years old, and to 
 be healthy and full grown. The age from seventeen 
 to twenty odd years seems best for this training. More 
 important than age and school education, however, is 
 the girlish love of childhood, and an ability to occupy 
 herself with children, as well as a serene and joyful 
 view taken of life in general. There ought also to be 
 a love of play and playful occupations, a love and ca- 
 pacity for singing. It goes without saying that purity 
 of intentions and a lovely, womanly disposition are 
 essential requisites. The fuller the educational accom- 
 plishments of a lady are, the more rapid and satisfac- 
 tory will be her progress in the science. 
 
 The means at the disposal of those willing to take 
 the course are generally so limited as to compel a cur- 
 tailment of the time of study to six months. Nothing 
 but inexorable necessity could have enforced such a 
 reduction of time, rendering next to impossible the 
 acquisition of even such knowledge as is absolutely in- 
 dispensable. Every part of the course must be short- 
 ened too much in order to render it possible to reach 
 the end at all. The entire course is made up with a 
 consciousness that the pupils themselves must fill up 
 the gaps in their development by incessant industry 
 and spontaneous labor, to work out and perfect the 
 ideas and principles mentioned in the course. There 
 is no possibility of reaching the goal desired in so short 
 a time unless a pupil will give her whole mind, and give 
 it determinedly and perseveringly, to the study. But I 
 am happy to say that a number of the pupils of the
 
 74 THEIR QUALITIES AND HABITS 
 
 school have completely reached the goal, so far as the 
 course would allow. But this is not sufficient unless 
 the pupil has also learned to observe and study the 
 phenomena of her own life and activity, and thereby 
 learned how to observe and guide the life and activity 
 of children. In this direction the study of the Kinder- 
 gartnerin ought to be continuous. 
 
 A complete preparation for bringing up and educat- 
 ing children ought to make the pupil theoretically and 
 practically conversant with all the requirements of the 
 child concerning its bodily (dietetic) and mental (ped- 
 agogic) needs from the cradle to school age. But that 
 is not enough : the normal-school pupil ought also to 
 be enabled to impart a good preparation for the first 
 grade of the elementary classes of the public school. 
 It is not possible, however, to include this branch in a 
 short course of only six months. A second course is 
 necessary to give time enough for the preparation for 
 that kind of teaching. In either case, however, suc- 
 cess cannot be complete unless the pupil on entering 
 the normal school is sufficiently prepared as regards 
 her school education, her maturity of character and 
 good judgment. Such efficient preliminary preparation 
 alone will enable the pupil to avail herself of all the 
 suggestions offered during the course, and, after leaving 
 the school, to continue to study, reflect, and labor for 
 the purpose of finishing her own education. 
 
 The time-table of daily duties, as explained by Froe- 
 bel in his prospectus, laid out work for the whole day, 
 from 7 A.M. till bedtime. The hour from 7 to 8 A.M. 
 was devoted to a morning service followed by a lesson
 
 A SPECIMEN OF DAILY WORK 75 
 
 in religion. The lessons attempted to " trace the evo- 
 lution of religious ideas in the child, and thereby to 
 indicate a method of awakening truly religious senti- 
 ments in the little ones." At 9 the regular school-day 
 opened. The hour from 9 to 10 was spent in teaching 
 " the science of the phenomena and laws of the evolu- 
 tion of the child ; of the essential nature of the child, 
 and the requirements of his nursing and education." ** 
 During the two hours from 10 to 12, the principles 
 taught theoretically in the hour preceding were prac- 
 tically demonstrated. These demonstrations embrace 
 practical exercises in "personal intercourse, appropri- 
 ate language in conversing with children, singing with 
 children, accompanying the singing with the appropri- 
 ate practice of the senses and limbs," etc. The spe- 
 cific relations between these exercises and the unfold- 
 ment of the soul-life of the child as an individual and 
 as a member of a social whole, were successively 
 pointed out. The Mutter und Kose-Lieder served as a 
 text-book in these lessons.* 
 
 The afternoon session commenced at 2 P.M. Till 4 
 P.M. the gifts for play and occupation were handled. 
 There were several small text-books, all of which are 
 now united in the " Pedagogics of the Kindergarten." 
 Froebel tried at every step to point out and make clear 
 the manifold relations between the occupations with 
 his gifts and the labors of man in contact with the cir- 
 cumstances of nature and events of life. 
 
 From 5 to 6 the pupils assisted in the plays and 
 games of the children that convened for the purpose. 
 
 * Translation published by Lee & Shepard, Boston, with fac-simile illustra- 
 tions.
 
 76 FROEBEL'S UNWEARIED LABORS 
 
 The hour from 6 to 7 was devoted to practising plays, 
 games, and occupations that had been carried out dur- 
 ing the day. 
 
 After supper the pupils practised whatever they felt 
 they had not completely mastered, and were assisted 
 by Froebel, Frau Froebel, and other helpmates. Al- 
 together, it is a fact that during the six months of the 
 course, Froebel devoted his whole time and energy to 
 his pupils, from seven in the morning until bedtime, 
 never wearying to explain and lecture, to labor and 
 play with them, and all this for a paltry remuneration 
 of half a thaler (about thirty-seven cents) payable by 
 each pupil every week of her attendance. Truly it was 
 not a business speculation, this first normal school for 
 Kindergarteners ; it was the irresistible force of enthusi- 
 asm for his great ideal, which was the perfection of 
 mankind by means of his new education, that carried 
 Froebel onward and made his ideas victorious. (Ed- 
 itor?) 
 
 LETTER II. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, Nov. 16, 1847. 
 
 MY DEAR HERMANN, The prospectus which I sent 
 you with my last letter has been much criticised, and 
 will not be published until after a careful rewriting. 
 When finished, it will be printed, in its new shape, in 
 a little pamphlet which Middendorff and I are engaged 
 in writing. It will be entitled " The Kindergartens," ' 
 which name indicates that it will be a concise expo- 
 sition of the principles of the whole system. 
 
 With this pamphlet is connected the carrying out 
 of a plan which is to be the copestone of my earthly
 
 INSTITUTION FOR ORPHANS ?/ 
 
 labors. 26 I herewith submit the plan to you, desiring 
 you to examine it and let me have your criticisms. 
 
 Simultaneously with the first conception of the Kind- 
 ergarten, there was present in my mind the idea of an 
 institution for the support and education of orphans. 
 The more I think of it, the greater appears to me the 
 importance of the idea for the success of the whole of 
 my scheme of education. I am even disposed to call 
 it the foundation and corner-stone of everything I pro- 
 pose doing for childhood in the Kindergarten and in 
 the family, and for the training of woman-educators of 
 children. 
 
 The central part of this enterprise must be a Kinder- 
 garten for the orphans of parents in good circum- 
 stances. It would consist of two branches ; namely, 
 first, the Kindergarten itself, the first pupils of which 
 would be the orphans above mentioned ; the second 
 would be a normal school for the practical training of 
 nurses and educators of children. 
 
 But it will be better to leave the discussion of the 
 details to the subjoined draft. 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 
 PROSPECTUS OF THE KINDERGARTEN-FOUNDATION 
 FOR ORPHANS. 
 
 The scheme comprehends the following three distinct 
 parts, or branches : 
 
 i. The institution for the support and education of 
 orphans from the earliest age until (for the beginning,) 
 to the sixth or seventh year. It is intended to be a 
 model educational institution for children of this earliest
 
 78 KINDERGARTEN FOR ORPHANS 
 
 age, and will form the " central institute," from which 
 the two other institutes will branch off, as follows : 
 
 2. A Kindergarten as a model institution. It would 
 be managed after the fashion of the German Kinder- 
 garten founded in iS^o. 37 
 
 3. A Normal Institute for children's nurses, assist- 
 ant educators, full educators, and Kindergartners. 
 
 These three branches would constitute one organic 
 whole, and would support and assist each other mutually. 
 In this way everything that can be expected from each 
 of the three branches thus united will be achieved in 
 the combined institution. And furthermore the results 
 of the combination will affect each of the branches so 
 beneficially as to render each much more perfect than 
 it could ever be made if each of the three branches were 
 carried out by itself. 
 
 The central institute must be supported by pe- 
 cuniary means large enough to pay a considerable 
 portion of the expenses of the two other branches. 
 The pupils of the central institute would all require 
 Kindergarten training, for which purpose it must have 
 a Kindergarten by itself. It could not get along with- 
 out it. This Kindergarten of the central institute 
 would open its doors to outsiders and admit other 
 children as pupils, thus forming the nucleus of the 
 second institute. 
 
 Again, the pupils of the third institute would be the 
 attendants to the pupils of the central institute. Each 
 pupil of the third institute would be intrusted with the 
 special care of two or three pupils of the central insti- 
 tute, to whose needs she would have to attend in the 
 morning and evening. For such service the pupils of
 
 PLAN FOR COMBINING SCHOOLS 79 
 
 the third institute would be remunerated either in 
 money, or in board and tuition, which would enable 
 poor girls to attend and prepare for their natural duties 
 in life as thoroughly as girls from well-to-do families 
 who could pay for the course. 
 
 The combination of the three institutes as de- 
 picted just above, would greatly facilitate the man- 
 agement of the Kindergarten, which might by such 
 means become more perfect than any Kindergarten 
 existing, isolated from institutes that could help to 
 support it, and could, no doubt, be developed to be a 
 model institution for other Kindergartens. 
 
 The third institute, constituting the normal school 
 for Kindergarten nurses and Kindergarteners, might, 
 in the extent of its usefulness, grow to be the most 
 important part of the system. It would derive great 
 benefit from its organic connection with the first and 
 second institutes. Under really good management 
 it would confer extraordinary advantages upon the 
 other parts of the system, by securing to them a uni- 
 form method of treating the children under the super- 
 intendence and direction of the normal teachers. The 
 scope of the studies of the normal institute might then 
 be advanced considerably beyond what can at present 
 be reached, and it would be more surely attainable 
 than the present smaller extent of studies. A reduc- 
 tion of the expenses of the normal course by means of 
 counting the services of the normal pupils at the 
 central institute as part payment, would, in a majority 
 of cases, allow young ladies to remain longer at the 
 school. If the present short course could be extended, 
 such an increase of time alone would produce an
 
 8O HONOR TO SCHILLER 
 
 extension of the range of studies. Further, the practi- 
 cal occupation in the first and second institutes would 
 naturally increase the abilities of the students. 
 
 The greatest difficulty in the execution of the plan 
 will, no doubt, be found in selecting the principal of 
 the whole institution. The three principals of the three 
 institutes could easier be found, and their assistants 
 easier still. But I have no doubt a suitable lady could 
 be found, considering that common sense, a high moral 
 dignity, and a natural, warm love for children, are of 
 greater importance than profound scholarship. 
 
 Such is, in few words, my plan 
 
 Having so far explained his idea, Froebel took up the 
 task of discussing ways and means to carry out his 
 plan. All his proposals refer to his own time, his 
 acquaintances and limited resources, which to know 
 would not profit anybody to-day. A great portion of 
 his proposals may, therefore, be omitted, but a few 
 remarks may be mentioned as showing his way of 
 looking at things : 
 
 At one place, Froebel refers to the German poet, 
 Friedrich Schiller, as having said that the inclination 
 to play ought to be rendered serviceable in the educa- 
 tion of man ; and continuing, Froebel asks : " How can 
 we honor Schiller most suitably ? " and he answers : 
 " The fittest recognition of a noble and great man 
 consists in continuing in his sense and spirit the work 
 which he commenced, in adopting his spirit as the 
 guiding principle of labor in general. Any educa- 
 tional work, then, founded upon play as a means of 
 developing childhood, is work in the spirit of Schiller."
 
 NECESSITY OF A HEAD 8 1 
 
 There might be an objection raised against keeping 
 so many children in one building, which would deprive 
 them of the family influences, says Froebel at another 
 point, and he proceeds to propose that a number of 
 children might be accommodated in private families. 
 
 Supposing all these conditions could be fulfilled, 
 says Froebel in conclusion, there remains the question 
 of the superintendency which is, as it were, the inmost 
 soul of the entire enterprise. It is of the utmost 
 importance to find a competent lady for the position. 
 
 Then Froebel proceeds to offer the position to the 
 mother and sister of Herr von Arnswald, trying hard 
 to persuade the ladies to undertake the task. But he 
 did not succeed in this. Neither was he able to 
 establish the institution outlined above. There is no 
 doubt that his plan was well conceived, and that a 
 similar " orphan asylum with Kindergarten and Nor- 
 mal School " would be highly serviceable to the cause 
 of education even now. 
 
 LETTER 12. VON ARNSWALD TO FROEBEL. 
 
 (Selected Passages.) 
 
 EISENACH, Nov. 27, 1847. 
 
 Regarding the grand enterprise which you propose, 
 we acknowledge the spirit of love and self-denial that 
 dictated it, but cannot at the same time deceive our- 
 selves by denying the immense difficulties of its execu- 
 tion. Can we hope that such an institution could ever 
 be carried out with the limited means at the disposal of 
 private individuals ? We cannot. For, first, the foun- 
 dation will require sums of money much too large ;
 
 82 OBJECTIONS TO THE TRAINING SCHOOL 
 
 secondly, the responsibilities attaching to the rearing 
 of little children are too great ; next, there would be 
 cases of sickness and death, which might play havoc with 
 the reputation of the institution ; and undermine confi- 
 dence in its management and thirdly, will guardians 
 or widows be disposed to intrust their children to an 
 institution whose purpose is the education of educators 
 and nurses ? Will they consent to have their children 
 serve as objects for the normal students to experiment 
 upon in their course of practical study ? Will they not 
 much rather demand that their children be placed in 
 the care of nurses and educators that have finished 
 their course and perfected their own education ? 
 
 Convinced that you have not your own outward in- 
 terest in view, but are solely solicitous to lay a sound 
 foundation for a perfect education of the people, I 
 would suggest that you, or anybody, should submit the 
 idea to the public in order to elicit a discussion of the 
 plan. Such a discussion would relieve you of being 
 the only one to carry the responsibility; it would not 
 only make known your ideas, but give you an oppor- 
 tunity to develop and mature and inspire them with 
 greater certainty of a successful issue ; last, and not 
 least, it would interest many people in your scheme, 
 whose combination would offer guaranties of practical 
 success. 
 
 In order to secure a successful realization, the plan 
 ought to be taken up by the State. There are many 
 orphanages, though far from enough. Could they not 
 be made serviceable for the training of nurses and edu- 
 cators ? States, or cities, or villages, either officially or 
 through private efforts united in societies, or clubs,
 
 BEAUTY OF MOTHERS* SONGS 83 
 
 ought to undertake the establishment of such normal 
 schools by transforming, or adding normal depart- 
 ments to, the orphan houses already established. 
 
 Might it not be advisable, as a test of the feasibility 
 of your scheme, to try if very small children would be 
 intrusted to your care ? Or, would there be an objec- 
 tion to your trying at Rudolstadt ? I think Keilhau, 
 with its established reputation, would be the best place 
 for the education of the female missionaries of your 
 new education. Let states, cities, and towns, or private 
 associations, found kindergartens and orphan asylums, 
 according to your plan, and it would be your business to 
 educate attendants, nurses, and Kindergarteners for 
 these institutions. 
 
 Dec. 4. Your " Mothers' Songs " have a sweet 
 sound on the zither. My wife, or sister, will sing them 
 to our baby, and I accompany them on the zither. Baby 
 likes the sound, evidently, and will lie still a long time 
 listening to the instrument. I would recommend the 
 zither to you as a means to awaken the sense of music 
 in your little pupils. It is easily learned. I have 
 heard it played by children of six or seven years. It 
 is a splendid means for training the ear to distinguish 
 niceties of sound. If the strings are out of tune ever 
 so little, the instrument is sure to render the dishar- 
 mony perceptible. Thus it will serve to develop musi- 
 cal hearing. 28
 
 84 LOOKING FOR A MATRON 
 
 LETTER 13. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, Dec. 9, 1847. 
 
 It is the consciousness of a man's own life, of his 
 own living activity, which affords an elevated and inex- 
 haustible source of the enjoyment of life, of pleasures 
 which, I believe, will continue ours beyond the grave 
 by determining the condition of our soul. 39 
 
 I am glad that you are now established in a more 
 spacious dwelling. No doubt, larger rooms add sub- 
 stantially to a more beautiful evolution of the life of a 
 little child, though there be only an increase in the 
 quantity of light and a greater purity of the air it 
 breathes. 30 
 
 The favorable reception which your mother and sis- 
 ter accorded to my proposal, has encouraged me and 
 filled me with the confidence that this exchange of 
 views will produce blossoms and fruits to the advance- 
 ment of human welfare. A thoughtful treatment of 
 childhood like that practised by your sister, ought to 
 be communicated like the force of a magnet : if prac- 
 tised in the position of superintendent, it would repro- 
 duce itself in others and be intensified and developed. 
 Let us, therefore, pursue and develop the idea in order 
 to be prepared to embrace every opportunity, however 
 small and seemingly insignificant, from which the in- 
 stitution may quite unexpectedly sprout and grow. Dif- 
 ficulties will vanish of themselves if the realization be 
 carried on according to natural conditions. Remem- 
 ber, how Keilhau and Burgdorf, and the Kindergartens 
 were commenced ; for instance, that at Dresden for
 
 ENDOWMENTS NEEDED 85 
 
 which I laid the foundation during my sojourn there in 
 1838 to 9. 
 
 Educational unions are also beginning to show their 
 influence. I have no doubt that as they become gen- 
 eral in the land, they will be the moving power in the 
 progress of all popular and national education. 
 
 Considering one by one, the difficulties which you 
 fear, there is, first, your fear that " such an institution 
 could never be carried out with the limited means at 
 the disposal of private individuals." I founded Keilhau 
 without any outward means or friends, and the institu- 
 tion has already celebrated its thirty-first birthday. If 
 that is too small for you, I remind you of the orphan 
 house at Halle. Have they not equally grown out of 
 nothing? and grown by nothing but the truth of the 
 thought which founded them, by the firmness of the 
 conviction, and the steadiness of execution, and, last, 
 not least, by the perfect unity of those engaged in the 
 work, that is to say, in the end by an invisible, that is, 
 a spiritual unity of action? 
 
 You say, " The foundation will require sums much too 
 large." That is true, but they are not required all 
 at once. 31 The spirit living in the cause, must and 
 will provide the sums. 
 
 Again remember Keilhau! When I resolved to 
 found that institution, I knew not where it could be 
 commenced, whether at Keilhau or at another place, or 
 what name to give to it ; and all the capital I possessed 
 under the sun, counting in everything, did not amount 
 to more than five cents, say five cents. Yet the insti- 
 tution was started, and has continued to this date. 
 
 And the institution required great sums, it is true,
 
 86 MAY COME GRADUALLY 
 
 but not all at once. 31 Until it reached the com- 
 prehensive extent at which it is now standing, and while 
 it was still managed by my sole and direct initiative, a 
 few hundred thousand dollars passed through my hands. 
 
 Now look at August Hermann Francke ! * My 
 work cannot be compared at all with the grandeur of 
 his work. Nevertheless, the same conditions of suc- 
 cess were active in either work ; namely, unity, trust- 
 fulness, and perseverance. 
 
 In the second place, you consider " the responsibili- 
 ties too great." As regards myself, I never yet found 
 them too great, and, thank God, during the thirty-one 
 years that the institution has been going, not a pupil 
 has died, although I have had to contend with severe 
 diseases and have never consulted a physician, not 
 even in the severest cases, but have treated them by 
 nothing but the strictest diet. I had at one time about 
 sixty pupils in my house, and at present there are fifty. 
 Nevertheless, it is evident that every responsibility 
 ought to be avoided by a strict medical surveillance. 
 
 In the third place, you utter an apprehension that 
 parents and guardians of children would hesitate to 
 intrust their little wards to an institution where those 
 who would have to care for them were themselves 
 students instead of being practised teachers or nurses. 
 But these students are assistants of the superintendent 
 and of the regular teachers who are always there, and 
 whose uniform normal treatment of the children will 
 preclude the possibility of injury being produced by a 
 change or any want of experience on the part of 
 students. 33 
 
 Your idea to make the school a State institution I
 
 WHY THE STATE IS HOSTILE 8/ 
 
 should not consider advisable until it had been estab- 
 lished and had reached a point of comparative perfec- 
 tion. The State, being fixed in its institutions, cannot 
 but bind and enchain free motion and bring it to a 
 stand. The State, as such, does not love, foster, and 
 protect free development until it has either experienced, 
 or thinks it foresees with certainty, that it will derive 
 profit from it. Just so the farmer does not love the 
 flower of the apple-tree or of flax for its own sake, but 
 merely on account of what it promises ; in the form of 
 a daisy the flower is indifferent to him ; and he hates 
 the beautiful corn-flower as a noxious weed. It is the 
 free man, the free family, that must create free institu- 
 tions. After these have been in existence long enough 
 for the State to perceive their usefulness, it is but too 
 quick in seizing hold of them in an arbitrary manner, 
 and will perchance not kill but surely enchain them. 
 That is why our intended institution ought to have 
 gathered strength enough to be able to bear blossom 
 and fruit even in fetters, as the vine will do in the lat- 
 tice work on the wall. 34 
 
 You said further, " There are orphanages ; could they 
 not be made serviceable for the training of nurses and 
 educators ? " No doubt they could, but they must be 
 Kindergartens first. I proposed such a change to a 
 number of institutions, but without success. You have 
 no conception how much I have already done for 
 spreading my system, so extensively proved and ac- 
 knowledged as good. But the final result of all my 
 endeavors has hitherto been nothing but an endless 
 succession of repulsions upon, and the confinement 
 within, my own self.
 
 88 LOOKING FOR A LOCATION 
 
 Nothing would be easier than a transformation of 
 (negative) children's homes into genuine (positive) 
 Kindergartens. But there is a poor mother here and 
 an old maid there who cannot be supplied with a living 
 unless the antiquated homes are maintained in their 
 present form ; that is to say, unless the hundred, or half 
 a hundred, of helpless little children intrusted to her 
 care be robbed of their first and most needed mental 
 food. Yea, truly, our misguided commiseration does 
 lead us into any number of miserable actions. 35 
 
 My intention to have a normal school for Kindergar- 
 teners I have not been able to carry out here at Keil- 
 hau, because we are short of space. That is why my 
 courses have had an ephemeral existence only. This 
 winter I could not even send out my prospectuses, 
 because I did not know how to accommodate any 
 pupils. Thus I am compelled to look out for a more 
 suitable locality. But where I may find it, I do not 
 know yet. I have repeatedly been asked to go to 
 Paris, to London, even to America, in order to carry 
 out my plans there. But that would be no help to my 
 German people, and I feel I am nothing if not a Ger- 
 man. 
 
 I hope your suggestion to establish my institution at 
 Eisenach may be fulfilled. Following your invitation I 
 shall go there as soon as possible and look about for 
 myself whether the chances will favor my plans. It 
 would be a splendid success if your children's home 
 could be developed into a Kindergarten as was done at 
 Hildburghausen and Homburg vor der Hoehe. 
 
 Now let me repeat how I think my plan might be 
 carried out. I intend visiting Eisenach again next
 
 NORMAL OR PRACTICE SCHOOLS 89 
 
 spring, if possible, and to be accompanied by one of 
 my best pupils. You would, I hope, introduce me to 
 the Board of the Children's Home, where I might be 
 allowed to engage the children in my educational games 
 and occupations for a few days. The Board would then 
 be in a position to decide whether these games and oc- 
 cupations should be introduced in the Home. Should 
 they be rejected, this scheme would have to be aban- 
 doned. 
 
 But, supposing the Board should adopt my games 
 and occupations for the Home, I should then propose 
 to call the institution a Kindergarten, and should be 
 willing to make it one, by promising to attend the insti- 
 tution with my normal pupils, to practise games and 
 occupations with the children for an hour four times a 
 week. 
 
 Having by such an agreement secured the Home and 
 Kindergarten for a practice school for my pupils, I 
 should take steps to secure the requisite number of 
 normal pupils. And having secured them I should 
 take a house with garden and grounds for them to 
 live in. The leader of the household, or, as it were, 
 the elder sister of the normal family, would be the same 
 pupil of mine that I hope will accompany me to 
 Eisenach as mentioned above. 36 
 
 There are lacking in the scheme two essential ele- 
 ments, namely, the superintending intellect, and the 
 motherly matron that must examine every detail and 
 have an eye on morals, order, cleanliness, etc. Both 
 elements may be united in one person, or they may be 
 found in two persons ; for example, in your mother and 
 sister. In the former, we have the eye of the matron
 
 9O DUTIES OF MATRON AND TEACHER 
 
 that need not be present all the time ; an occasional 
 inspection, even if not oftener than once a week, might 
 do. Your sister would attend to the intellectual needs, 
 or to the education proper, and be at the institution 
 every other day, if possible. Such an arrangement 
 would be a guaranty to parents and the public, that 
 the sense of domestication, of female dignity, and edu- 
 cational progress, pervaded the whole institution. 
 
 Your mother and sister, the Kindergartnerin and 
 myself, would constitute the faculty, which would delib- 
 erate upon and determine every step to be taken. I 
 would never presume to interfere with anything decided 
 by the faculty. Not until this whole programme had been 
 actually carried out for a length of time, could any suc- 
 cess be expected to be great enough to satisfy the 
 public and entitle us to solicit the municipal authorities 
 and the government for assistance. 
 
 After the institution had thus been developed, step 
 by step, and grown to be a proper normal school, a 
 Kindergarten for a certain number of hours a week 
 might be opened in the institution, and a number of 
 orphans be received to board and educate. 
 
 In this manner the whole might grow up. The con- 
 ditions surrounding us would determine our progress, 
 as we should not at any time step outside of our domes- 
 tic occupations unless our surroundings had suggested 
 such action. 
 
 I was much pleased with your remarks concerning 
 the zither. For a long time I have been on the look- 
 out for a musical toy, but have not yet been able to find 
 anything better than a harmonica of tuned glass
 
 JEAN PAUL ON CRYING 9! 
 
 pieces. These pieces are cut and tuned and arranged 
 like the scale of a piano, and are struck with little cork 
 hammers. It is a very simple plaything, has a sweet 
 sound, and is liked by children. But it is difficult to 
 play tunes on it. Your proposal to introduce the zither, 
 may help me out of the difficulty. I will try. 
 
 Regarding the crying of children, much remains to be 
 studied and said. I think crying may become spas- 
 modic, that is, mechanical, the child being carried away 
 with it against its own will, or, at least, without willing 
 it. In such cases I think the readiest means to check 
 crying is an unexpected and striking event for in- 
 stance, a bright light, sudden darkness, a strong sound, 
 etc. Jean Paul 37 in his " Levana," distinguishes 
 four kinds of crying with children, and indicates suitable 
 checks. You could hardly find a more useful present 
 for your young wife than a collection of the best pas- 
 sages and discussions from the above book ; namely, 
 Jean Paul's " Levana, or Educational Science." 
 
 Let us never lose sight of Martin Luther's words : 
 " If we want to educate children, we must be children 
 with them ourselves." 
 
 F. FROEBEL. 
 
 LETTER 14. FROEBEL TO VON ARNSWALD. 
 
 KEILHAU, NEAR RUDOLSTADT, 
 Jan. 19, 1848. 
 
 Since I sent you my last letter I have been travelling. 
 I visited Eisfeld and its neighborhood near Hildburg- 
 hausen. I wanted to extend my propaganda for my 
 educational ideas, and labored hard day by day from
 
 Q2 SMALL BEGINNINGS 
 
 nine in the morning till evening, and every day at 
 another place. I returned home on New Year's Eve. 38 
 
 On this tour I sowed a seed which may grow and 
 bear fruit some day, just as I expect to do at Eisenach, 
 where, you say, there is plenty of material that might 
 develop under the manipulation of a steady hand, which 
 means a clear, steady, and firm activity bent on concen- 
 trating the different forces upon one point. That can- 
 not be done better, I think, than in the way already 
 indicated in my last letter. That pupil of mine whom 
 I mentioned in the letter, is the very individual to ad- 
 vance the project in the most ingenuous and natural 
 manner. With her assistance I can go through games 
 and occupations with the children themselves, with a 
 hope to awaken an interest in my method with the 
 ladies of the city. Miss Luise Levin that is the name 
 of my pupil has relatives at Eisenach, and might pro- 
 long her visit there awaiting developments. 
 
 The beginning could thus be very small. But the 
 smallest does not preclude the greatest : the seed of 
 the pine and fir tree is small as a mustard seed, yet in 
 the smallest of its sprouts there is already the tendency 
 to be a tree that shall raise its top to touch the clouds, 
 and shall, at a distant future, maybe after centuries, be 
 the mast of a vessel steadily conducting thousands of 
 emigrants to the land of liberty. 
 
 Such a natural development will also tend to infuse 
 health into the whole institution, for which reason sick- 
 ness will be of much rarer occurrence in such a commu- 
 nity than with others. You will remember that such 
 was the case in my institution when you were a pupil 
 with us. Yea, it is even certain, that such a natural
 
 MAKE FRIENDS WITH POWERS THAT BE 93 
 
 mode of life will strengthen such children as have been 
 weakened and retarded by dietetic mistakes. 39 It 
 is this twofold confidence which furnishes me with the 
 fresh living courage to move once more forward to 
 the foundation of a new institution. 
 
 It might be well to consult with the mayor of your 
 city in advance. People like being consulted upon a 
 matter before it is matured, or before the sparrows are 
 crying it out from the housetops. It is correct that a 
 man should find in such timely consultation an expres- 
 sion of confidence, for there is always a possibility that 
 his advice, his opinion, will be heeded. Perceiving this, 
 he feels a warmer interest in the matter ; he is made 
 to recognize himself as an active member of a great 
 whole, which is founded upon the co-operation of all 
 its members. Thus confidence in self as in others is 
 awakened and it is upon such confidence, as upon con- 
 fidence in God who does not either act or speak but 
 through man, that any durable work can be erected or 
 evolved. 40 
 
 As your little daughter loves the zither, so Barop's 
 baby, not yet twelve months old, loves the piano. It 
 seems with him to be the loud sound and the indefinite 
 change of sounds which gives pleasure. I have had 
 occasion to notice a number of children feel pleasure 
 in hearing the sound of a musical instrument and per- 
 ceiving the recurring movement of rhythm. The chil- 
 dren of a peasant living near me will imitate the sound 
 of church bells for hours, singing bim, bam, bim, bam, 
 and even repeat the performance on the day following 
 when no bells are ringing. I think I perceive in all 
 this, that melody and harmony are rooted in the being
 
 94 BEGINNINGS IN TRAINING INFANTS 
 
 of man, and that the training of this faculty in childhood 
 ought to be made a part of early infant education. 
 
 It is surely not right to try to appease the active 
 tendency of life of children by allowing them all the 
 time to suck or munch by way of feeding. The ener- 
 getic infantile tendency to act, must always be satisfied, 
 and the fingers are used as means to effect the satis- 
 faction. For that reason we must by timely training 
 meet this early tendency of the child to use its hands 
 and play with hands and fingers. Let fingers and 
 hands, by games and songs composed especially for 
 movements, be led to make such rhythmical motions. 
 For which purpose the children's own activity and in- 
 ventiveness must be watched. I shall make this matter 
 a particular study whenever opportunity offers. 41 
 
 You ask under what conditions it would be proper 
 to check babies in a loud voice. It is not judicious 
 under any circumstances. The infant is living com- 
 pletely within the steady flow, the continuous current 
 of objective reality, and is therefore not able to reflect 
 on anything. 42 
 
 And great would be the error to try to arouse the 
 little ones to reflect, or in fact to any activity, before 
 they are ripe for it ; that is, before the activity begins 
 showing itself of its own accord. If your little Mary is 
 backward in her exterior development compared to that 
 of other infants, it does not matter so long as her mind 
 or her inner life is gaining strength, which, you tell me, 
 it seems to do. There is only one consideration I would 
 urge where, as in your case, quite a number of different 
 individuals are day by day producing a number of 
 impressions and reactions, and thereby influencing the
 
 WHAT CHRISTMAS SHOULD BE 95 
 
 development of the little being in different directions. 
 In such a case it is not enough that the influence of 
 each individuality should be received and retained : it 
 must also be connected and harmonized with all the 
 other influences. Such reception, retention, and har- 
 monious connection require time and equanimity. It 
 is necessary, then, that all the impressions produced 
 should continue even and restful ; that is to say, that 
 none of them should contain an element of over-excite- 
 ment. 43 
 
 For a few years past I have tried to pass the 
 Christmas holidays, not at Keilhau, but how shall I 
 express it ? with the people. The reason is, that 
 I look upon the celebration of the birthday of Christ as 
 an important means of education for the whole people. 
 It is necessary, of course, to give to the celebration a 
 kind of universal sentiment. This idea I am trying to 
 elaborate as an important concern of public life. 44 
 
 This Christmas I celebrated at Schalkau, between 
 Sennberg and Eisfeld, with children for whom Hoff- 
 mann and Meyer provided a Christmas-tree. On this 
 occasion it was the influence which, as I perceived, a 
 carefully fostered child-life exercised upon the mind of 
 older people, which afforded a full satisfaction to my 
 longing for a popular celebration of Christmas. 
 
 This experience also convinced me that we are not 
 able to influence parents, or the people, with any pros- 
 pect of success, unless we take care of the development 
 and education of their children. 43 The effect of such a 
 course will be a well-ordered whole, appearing like
 
 96 HOW TO HAVE A FESTIVAL 
 
 a cluster of flowers, a bouquet or a wreath, arranged by 
 a lover as an emblem of his sentiments. 
 
 This single experience was so valuable to me as to 
 appear well worth a journey in winter time. It shall 
 not be lost sight of again in all my life and labor here, 
 or, if we succeed, in Eisenach. 
 
 But the journey gave me more. In the society of 
 some friends of childhood and youth whom I had partly 
 met for the first time, partly learned to understand bet- 
 ter than before, I continued my journey on Monday 
 after Christmas to Cloister Veilsdorf near Hildburg- 
 hausen. There we met, by appointment, upwards of 
 twenty friends, in order to make preparations for a 
 popular festival combined with games for children and 
 young people. A number of teachers propose to cele- 
 brate the festival, uniting all their schools about Mid- 
 summer day. 
 
 The majority of those present had not the remotest 
 idea of games of development, and cognate occupations, 
 for which reason it was necessary that they themselves 
 should first be taught to play. There being not chil- 
 dren enough present, I said, " If we want to educate 
 children, we must become children ourselves." There 
 was no getting out of it ; all the dignified schoolmasters 
 had to become school-children again. They felt rather 
 strange at it at first, but were soon so completely filled 
 with the joyous spirit of the occasion that all worked 
 together in perfect harmony, their hearts glowing, their 
 senses growing clear and full of cheer, their limbs 
 supple, and their perception active. It was not until 
 eleven at night that we parted in a cheerful mood, and 
 resolved to meet again the next day at a place nearer to
 
 DEEP PUBLIC INTEREST 97 
 
 the forest, in order to continue the study of the subject, 
 and afford other educators an opportunity to take part 
 in the exercises. 
 
 And when I arrived at Bruenn the day following, I 
 found a number of friends already awaiting me. Among 
 them was Mr. Heim, teacher of the upper grades of the 
 Normal School at Hildburghausen. The exercises of 
 the preceding day had interested him so much, that he 
 had started at seven in the morning and walked three 
 hours in order to be in time for the commencement on 
 the second day. He has been an esteemed teacher of 
 the majority of the teachers at present holding positions 
 as public-school teachers in the country round about ; 
 for which reason I greatly rejoiced at his zeal in the 
 matter as an example to all others and a blessing to 
 the cause. 
 
 The number present this day could hardly find seats 
 in the room of the schoolmaster, at whose house we 
 had met. I showed the occupations of children and 
 their effect upon the mind and life of the child. When 
 we parted in the evening, a meeting at a larger room 
 in Oberwind was agreed upon for the next day, which 
 was Wednesday, December 2gth. Children were to be 
 present, with whom games should be played similar to 
 those which were to be played at the Spielfest [festival 
 of games] projected for midsummer. I prepared the 
 children in the evening and morning, and they displayed 
 so much love, joy, and perseverance in the matter that 
 I was emboldened to let them show their performances 
 before the assembled teachers in the afternoon. 
 
 The meeting at Poppenwind on the day following 
 was still more numerous. A number of clergymen
 
 98 WHY IT WAS SUCCESSFUL 
 
 were present. Two pastors from Eisfeld had come in 
 company with all the teachers of the city. The first 
 business transacted was the reading of the resolution 
 of the Consistorium/ 6 granting the petition of the 
 teachers to be allowed to celebrate a united children's 
 Spielfest. This having been made known, those present 
 showed an increased interest in the proceedings. 
 
 After this, I again performed games with my school- 
 children, assigning the teachers to their places in 
 the ranks. The result was general satisfaction ; and 
 another appointment was made for the next day at 
 Bruenn, the home of the pastor, where the children of 
 three schools should meet. I rehearsed with them 
 again in the evening and morning, and the result was 
 highly satisfactory. The exercises of the day were also 
 witnessed by a number of ladies. 
 
 In this way my Spielfest for childhood, youth, and 
 the people, was made a certainty ; a committee for the 
 general superintendence was appointed, and I was com- 
 missioned to manage the whole affair. Should the 
 success be what I expect, I hope that the festival will 
 greatly assist our plans at Eisenach. Anyhow, I most 
 sincerely wish to see you at the Spielfest. , 47 
 
 On Friday, at six in the morning, I started on my 
 journey homeward. I had to walk the whole distance 
 from Poppenwind, by way of Heubach, Masserberg, 
 Katzhuette, Schwarzburg, and through the valley and 
 Blankenburg to Keilhau. I arrived and entered the 
 assembly room just in time to hear Middendorff speak 
 words of farewell to the old, and welcome to the new 
 year. I had desired to celebrate Sylvester 48 in my 
 home circle, and had just been able to manage it.
 
 THROUGH DARKNESS AND LIGHT 99 
 
 Never before in my life did I take leave of the old 
 year in a manner similar to this. Imagine to yourself 
 my road running in complete darkness through the 
 narrow Schwarza valley, which in this part does de- 
 servedly bear the name of the Black Valley. 49 It 
 is here very narrow, in many spots apparently without 
 an exit, as though there was no getting out of it ; the 
 mountain sides covered with a black forest, nearly 
 touching each other at the bottom. 
 
 Such a walk in the night will necessarily turn a man's 
 eye upon, and within himself, and upon the invisible 
 and all-powerful unity of life. And with such ideas 
 I entered the hall at Keilhau, all ablaze in festive 
 illumination. 
 
 In this way, my transition from the old to the new 
 year represented to me, not only by the circumstances, 
 but even in the words I heard spoken, a survey of the 
 past and a bright hope for the coming term of life. 
 This has made a deep impression on me, and I con- 
 sider it so good an omen for the successful progress of 
 the work which we are about to begin together, that I 
 feel prompted to devote another careful discussion to 
 the chances of our scheme. 
 
 You know that I was born in a village in the Thurin- 
 gian Forest called Oberweissbach where my father was 
 pastor. There were two school-teachers in the place, 
 one of them being the leader of the choir at church, 
 and the other the organist. The former taught the boys 
 and the latter the girls. My father was prevented by 
 his many official duties from teaching me himself, and
 
 IOO A GOLDEN TEXT 
 
 was compelled to send me to one of the schools. He 
 selected the girls' school, because he was not satisfied 
 with the way in which the boys' teacher attended to his 
 duties. 
 
 It was a Monday when my father took me to school 
 himself. I was placed on the seat of honor by the side 
 of the teacher, for the reason, I guess, that I was the 
 son of the pastor, or, it may be, because I was reputed 
 a mischievous boy that should not sit with the girls. 
 The smallest girls on the first form were seated just in 
 front of. me. A verse from the Bible treated in the 
 sermon on the Sunday preceding, was spoken aloud by 
 one of the older girls, and repeated by all the small 
 girls in front. On this first day of my attendance they 
 repeated the words of the Lord : " Seek ye first the 
 kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these 
 things shall be added unto you." 
 
 The verse was explained to the older girls and also 
 for me. But the little girls were not required to know 
 it perfectly before Saturday. Meanwhile the verse was 
 repeated by them in parts again and again, in the high 
 pitch of their childish voices, in chorus, and in the old 
 chanting manner of village schools. I heard this verse 
 repeated for a long time every morning of the six days 
 of the week, until the sounds, the words, and the sense 
 had produced so strong an impression upon me as to 
 make this verse the motto of my life in the truest sense 
 of the word ; for it has resounded like the chant of a 
 chorus of nuns in my ears on all the days of my life. 
 The older I grew, the more thoroughly was I led to rec- 
 ognize the full importance and efficacy, and the pro- 
 found living truth of the maxim. It became the basis
 
 HARMONY OF SCHOOL WITH HOME IOI 
 
 and the regulator of numerous undertakings of mine, 
 and always proved its entire truthfulness. 
 
 After this confession you will understand how pro- 
 foundly I was affected and pleased to learn that you, 
 my beloved, cherished friend, have selected the same 
 verse as the maxim and principle of your life. With so 
 secure a basis common to both of us, the work we com- 
 mence conjointly is sure to endure, for it contains 
 within itself the condition of duration. In this way the 
 work which we intend to carry on conjointly, is from 
 the start sanctioned by God and blessed through the 
 unity of life. Let us then behold this faith in all the 
 events of life in order to confirm and elevate our trust 
 in God and in ourselves ! 60 
 
 As you are dissatisfied with the inharmonious rela- 
 tions between school and home, between teachers and 
 parents, so, I find, do others feel in many places. It is 
 not correct to expect an improvement to be effected by 
 a reform directly affecting the home or family. Such 
 an improvement will surely follow, however, from a re- 
 form of the education of childhood, as I had occasion 
 to mention above when I spoke of the influence which 
 an increased energy of child-life must necessarily exer- 
 cise upon parents. Let us try, then, what can be done 
 by a common Kindergarten erected upon the spiritual 
 corner-stone of the other saying of Christ : " Suffer 
 little children to come unto me, for of such is the king- 
 dom of heaven." 
 
 My method of educating children must be conceived 
 and carried out in a spirit little known as yet, you say. 
 And you are right. And for this reason am I deter- 
 mined to devote myself, so far as I have myself realized
 
 IO2 RHYTHM AND TACT 
 
 this spirit, to the management of the institutions until 
 they who are now assisting me, have conceived the 
 right spirit and realize its power. There is no end of 
 difficulties obstructing my way, you say : but if we join 
 hands we can overcome them all. That may not be 
 easy to do, but I am prepared to suffer them patiently 
 until their removal can be assured. In my life I have 
 had many occasions to prove my patience and persever- 
 ance in single-handed struggle. 61 But this time I 
 shall have not only you and your ladies to support me, 
 but my pupil of whom I have spoken before. She is a 
 simple-minded, modest and sensible girl, whose activity 
 and successes in the practical work of my system will 
 be a living link of mediation between the world and 
 myself. Her help will be altogether invaluable. 62 
 
 Her activity will demonstrate the living charm per- 
 taining to a woman's play with children wherever and 
 whenever going on. And it will also show the defi- 
 ciencies attaching to the common natural play of 
 women with children. The greatest of these defects is 
 the absence of rhythm and tact. Not only the spon- 
 taneous play of older children, but all the movements 
 of the fingers and hands and members and parts of the 
 body ought from the beginning to be made rhythmical 
 in ever changing meters and verses. And the child 
 will be benefited and entertained, if the rhythmical 
 movements are accompanied, if not by songs, at all 
 events by words clearly spoken and, if possible, versi- 
 fied. Words spoken in a simple way of chanting will 
 surely produce an impression upon the child much 
 more powerful than plain speech. 
 
 Another deficiency in common play with children is
 
 NO NONSENSE WORDS TO BE USED IO3 
 
 this, that it is so frequently connected with thoughtless 
 or even meaningless words. It is true, the child does 
 not yet understand the words, but nevertheless he re- 
 tains the sound of any word indelibly on the tablet of 
 his memory. At a latter period of life, when compre- 
 hension attaches a sense to the sound, the senseless 
 word will be the more injurious. For the child, when 
 awakening to an understanding, has already been com- 
 pletely used to listen to and to employ words which 
 he does not understand and which are altogether sense- 
 less. 
 
 It is a necessary precaution to be observed by every 
 educator, to select only sensible words to be spoken to 
 children from the start. Every word ought to offer to 
 the child's mind a sound to which to attach some 
 elements of thought, from the first moment when it 
 begins to think at all, which is at the moment when 
 the first sense impressions are not only received but 
 also perceived. Such words will offer food to the mind, 
 to the heart and intellect, from the cradle, and will 
 thus, no doubt, serve to supply strength for the active 
 life to follow. 68 
 
 Miss Luise Levin, who is working in my room, has 
 told me just now, in connection with what I said above, 
 that a relative of hers, a baby of two years, did not 
 like singing, but listened with pleasure to a clear recital, 
 although he did not understand much of it. I moreover 
 know of two little boys, whose mothers used to sing 
 to them ; and whenever the latter sat down at the piano, 
 the boys would go and ask her not to sing. I wonder 
 whether the distortions of the face that accompany the 
 act of singing with the majority of performers of the
 
 IO4 SCHEMES AND PROPOSALS. 
 
 art, are the cause of this childish antipathy ? For it is 
 just this sort of singing which the boys did not want 
 to see. You see the little beings will supply us all the 
 time with problems for solution. 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SAND BATH MOULDING SAND 
 
 11 This suggestion was the origin of that most 
 useful of present Kindergarten appliances, the sand 
 bath ; and it is interesting to see how its inventor fore- 
 saw the manifold uses to which it might be put. It 
 might be, he suggests, an imitation of the Kindergar- 
 ten with its beds and walks and lawns, its little tables 
 and chairs, and the children and teachers engaged in 
 it. Then it can be used for building brick walls with 
 the cubes used as stones, or houses with blocks. The 
 latter occupation may be an imitation of building a 
 house by first digging the basement and then erecting the 
 walls, etc. The last suggestion made by the inventor 
 is most valuable, namely, the laying out of mountain 
 and valley. If carried out, this will offer a splendid 
 way of giving the first practical lessons in topography. 
 The child can build its own house with its garden, or 
 yard, and street. Or, if the children are poor and have 
 no garden, the schoolhouse may be the starting-point, 
 and may mark the street in which it stands. From this 
 street the children may go to those of their friends and 
 other places, or the nearest streets may be enlarged to 
 the city, locating the chief places and the surrounding 
 country, lake, river, and so on. A hole may be dug 
 which may serve to represent a well, a mouse-hole, or 
 105
 
 IO6 PRACTICE IN FORMS 
 
 the burrow of the fox, of the prairie-dog, etc. Trees, 
 orchards, woods, poles, parks, etc., may be made with 
 sticks and leaves. Animals, children, and men may be 
 cut out of paper, in order to give life to the landscape. 
 
 Sand forms have been made for the little ones to use 
 in various ways. They make cakes of sand with the 
 forms, and place each cake on a plate, place the plates 
 on a tray, and go to present the cakes to their teachers 
 or friends. This play practises them, first, in making 
 good forms of loose sand ; secondly, in handling the 
 form on its plate ; and thirdly, in carrying a tray full 
 of the loose heaps without upsetting them. Great 
 varieties of such forms are made and supplied in 
 boxes. 
 
 Sand of one kind or another is found in many 
 localities, and where not found it is easily procured. 
 The sand bath can, therefore, be easily had everywhere, 
 and not much study is required to make it useful to 
 children. All that is necessary is to see that the chil- 
 dren do not wallow in the sand, or throw it about, but 
 try to represent in sand forms whatever they see round 
 about them. If thus used, the sand will be found one 
 of the best means of occupation and of education for 
 the little ones. 
 
 12 Dr. Mai went to see Froebel at Keilhau in the 
 summer of 1848. But he had actively embraced the 
 Froebel idea in 1845, when he established a Kinder- 
 garten at Eisenach, which is still carried on by Miss 
 Traberth. Dr. Mai was a conscientious and clever 
 teacher, and remained at the head of his ladies' school 
 to the end of his life. His correspondence with Froe- 
 bel was carried on for several years. It is hoped that
 
 ENTIRE SELF-DEVOTION 
 
 it can be published some time, as it will surely add 
 many interesting passages to the Froebel literature. 
 
 18 Enthusiasm is faith d outrance ; and how great 
 a portion of this boundless enthusiasm Froebel pos- 
 sessed, is made evident in the advice which he gave 
 to the teacher, Mr. K - . This young man was a pub- 
 lic-school teacher at Eisenach, which means, in Ger- 
 many, an official position and regular income secured 
 for life, free from cares or anxiety about the future and 
 any vicissitudes in its lap. No political revolution, no 
 change of parties in power, can affect such a position ; 
 the German public-school teacher is settled perma- 
 nently. And this secure position in life Froebel boldly 
 advised to be thrown to the wind in order to obtain 
 freedom to serve the Kindergarten movement, which, at 
 the time, offered nothing but the certainty of continual 
 struggles and privations. To make up for such an 
 immense sacrifice, Froebel offers the sublimity of en- 
 thusiasm in the service of childhood. As Christ said, 
 " Whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find 
 it; " just so says Froebel to him who would follow him, 
 that he shall recover his loss many times by receiving 
 his own self back in a blessed and perfected condition. 
 Froebel himself had done the same thing ; he had sac- 
 rificed every prospect of outward success to his idea of 
 the education of man ; he had submitted to incredible 
 privations for it, and yet never for a moment repented 
 of it. In his biographical sketches he tells how deeply 
 his childish heart had been moved by the word, " Seek 
 ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness ; " 
 and that this had become his life-long motto, which he 
 tried to realize by making that other word of Christ his
 
 IO8 THE FIRE OF ENTHUSIASM 
 
 own which says, " Suffer little children to come unto 
 me : " and out of the abundance of this wonderful en- 
 thusiasm and faith in his divine mission he advised 
 others to follow him, if, as he said, they could do so 
 deliberately and with a devoted soul. 
 
 Slowly as a tree whose growth is not unduly has- 
 tened by the warm surroundings 'of a hothouse, but in 
 the midst of storms and frosts, alternating with heats 
 and balmy breezes, is gradually developing its form, so 
 the ideal of .his education of children had grown in the 
 mind of Froebel. And to this very slowness of devel- 
 opment was due the bright and ever-present warmth of 
 his enthusiasm. This brightness and warmth sparkled 
 in his eyes and assisted his words with those who had 
 the good luck of living with him and being taught by 
 him personally. They all imbibed his enthusiasm and 
 retained it to the end. That is why Froebel could say 
 in truth that he had never found one who had repented 
 of his resolve to devote his life to the Kindergarten 
 education. 
 
 And this enthusiasm was not buried with Froebel's 
 body. It continues in all his true disciples. And no 
 doubt, while it lasts, the great cause will grow and pros- 
 per until all mankind shall be blessed in it. 
 
 14 Although this description of the evils connected 
 with the position and office of nursery maids may have 
 been correct in Germany in those days, it is no longer 
 so, at least not in this country. For although here, in 
 most houses, the cook still holds the superior place as 
 regards salary and respect, a good dinner being consid- 
 ered of greater importance than the intellectual and 
 moral needs of the children, yet most nursery girls of
 
 MOTHERS MUST INSTRUCT THE MAIDS ICX) 
 
 our day pretend to know something about the treat- 
 ment of children. Besides, in this country, nursery 
 girls, and domestic servants in general, are not so 
 plentiful by far as in the old country. For this reason 
 it does not seem as necessary here, as it is in Europe, 
 to have institutions for the express purpose of training 
 maids in the business of nursing and of imparting the 
 first education to little children, i.e., to infants. 
 
 What is more needed here, is, that the mothers them- 
 selves should know what their children really jwant; that 
 is to say, that they should themselves have an insight 
 into the necessities of education in general, and of in- 
 fantile education in particular. They ought to know 
 that upon the proper natural development of the child 
 during its first years of life, the whole future of the 
 little one depends. Later education must and will 
 superadd many things, but the groundwork must be 
 done in the nursery. And there the mother alone 
 rules : in her is vested unlimited power, and on her 
 rests the entire responsibility. So much more necessary 
 is it for her to know the whole extent of her duty. 
 
 To the mother alone, infantile education is intrusted. 
 Why does this trust not extend to the time when the 
 child grows older ? Woman is undoubtedly the natural 
 educator of man ; and the entire management of educa- 
 tion ought to be, and would, I think, have been in- 
 trusted to her long ago, had she shown herself better 
 prepared to undertake it. But she is not yet prepared 
 for so responsible an office, and her lack of capability 
 is due to her own misapprehension of the situation 
 more than to any other circumstances. The women 
 teachers of this country generally consider their public-
 
 I IO CLASSES OF MOTHERS 
 
 school duties as a convenient pastime between their 
 own years of school attendance and marriage; and 
 they do not look upon the office of teacher as a life 
 business for which they ought to prepare and study 
 with all the power and energy of which they are capa- 
 ble. The neglect of self-preparation is the cause of 
 the lack of capacity to which must be attributed the 
 fact that female teachers attend to the duties in the 
 classes, while nearly all the superintendence has to be 
 done by male teachers, who have made the task of 
 teaching their life business, and have thoroughly pre- 
 pared and fitted themselves for it. No doubt, the fact 
 of having assigned to woman the largest share of public- 
 school duties, gives to this country a position in ad- 
 vance of every other country of the world ; nevertheless, 
 a great deal remains to be done. 
 
 In order to enable this nation to do its duty in this 
 direction, the female half of the people must first be 
 prepared to comprehend the duties naturally devolving 
 on them. Mothers' classes have been started in many 
 places in connection with the Kindergarten movement, 
 and they will certainly do their share toward awakening 
 the necessary interest in infantile education. But more 
 is needed to prepare young wives and girls for the 
 duties of their future calling as nurses and educators 
 of their own children. 
 
 Not to prepare carefully for this calling, is to inflict 
 irreparable injury upon their own prospects of happi- 
 ness. For there is no happiness comparable to that 
 which a mother will find in the training of her own 
 children. The errors of so many women of our time, 
 in seeking in society the recreation, or pleasure, which
 
 INSTITUTIONS FOR MAIDS III 
 
 they overlook, or do not know how to find, in the com- 
 pany of their children, will always evoke a feeling of 
 compassion and pity in those who have enjoyed the 
 true delights of home. A woman need not be a re- 
 cluse; but if she would be truly happy, let her children 
 always be her first and greatest consideration ; and she 
 should not allow to society or to any public claims 
 more than the second place among her duties. 
 
 Institutions for nursery maids, as proposed by Froe- 
 bel, and at present established in many places in the 
 old country, seem out of place in this country. But 
 such institutions would do well for mothers and girls in 
 general. A full Kindergarten course may not be ne- 
 cessary, as they can attain as much as they want in a 
 shorter time. The course in such institutions must 
 consist in imparting practical and theoretical instruc- 
 tion : first, in attending to the bodily wants of children, 
 including dietetics and hygiene ; secondly, in keeping 
 children busy in a manner to impart a love of work and 
 arouse a love of self-improvement, and to develop the 
 social instincts ; and, thirdly, in awakening a general 
 interest in the progress of mankind, as depending upon 
 the education of the growing generation. Such insti- 
 tutions would do more for the general progress of the 
 nation than any other institution now existing, or any 
 which can be imagined. 
 
 15 Pastor Hildenhagen at Quetz was one of the 
 earliest and most enthusiastic disciples of Froebel. 
 He had founded a Kindergarten at Quetz, which was 
 in a flourishing condition, as well as the young people's 
 school which he had founded. This prosperity lasted 
 as long as he remained at Quetz. But when he left
 
 112 THE KINDERGARTEN A "REFORMATION 
 
 that place, following his love of teaching youth, and 
 having accepted the head mastership of an institute at 
 Halle, both the Kindergarten and the young people's 
 school soon died from inanition. These facts are tell- 
 ing examples of what a man of enthusiasm and energy 
 can do for the advancement of mankind, and of educa- 
 tion more particularly; and likewise of the duty devolv- 
 ing upon every one who knows the New Education to 
 do his utmost to make it prosper and prevail in the face 
 of the diffidence and indolence pervading the ranks of 
 the people at large. 
 
 16 The " Reformation " is the name generally given 
 in Germany to the reformation of the Church of Rome, 
 inaugurated by Martin Luther. It began in 1517, and 
 was the cause of almost incessant wars until the peace 
 of Westphalia in 1648. 
 
 This letter being addressed to a faithful minister of 
 the Lutheran denomination, Froebel evidently thought 
 he could enlist the pastor's interest in his cause most 
 effectually by showing what he conceived to be the 
 points of contact between the Lutheran reformation of 
 the Church and the Froebelian reformation of the school. 
 
 17 To Martin Luther the German nation is indebted 
 for a remarkable extension and popularization of its 
 long-standing educational institutions. It was he who 
 introduced the first public schools and wrote his cate- 
 chism of the Protestant faith as the first school-book 
 of Germany. He impressed upon all the Protestant 
 princes and States of Germany the necessity of having 
 the youth of the land publicly and regularly instructed 
 in the faith, if they would stand firm against Roman 
 Catholicism.
 
 LUTHER AT WARTBURG 113 
 
 18 The Wartburg is an old castle of the mediaeval 
 Landgraves of Thuringia, located close to the city of 
 Eisenach. After Luther had had his hearing and made 
 his famous speeches before the Reichstag (imperial con- 
 gress) at Worms on the Rhine, in 1521, he was, on his 
 return journey, suddenly seized by a band of masked 
 knights and taken to the Wartburg with orders to re- 
 main there. There he began his translation of the 
 Bible. While engaged in the work, the devil (so says 
 the legend) appeared to him and threatened him. But 
 Luther, nothing daunted, threw an inkstand at his Sa- 
 tanic majesty, and the black spot on the wall made by 
 the ink is still shown to visitors at the Wartburg. It is 
 to this translation of the Bible that Froebel refers as the 
 word of the Lord made ready for us. The Wartburg, 
 by the by, is also the place where the great singing con- 
 test occurs in Richard Wagner's opera " Tannhauser." 
 
 19 Froebel was in the habit of sending those of his 
 letters which were of particular importance to a number 
 of friends and sympathizers. At this period copies of 
 his letters were submitted to Von Arnswald. So was 
 letter four addressed to a pastor at Eisenach. It is 
 in answer to this communication that letter five was 
 written. 
 
 20 Froebel's careful attention was directed toward 
 each child with which he came in contact. Thus he 
 encouraged his friend Arnswald to forward to him 
 reports upon the daily doings of the little Mary, Arns- 
 wald's daughter. These reports Froebel read to his 
 pupils and discussed with them, rendering every single 
 observation made by Arnswald more useful by showing 
 its relation to general principles. He was also ever
 
 114 FROEBEL S SYMPATHETIC ATTENTION 
 
 ready to receive child visitors, and to entertain and 
 keep them occupied. Being once interpellated upon 
 such an occasion, he said to his friend, " Who knows 
 what is in that child ? It may grow to be of much 
 greater importance than I am to the world, and I feel 
 bound to serve it as much as is in my power." Another 
 time, a little boy from the village came to see Froebel, 
 and stood bashfully at the door of the room, in which 
 a merry play was going on. " Why do you not step in, 
 Joe ? " the boy was asked. " The playmaster must 
 first come to me," replied the boy, half aloud. Froebel 
 chanced to overhear the boy's reply, and immediately 
 went out to satisfy the boy's wish. He then went to 
 see the boy's home, and finding the floor of the rooms 
 to be the bare ground, without a wood flooring, he told 
 the mother it was unwholesome for the children. In 
 the winter following, when Froebel was absent from 
 his home, the same mother went to Frau Froebel and 
 asked her to write to him that a flooring had been laid 
 in her dwelling; adding that she felt sure Froebel 
 would be glad to know that his advice had been acted 
 on. This shows the sympathetic attention which Froe- 
 bel paid to everybody with whom he came in contact, 
 chiefly where there were children ; and also that he knew 
 how to show his sympathy in a way so gratifying to the 
 people that they gratefully received and esteemed it. 
 
 21 This little trait is another demonstration of the 
 self-denying sympathy with which Froebel treated the 
 children. There are few people who, on being com- 
 pelled to hear all day long the same loud, monotonous 
 melody from a child's throat, would not grow nervous 
 and irritated and desire to stop it. Not so Froebel.
 
 FUNCTIONS OF DIFFERENT TEACHERS 1 15 
 
 He listened to the chant, and studied its relation to child 
 life, and concluded that song has an important part in 
 the development of childhood, and ought to be carefully 
 fostered in every family. 
 
 22 Froebel carefully distinguishes the different grades 
 of qualification of women for the office of educating 
 children. He distinguishes between Kinderpflegerinnen 
 (literally children's caretakers) and Kinderfiihrinnen 
 (literally children's guides). Among Kinderpflegerin- 
 nen he distinguishes Kinderwarterinnen (children's 
 nurses) and Kindermadchen (literally children's ser- 
 vants, i.e., nurses). By Kinderfiihrerin he means Kin- 
 dergarteners, or real educators of children in Kinder- 
 gartens or in the houses. 
 
 23 The family Arnswald and other friends to whom 
 Froebel submitted the draft, criticised it so extensively 
 as to convince Froebel of the necessity to rewrite 
 the whole. The identical draft here published has 
 never before been printed, except in the Kindergarten 
 Magazine of November, 1891. 
 
 24 The original lectures of Froebel as delivered to 
 his pupils are in course of preparation for publication. 
 They will be accompanied by remarks indicating how 
 Frau Froebel used to explain and practically illustrate 
 the lectures. This little work may serve as a guide to 
 the lecturer and teacher, and likewise as a handbook 
 to refresh the memory of students in and out of Kinder- 
 garten Normal schools, and also as a reference book to 
 the practical Kindergartener. 
 
 26 The pamphlet here mentioned by Froebel was 
 published under the title, " Die Kindergarten," by W. 
 Middendorff. A second edition of it was prepared by Dr.
 
 Il6 THE CHILDREN BRING HOME JOY 
 
 Wichard Lange, and published by Hoffman & Campe, 
 at Hamburg. The little book contains a clear and 
 concise exposition of the principles of the system, and 
 may still be studied with advantage by Kindergarteners 
 and mothers. As a sample of its style we print an Ex- 
 tract from Middendorff ' s Die Kindergaerten, " Look 
 at the little ones, how they start off on their walk to 
 the Kindergarten in the morning, happy and cheerful, 
 like young tourists ; and again how they long to get 
 home to their parents a few hours later in order to com- 
 municate the splendid treasures which are filling their 
 minds. They have the precious feeling that they have 
 been active, have exercised their faculties, have gained 
 an increase of pleasures and abilities. They take home 
 this treasure like a sweet-smelling nosegay with which 
 to rejoice the hearts of their parents. Will these dis- 
 appoint them ? Look at the father coming home from 
 business with a longing for mental recreation as though 
 it were an enlivening draught, and looking to his little 
 ones to offer him the potion. He is not disappointed. 
 Every trace of weariness and dissatisfaction that may 
 have been visible on the mother's brow, has already 
 been smoothed away by the happy prattle of the chil- 
 dren, who now are busy to freshen his appetite for din- 
 ner. Their cheeks rosy and fresh, their eyes sparkling 
 with cheerful animation, they will answer his ques- 
 tion, what they have done at the Kindergarten, before 
 he has had time to ask. The words are hardly quick 
 enough to express the pleasurable ideas that fill their 
 minds : How often they have hit the cubes with the 
 balls ; how often they caught the ball in succession ; 
 what new games they have learned ; what new plants
 
 ORPHANAGES NOT ESTABLISHED II f 
 
 are growing in their beds in the garden ; what flowers 
 are there in bloom ; what they have built, namely, their 
 breakfast table, their mother's sewing-table, the sun 
 that set so red the preceding evening ; what songs and 
 sayings they have learned ; what stories were told by 
 the teacher ; how their good friends, the girls and boys, 
 behaved, and so on. 
 
 Do you not think that, imperfect as they maybe, it is 
 these childish communications that will render the meal 
 cheery and wholesome, and will unite the whole family 
 as with a bond of sympathy, blessing it with renewed 
 strength and delight ? In this way the Kindergarten 
 will clear the atmosphere of the household and make 
 family life happy in its harmony." 
 
 26 It was not granted to Froebel to carry out this 
 plan which he calls " the copestone of his earthly la- 
 bors." He was taken away too soon for us and for the 
 world. During the few years that elapsed between the 
 communication of the above scheme to his friend 
 and his death, his means were too scanty, and the en- 
 couragement he met with too small, to enable him to 
 attempt the realization of so comprehensive an enter- 
 prise. It is fortunate that his plan was not buried with 
 him. In the above description and the additional ex- 
 planations given in his subsequent letters to the same 
 address, the scheme is fully developed and can be 
 clearly understood according to the intentions of the 
 master. No class of children is more in need of help 
 than orphans, and the duty to care for them is among 
 the most essential, necessary and beneficial. It is by 
 a proper education that the best interests of all mankind 
 are to be served, and it would truly be a blessing to
 
 IlS A GERMAN NOTION THE ZITHER 
 
 the rising generation, if orphan institutions could be 
 established according to the plan of Froebel. 
 
 27 The name " German Kindergarten " was given to 
 this institution by Froebel, June 28, 1840. On that 
 day the four hundredth anniversary of the invention of 
 the art of printing by Johann Gutenberg was cele- 
 brated all over Germany. The festivity at Blankenburg, 
 where Froebel had established his first Kindergarten, 
 was very enthusiastic, inspired by Froebel who deliv- 
 ered the speech of the day. It was on this occasion 
 that he said, the purpose and the inner life of the insti- 
 tution demanded that it should be called " Kindergar- 
 ten ; " but the spirit that had originated it and favored 
 and fostered its growth, was altogether German, for 
 which reason he proposed to call it the " German Kin- 
 dergarten." His hearers were greatly moved, and 
 did not separate without subscribing a goodly sum to 
 advance the spread of the German Kindergarten. 
 
 28 Concerning the zither recommended by Herr von 
 Arnswald for use at the Kindergarten, Mrs. Luise 
 Froebel reports that this instrument is in use at a Kin- 
 dergarten at the city of Eisenach. She says that the 
 children's songs at that institution had an unusually 
 sweet sound, and that a disturbing want of harmony, too 
 often found at other institutions, was never heard at this 
 Kindergarten at Eisenach. The zither she suggests, 
 may produce sounds which the untutored ear of the 
 child may hear more distinctly than the sounds of a 
 piano, and which it can consequently strike more ac- 
 curately with its voice. It might be useful for other 
 Kindergartens to act upon this suggestion in order to 
 improve the training of the musical gift.
 
 THE REALITY OF IDEAS 
 
 29 This is a strange saying : The consciousness of 
 earthly life will afford pleasures which will continue 
 ours beyond the grave and determine the condition of 
 our soul. Such a condition is impossible, unless the 
 soul after death is of a kind with the soul in the 
 flesh, unless the departed soul has sentiments and 
 states like those of the soul in an earthly body. It 
 follows that Froebel did not conceive the departed soul 
 to be an unsubstantial, impalpable phantom, but a real 
 being with feelings and thoughts which would continue 
 the soul life of man on earth. Whether this idea be 
 considered as corresponding to facts and experiences, 
 or as gratuitous, there is no denying the fact that it is 
 in harmony with the conception which Froebel had of 
 life in general. He never had a thought, but it was a 
 symbol of an exterior reality, and his ideas were not 
 clear to him himself until he had outwardly realized 
 them. He found similes in nature and life for all his 
 thoughts ; that is to say, every thought of his was real- 
 ized to him in a form perceptible to his senses, or it 
 assumed a shape distinctly perceivable. It was the 
 same with his belief in immortality : his immortal soul 
 was realized in his thoughts as a distinctly defined 
 shape or form which, naturally, could hardly be differ- 
 ent from his natural body. In his creed, as in his edu- 
 cational and practical principles, it is evident from the 
 thought just elucidated, Froebel's intellect rose to an 
 astonishing height of naive and ingenuous power which 
 distinguishes him advantageously from the general 
 tameness and mediocrity of his times. 
 
 80 Here again Froebel proves himself in advance of 
 his time. Light and pure air were not valued so much
 
 I2O POSTURE, LIGHT, AND AIR 
 
 in his time as they now are, but he insists that they add 
 to a more beautiful evolution of life. His conclusions 
 are confirmed by the numerous examinations of the 
 eyes of school-children made and published in the last 
 twenty or thirty years. These medical examinations 
 have proved that insufficient light, or light entering the 
 room from the wrong side, does not only injure the eye- 
 sight, causing short-sightedness with all its unpleasant 
 influences and its stunting effect upon the development 
 of the power of perception, but also induces the habit 
 of stooping in sitting when engaged in reading or writ- 
 ing. Such incorrect carriage of the body causes con- 
 gestion to the vital organs of the trunk, to the head, and, 
 most banefully, to other organs. It is true that the 
 incorrect shape of the desks and benches used in our 
 schools greatly aggravates the evil influences of insuffi- 
 cient light. Such errors of construction tend not only 
 to deteriorate the health of body and mind of school- 
 children, but render them less capable to do their duty 
 at school and to make such progress as they might 
 under other surroundings. Nor should it be forgotten 
 that they increase the difficulties with which the teacher 
 has to contend, and weaken the chance of maintaining 
 good discipline. The construction of schoolhouses and 
 furniture with particular attention to hygienic condi- 
 tions, ought to be made a special study by school boards, 
 superintendents, and teachers. 
 
 81 What a wonderful amount of practical wisdom 
 there is expressed in this " not all at once." It is a 
 practical realization of the scriptural warning to take 
 no heed of the morrow ; enough for the day is the 
 trouble thereof. And it is less likely to be misunder-
 
 USE OF PUPILCHILDREN IN TRAINING SCHOOLS 121 
 
 stood. It means this much : If your plan is well ma- 
 tured, and you are convinced that your strength is great 
 enough to carry.it out, do not shrink from momentary 
 difficulties, but face them boldly, and be sure they will 
 diminish and disappear in the most natural way. Begin 
 not larger than your present means allow, and for the 
 requirements of the morrow, the morrow will surely 
 take care. It is this little saying " not all at once," 
 which enabled Froebel to accomplish all he did without 
 any means at starting. 
 
 82 August Hermann Francke was the founder of the 
 extensive Orphan House at the city of Halle-on- 
 Saale in Prussia. He had not a cent when he began 
 his orphanage, says the legend, but raised all he wanted 
 by prayer. The establishment is at present one of the 
 largest scholastic institutions of Germany. 
 
 ss \Ve will not lend our children to be experimented 
 on and used for practice work in the training of stu- 
 dents preparing to be teachers some future day," is an 
 objection frequently made by parents to schools where 
 so-called practice teaching is going on. It would be 
 as correct to refuse being treated at a hospital con- 
 nected with a school of medicine, because medical 
 students are frequently deputed in such institutions to 
 attend to patients. Such students are under the super- 
 intendence of an experienced staff of medical men, 
 whose instructions they have to carry out. In most 
 cases, therefore, patients are in better hands with 
 these students than with a common, irresponsible, and 
 too often incompetent private practitioner. It is the 
 same with the practice teacher who acts under the 
 superintendence of an experienced staff of teachers.
 
 122 STATE INTERFERENCE BANEFUL 
 
 Common-school teachers, on the other hand, are not 
 always trained for their calling, and are consequently 
 incompetent even more frequently than medical prac- 
 titioners. In most cases, therefore, pupils are in better 
 hands with students of Normal Schools than with more 
 or less incompetent teachers at work in public schools. 
 
 84 How correct this view of Froebel was, the present 
 German emperor has again proved by his wanton 
 attempt to regulate the schools of Germany according 
 to his personal fancy, as if one man could at any time 
 be able to say what is right in school systems, or 
 methods, and reduce the teachers of a whole nation to 
 machines. The same event shows how erroneous would 
 be any attempt to make the public school of this 
 country dependent upon the central government, to be 
 handled like the post-office. It also shows that the 
 governments of the states, and of cities and country 
 towns, ought not to be allowed the power to interfere 
 with schools to as great an extent as they do. The 
 school must be independent of all governmental inter- 
 ference so far as system and method go. All the influ- 
 ence to be allowed to the authorities ought to be the 
 naming of certain subjects to be taught in school, and 
 the goal to be reached in them. 
 
 85 " Nothing would be easier than a transformation 
 of children's refuges into genuine Kindergartens," says 
 Froebel, if " our misguided commiseration did not lead 
 us into any number of miserable actions." Examples 
 need not be crowded together to prove the truth of the 
 latter assertion in a country where "politics " rules the 
 appointments of teachers as of other office-holders. 
 Regarding appointments to communal and state
 
 JEAN PAULS "LEVANA 123 
 
 offices, there have always been criticism and recrimina- 
 tion. But for the defence of poor, innocent childhood 
 against unfit teachers and nurses, the public press has 
 little time or room to spare. But will not the girls and 
 boys of the day be the women and men of the future ? 
 And ought not their interests to be protected, and their 
 education to be the main object of public as of private 
 life ? Their education must enable them to make a 
 living, and to fill their places in the world to the full 
 extent of their natural abilities. Under such circum- 
 stances, to appoint an incompetent teacher of youth, or 
 a disqualified matron of a children's home, is a crime 
 committed against the generation to come. 
 
 86 The Kindergartnerin whom Froebel here calls one 
 of his best pupils, and whom he intended to accompany 
 him and help him and be his right hand in the estab- 
 lishment of his great plan, was none other than Miss 
 Luise Levin, afterwards his wife, at present his widow. 
 They did not go to Eisenach, as Froebel thought of 
 doing when he wrote this letter, but the lady was his 
 sole and indispensable helpmate in all his undertakings, 
 his classes and lectures to the end of his life. 
 
 87 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, known in literature by 
 his two first names, Jean Paul, was one of the most pro- 
 lific and original of German authors. For a long time 
 he shared with Schiller the honor of being the favorite 
 of the youth of Germany. His work on education, 
 called " Levana," retains to this day a certain reputa- 
 tion for its ingenious reflections and quaint sayings. 
 
 88 When Froebel undertook this journey, he was less 
 than four months short of sixty-six years old. But the 
 activity he displayed was something wonderful. He
 
 124 FROEBEL S TIRELESS INDUSTRY 
 
 travelled on foot across the high mountains and deep 
 valleys of the Thuringian forest, covered with deep snow 
 and ice. In order not to lose any of the precious hours 
 of day, he would wander from one place to another in 
 the evening, after having finished his business in the 
 place he left. And however late he might arrive at a 
 new place, he would always be up and start out on his 
 business early the next morning. On the 3ist of 
 December, 1847, ne started early in the morning from 
 Eisfeld, and walked the whole day across the snow- 
 clad mountains to his home at Keilhau, where he 
 arrived about midnight. He joined in the jovial meet- 
 ing of teachers and pupils, and added in his usual way 
 a great deal to the enjoyment of the assembly. After 
 all had gone to bed, he sat up for several hours writing 
 letters, a number of which were ready for mailing in 
 the morning. Yet he was not late for breakfast. 
 
 89 The assertion of Froebel "that a natural mode of 
 life will strengthen such children as have been weak- 
 ened and retarded in their development by dietetic 
 mistakes," the editor of these letters has had confirmed 
 repeatedly in his own experience. He was for years at 
 the head of a boarding-school for boys, where regu- 
 larity of life and a judicious diet, providing the best 
 meals, but no sweets or cakes between meals, were 
 customary. There was an official doctor to satisfy the 
 requirements of anxious mothers, but his services were 
 hardly ever required. Boys that arrived at the insti- 
 tution weakly, and given to all kinds of morbid habits, 
 had their vigor restored rapidly, and dropped their un- 
 pleasant infirmities. Our city life usually overwhelms 
 childhood with possessions, enjoyments, and experi-
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN 12$ 
 
 ences so numerous and unsuitable to the youthful mind 
 as to produce a state of excitement so much more 
 deleterious as it is incessant. Such a state will en- 
 gender debility, and predispose to disease. Holiday 
 trips and sojourns at the seaside or at summer resorts 
 are looked to for relief and cure. Such changes work 
 a deal of good, no doubt, but only temporarily. With 
 the return of the children to the city, the former mode 
 of life begins again, and with it the action of the causes 
 that produced all the former mischief. So long as 
 these causes continue to injure the healthful develop- 
 ment of childhood during nine or ten months of the 
 year, periods of recreation of two or three months will 
 not help a great deal, and the little good they might do 
 is generally lessened by most families managing so as 
 to keep up the injurious over-excitement during holiday 
 times. To effect a cure, a lasting change of the entire 
 mode of life is requisite. Urban over-excitement must 
 be overcome by a plain, natural mode of life befitting 
 youthful development. That will effect a cure without 
 medical attention and without trips to sea baths and 
 health resorts, for it will remove the causes of indis- 
 position. 
 
 40 This sentiment seems to be contrary to that of the 
 world at large. People will commonly say that a man 
 cannot succeed unless he knows how to keep silence 
 upon his plans. Froebel, on the contrary, advises his 
 friend to consult others upon his great scheme, and 
 proceeds to give his reasons why such consultations 
 ought to be generally resorted to. Both principles 
 seem to be correct if properly adapted to different 
 circumstances. People in general have to be afraid of
 
 126 FROEBEL NOT EGOTISTICAL 
 
 competition because they act from egotistic motives, 
 and fear that others will do the same. The only way to 
 prevent others from acting to the disadvantage of any 
 man with whom they can compete, is that he should 
 keep his plans and methods of action secret. But 
 Froebel was not afraid of competition ; on the contrary, 
 he would have greatly rejoiced if thousands had arisen 
 to compete with him in establishing Kindergartens. 
 There was not a trace of egotism in him. He schemed 
 and labored for nothing but the welfare of others. He 
 had no occasion, therefore, to keep his schemes secret, 
 but tried to spread them broadcast over the land, took 
 everybody into his confidence, and found the philo- 
 sophical reasons, which he enunciates in his letter, in 
 favor of his conduct. 
 
 41 Many students of infantile life, both medical men 
 and educators, have raised their voices of warning 
 against sucking-bags or bottles given to keep infants 
 quiet. But none of them connected the tendency to 
 suck with the activity of the hands and fingers, as 
 Froebel does. Yet there seems to be a connection, 
 as Froebel asserts. Whatever a baby can reach is 
 pushed in the mouth by the hands ; and the hands are 
 used to push down whatever the mouth may have re- 
 ceived. Froebel concludes that engaging the hands in 
 other pursuits will direct the energy of the child to the 
 occupation of his hands by themselves, and deliver him 
 from the predominance of the demands of his appetite. 
 Thus, manual exercise is used by Froebel to keep the 
 stomach healthy. 
 
 42 Froebel maintains that talking in a loud voice of 
 warning, or shouting to babies, is wrong, whatever the
 
 BABIES NOT TO BE FRIGHTENED 1 27 
 
 circumstances may be. Every sudden, loud sound will 
 shock the nervous system of children and terrify them. 
 Such a shock may at times be of good effect in older 
 children, that are able to reflect and connect the shock 
 and the menace contained in it with some preceding 
 event. But babies are not able to reason about cause 
 and effect. They feel the shock as an isolated occur- 
 rence. They are unable to understand any causal 
 connection between their feeling of fright and an action 
 of their own. The editor has known a man who had 
 an only child, of whom he was very fond. He one day 
 put his lips playfully to the cheeks of the baby, and 
 sounded a steady, deep " Boo ! " The child looked up 
 in affright, set up a loud cry, and began weeping con- 
 vulsively. Another baby about a year old was saluted 
 in a stern, half-threatening tone by a visitor fond of 
 practical jokes, and also began sobbing convulsively. 
 For many weeks afterward, the child could never look 
 at the same person without falling into another fit of 
 sobbing. 
 
 48 This warning, to be careful that impressions made 
 and influences exercised upon children should be even 
 and restful, studiously avoiding over-excitement, ought 
 to be carefully heeded, not only where there are many 
 persons about a child, but also where it is left to the 
 sole care of the mother. It is true that children sub- 
 ject to an exciting treatment usually make an impres- 
 sion of being quicker and brighter than others ; but 
 this brightness is procured at the expense of the health 
 of body and mind, and is followed, with rare exceptions, 
 by physical and mental suffering in later years. It is not 
 uncommon that children treated in accordance with the
 
 128 EXCITEMENT INJURIOUS 
 
 natural method, as indicated by Froebel, like little Mary 
 Arnswald mentioned in the letter, seem to lag behind in 
 their mental development during the first years of life 
 if compared with children educated in a manner to 
 over-excite the nervous system. But if their natural 
 gifts are only like those of their companions, made more 
 lively by artificial incitements than they naturally should 
 be, they will surely overtake the latter in the end. The 
 educator who excites, has not learned to patiently await 
 the spontaneous development in the natural growth of 
 childhood. He will, for example, accelerate the power 
 of muscular response to impressions, by not allowing 
 time enough for the sensuous images to be duly cog- 
 nized and connected with the store of percepts already 
 retained by the infantile mind. He will show the child 
 incessant changes of lights, colors, sounds, and move- 
 ments, which will prevent any one impression to pro- 
 duce a lasting image. Or, in order to rapidly develop 
 the power of speech, he will repeat to the child all 
 manner of ready-made words and utterances, the mean- 
 ing of which the child does not understand. Such 
 utterances, not being of natural growth, will cause an 
 over-excitement when they are received, and a similar 
 over-excitement whenever the child gives them out 
 again. Children brought up on this plan, live in an 
 incessant state of excitement. They are credited with 
 being exceedingly clever or " cute," and are the great 
 pride of their parents, who will parade their precocity 
 on every opportunity. It is a vanity for which the poor 
 children have to pay a high price, and they are to be 
 esteemed fortunate if they can ever overcome the loss 
 of stamina produced by such an erroneous treatment.
 
 THE FORCING PROCESS NOT BEST 1 29 
 
 In order to prevent such injuries to children, they 
 should be surrounded with conditions of a sound, natural 
 growth ; or, to state it in a shorter way, should be 
 reared by the Kindergarten method, that is to say, by. 
 the Froebel system. The parent is not to be alarmed 
 if the Froebel-child seems to lag behind those pre- 
 cocious little ones whose minds are forced to display 
 artificial blossoms like hothouse plants, and which will 
 fade like these when exposed to the fresh winds of the 
 open garden of nature. Let the mind of a child grow 
 a little slower ; there is no fear that it will continue 
 backward and stunted. Nature will vindicate her su- 
 perior power, if only the parent is assiduous in lead- 
 ing and inciting the child so far as is spontaneously 
 indicated by its own love and tendency of learning and 
 acting, that is, of receiving impressions and manifest- 
 ing the appropriate responses, and of giving shape 
 or objective reality to the subjective images of its own 
 mind. This is what Froebel calls entwickelnd erziehm, 
 i.e., educating by development, or by evolving whatever 
 innate talents may manifest themselves. It is the 
 opposite of a common-school education, which does 
 not evolve talents, but pumps so-called knowledge into 
 the children's minds, memory without reason serving as 
 pumping-plug. 
 
 44 Among the Germans, Christmas is, more than with 
 any other nation, a children's festival. That is why 
 Froebel attached so much importance to it. As all his 
 reformatory ideas were directed upon the education of 
 childhood, and through childhood of man, every insti- 
 tution that might in any way be turned to account for 
 the advancement of popular education, engaged his
 
 I3O CHILDREN TO REFORM PARENTS 
 
 endeavors to develop it and render it better adapted to 
 educational ends. It was this same purpose which he 
 pursued in his endeavors to change popular open-air 
 summer festivals, picnics, and excursions into what he 
 called " Spielfests," or " festivals of games," a descrip- 
 tion of which, as Froebel had conceived them, was 
 given in Letter 6, p. 65, and another will be found in 
 this letter. 
 
 45 This idea that a proper natural education of chil- 
 dren is the best and surest way to reach, to influence, 
 and to reform their parents, has been often repeated 
 since the times of Froebel. A very attractive exempli- 
 fication of the idea was given by Middendorff, as quoted 
 in Note 25, p. 116. The idea is frequently stated in 
 modern times, by saying that the quickest and surest 
 method of reforming mankind consists in the abandon- 
 ment of the adult generation, and in concentrating all 
 attention and means upon the education of childhood. 
 
 46 " Consistorium " is the name of a board of super- 
 visors of churches and schools, appointed by a German 
 government. Its functions are similar to those of 
 governing bodies of different denominations in this 
 country, such as presbyteries, synods, etc. Teachers 
 and clergymen in Germany are bound to ask leave to 
 do anything which is out of the common course of their 
 duties, such as the festival of games proposed by 
 Froebel. 
 
 47 It is with an indescribable feeling of sadness that 
 the editor finds himself compelled here to inform the 
 readers of this letter of Froebel's, that the lovable and 
 patient sufferer and friend of childhood, our great 
 master of the New Education, was doomed to experi-
 
 THE FESTIVAL CAME TO NAUGHT 13! 
 
 ence another painful disappointment with this his 
 cherished plan of the Midsummer Spielfest (festival of 
 games). It was never carried out. Within a few short 
 weeks after he had penned the letter to his friend, 
 Von Arnswald, the revolution of February and March, 
 1848, broke out, and caused a subversion of public 
 institutions and social order so universal and complete 
 as to render the execution of Froebel's plan impossi- 
 ble. As is evident from the whole cheery tone of the 
 letter, Froebel had entertained great hopes that the 
 festival might spread a knowledge of, and practical 
 interest in, his natural method of education. The 
 festival was to unite a number of teachers and schools 
 and populations of villages and towns in a practical 
 experience and participation in the joys which their 
 children should find in the games, which Froebel would 
 manage in a way to make them efficacious means of 
 development and education. All these hopes of the 
 old master came to naught. 
 
 48 Sylvester is the name of the saint to whom the 
 3ist day of December, or the last day of the year, is 
 dedicated in the calendar. The evening of this day 
 is a time of jollification in Germany and other countries 
 of Europe. At midnight the New Year is " let in," as 
 it is called, with ceremonies of different kinds at differ- 
 ent places. It is this festival of which Froebel speaks. 
 
 49 The German word " schwarz " means black. It is 
 given as a name to a number of localities distinguished 
 for their sombre appearance. The valley of which 
 Froebel here tells is unusually narrow, like a deep 
 canyon in the mountains of Western America. The 
 dark forests growing from the brinks of the little stream
 
 132 FROEBEL AGAIN DISAPPOINTED 
 
 to the tops of the mountain sides, are mirrored in the 
 clear waters, and give to them the dark appearance on 
 account of which the rivulet is called the " Schwarza." 
 A spot most widely known among tourists and the 
 travelling public in all countries is the " Schwarzwald," 
 or Black Forest, in the southwest of Germany, so called 
 from the dark appearance of its extensive fir-bedecked 
 mountain tops. 
 
 60 This was another forlorn hope which poor Froebel 
 was compelled to relinquish. The institution at Eise- 
 nach was never established. It was the public disturb- 
 ances of the year 1848 which prevented its establishment. 
 The excitement of the political agitation was too great 
 to allow a quiet movement, aiming to lay a foundation 
 for the progress of mankind by means of a natural 
 method of education, to adequately engage the interest 
 of men. The hopes and fears of the promises and 
 results of the political revolution kept the minds of 
 the people so completely occupied as to render it 
 impossible for them to devote their thoughts to an ex- 
 amination of the peaceable educational revolution 
 intended by Froebel. The public looked out for 
 political reforms as the only true panaceas for the ills 
 oppressing mankind, and was thereby rendered inca- 
 pable of understanding the principle of the Kinder- 
 garten. 
 
 61 Well had Froebel a right to speak of many occa- 
 sions which his life had offered him to prove his 
 patience and perseverance. Neither could he have 
 expected anything different. If you would be spared 
 trials of unusual severity, choose a beaten track to 
 travel through life, a track long laid out, and well-
 
 THE IDEALIST SEEKS NEW PATHS 133 
 
 trodden by thousands. In such a path, you will find 
 guide-posts to direct you at every step you take ; and if 
 you beware of jostling too much against those of your 
 fellow-men who travel the same way, you will have 
 a smooth road and will escape most of the disappoint- 
 ments, checks, and trials. Such as elect to find paths 
 of their own must cut them through primeval forests 
 in order to reach a goal unknown to the mass of 
 men. 
 
 It is such new paths, that the prophet the idealist 
 who sees and wants to reach a new goal has to travel. 
 And that is the reason why he cannot escape numerous 
 checks that try his strength, his faith, and perseverance 
 to the utmost. And Froebel was such an idealist. The 
 education of man was the ideal goal which he saw with 
 his mind's eye and pursued all through his life. There 
 was not a beaten track leading toward that goal, neither 
 knew he the direction nor the mode of constructing 
 the path that should lead there. Yet he boldly set to 
 work upon his own road, confident that in laboring 
 at it, he would find the proper method of doing the 
 work. 
 
 And he did find it, but not until late in life. It was 
 through the numerous checks and trials which he 
 encountered that he was taught, and finally learned 
 how to proceed. Undaunted by difficulties of every 
 kind, he succeeded in realizing his ideas to an extent 
 that could hardly have been expected. 
 
 At the beginning of his first enterprise, which was 
 the school at Griesheim, later Keilhau, his capital in 
 money consisted of five cents. Unable to pay for a 
 night's lodgings out of that, he slept in a barn, on
 
 134 INFANT EDUCATION PRECEDES 
 
 a wisp of straw, and had a good rest. After that, 
 when the school at Keilhau had been made a success, 
 he had plenty of money, but never spent any for his own 
 use.. He applied everything he had to the perfection 
 of his institute. That is the reason why, at the time 
 when he wrote this letter, in his sixty-sixth year, he had 
 no greater riches than on the day when he began his 
 school at Griesheim. 
 
 His experience with the pupils whom he had educated 
 at Keilhau, had convinced him that in all of them (and, 
 he concluded, in all children), there was a defect of 
 development of the mind, due to a lack of education 
 during the first years of life. He had also learned, by 
 the same experience, that it is impossible in later years 
 to make up for what had been lacking in the first years 
 of life. With this conviction in his mind, his activity as 
 teacher and educator of boys of school age no longer 
 gave him the satisfaction it had formerly afforded. He 
 felt the need of something being done for infants 
 between their births and the time of entering school. 
 In order to be able to pursue that end, he dissolved 
 his connection with the school at Keilhau, and devoted 
 all his energy to infant education. 
 
 It was another path he was compelled to hew out and 
 build for himself. The ideal to be reached by this 
 path was altogether new, and, consequently, much 
 stranger to the world than his former ideals. There 
 was not the remotest chance of making money in this 
 work. Then, how did Froebel manage to live ? I do 
 not know, and I believe he hardly knew himself. A 
 crust of bread and a drink of water sufficed for the 
 nourishment of his body, and his palate never longed
 
 WITHOUT HASTE, WITHOUT REST 135 
 
 for any relish. Froebel had succeeded in completely 
 subduing his bodily feelings, and rendering all his 
 animal life subservient to his idea ; as far as my knowl- 
 edge goes, there never was an ascetic who had so 
 perfectly overcome the flesh as this man Froe- 
 bel. Nevertheless, he never thought of asceticism as 
 a principle of life. It was nothing but the over- 
 mastering influence of his idea that had conquered his 
 body. 
 
 Froebel was always welcome at the school at Keilhau, 
 and felt the less delicacy in enjoying its hospitality, as 
 his services and his advice in school matters were not 
 only welcome but always desired. He had even held 
 his normal courses for Kindergarteners there. But at 
 the time when this letter was written, no normal pupils 
 could be accommodated, for want of room, and thus he 
 was compelled to look out for another place. Without 
 money and without means, except his genius and enthu- 
 siasm, he was as poor then as he had been when he 
 started his first school. 
 
 Nevertheless he did not despair. He continued to 
 look out for new opportunities, and he found them, as 
 is well known, at Dresden, at Hamburg, and at 
 Marienthal. 
 
 62 The frequent mention which Froebel makes of 
 Miss Luise Levin, his pupil, in this correspondence, 
 shows how closely these two souls were already united 
 at that period. As his first wife had been his true help- 
 mate in his former enterprises, and had been the first to 
 practically carry out his ideas of infant education, as 
 shown in the " Mutter und Koselieder," thus Miss 
 Levin had become the practical interpreter of his ideas
 
 136 NO WORDS WITHOUT SENSE 
 
 to his normal pupils, and her marriage to Froebel was 
 only the crowning of a friendship, and of a unison of 
 interests, of labors and ideals, that had already lasted 
 through half a decade. There is no doubt but Froebel's 
 life at Marienthal was not only made fruitful, but even 
 rendered possible through her. 
 
 68 Sounds must have a meaning. Speaking to chil- 
 dren senseless sounds is even worse than giving to 
 sounds an erroneous meaning. For errors of meaning 
 can be corrected ; but if the child has once been used 
 to listen to and, consequently, to repeat sounds devoid 
 of meaning, he will hardly ever be able to accustom 
 himself to adapt sound and word to a corresponding 
 thought. That is why Froebel says that a senseless 
 word must, under all circumstances, produce an in- 
 jurious effect. 
 
 To get a child used to hearing and speaking words 
 without a clear meaning, is laying the foundation to 
 the habit of talking without thinking. Well-uttered 
 sounds, by themselves, produce a pleasurable feeling in 
 a child, and will be imitated. The frequent hearing 
 and repeating of meaningless sounds will engender 
 a love of sounds without meaning, and this love will 
 continue to adult life. A man brought up in this habit, 
 will always love to hear big-sounding words, chiefly 
 when spoken by his own organs of speech. And such 
 men are by no means rare. They love to hear them- 
 selves talk, and care much more about the quantity 
 than the quality of their speeches. 
 
 If you wish to educate men of thought, rather than 
 heroes of " talk," remember from the first to use no 
 words or sounds but such as convey a clear meaning to
 
 TALKS FOR BABES 137 
 
 the mind. When a baby first opens its eyes to the 
 light, let it hear the word " light." A little later it may 
 be shown light and shade, and hear the words " light " 
 and " dark." In feeding it, do not call the food " good," 
 or "goody, goody," because the word "good" ought to be 
 reserved for a higher meaning ; but use the word " sweet," 
 with food of pleasant taste, and the word " sour," or 
 " bitter," if you want to describe an unpleasant taste 
 of something which the baby must avoid crowding into 
 the mouth. The word " bad " ought to be more care- 
 fully avoided than " good," in connection with per- 
 ceptions that are purely sensuous. Words similar to 
 the above in this, that they express sensuous perceptions 
 only, ought to be selected for use, so long as the 
 mental activity of the baby continues confined to 
 the life of the senses. Examples need not be multi- 
 plied, as sufficient instructions concerning the first 
 steps in education are given in Froebel's numerous 
 writings. 
 
 Among the most important primary ideas aroused by 
 the first activity of the senses, are those of objects, 
 of locality and motion. It is necessary, therefore, to 
 pay particular attention to these relations in space. 
 The words "here, there, left, right, forward, back- 
 ward, up, down," etc., ought to be used with care in 
 order to avoid causing confusion in the mind of the 
 child. 
 
 So long as the mother has the child on her lap, and 
 both are looking forward in the same direction, she can 
 use words in space as she would for herself. But when 
 the child faces her, the words " here, there, left, right, 
 forward, and backward/' must be used for the child in
 
 138 MEMORY BY ASSOCIATION 
 
 a sense converse to that which would be right for the 
 mother. 
 
 A similar consideration applies to a teacher who has 
 a number of children facing her, either sitting at tables, 
 or standing in a circle. 
 
 Memory acts by simple association in time. Let 
 the child see a light and hear the word " light " at the 
 same moment, and the two-sense impressions of the eye 
 and ear will be retained by memory as belonging 
 together. By such association, the sound and the 
 object are united, or the sound, or word, is freighted 
 with a meaning. Any sound which a child hears for 
 the first time, will be in its memory connected with the 
 object or event which it sees or feels at the same 
 moment. For such reason, it is necessary that the 
 word spoken should correspond to the image present at 
 the time to the mind of the child. 
 
 The action of memory you cannot command or 
 direct as you like. You must be careful to make use 
 of it according to its natural rule of action. 
 
 Avoid erroneous associations between sounds and 
 impressions of objects or events. If you are careful to 
 have always the proper sound, together with the event, 
 memory will do the rest, providing a well-ordered store of 
 conceptions regularly associated with appropriate names. 
 
 Supposing you have a number of balls of different 
 colors, and set them running fast one after the other, 
 crying out, " helter-skelter," the two impressions will 
 remain associated in the child's mind. Seeing the 
 rapid motion of many colored balls, it is delighted, as 
 children always are on perceiving motion. Hearing 
 the word "helter-skelter" at the same time, it will con-
 
 WORDS AND IDEAS 139 
 
 nect that word with the pleasurable impression pro- 
 duced by the balls moving rapidly. Produce the 
 same pleasurable impression by a rapid movement of 
 another sort, and the "helter-skelter" will again be 
 connected with it in the child's mind. It is very 
 likely, then, that, for a time, every rapid motion will be 
 to the child a "helter-skelter." 
 
 If you raise up an infant's arms and hands and say, 
 " So big is baby," the child will hav$ the pleasurable 
 impression of the muscular movement of the arms and 
 connect with it the sounds, " so big," with the accent 
 on the " so." Let the child in any position stretch 
 hands and arms over its head, and the feeling will call 
 up the sound "so" mostly without anything else, or if 
 with any addition, it will be some remnant of the word 
 " big." Or, the upward stretching of the arms will be 
 associated in the child's mind with the sound " so." 
 Such was not the educator's intention, no doubt, but 
 it is a necessary result of the previous association, 
 that the sound " so " is expressive of the stretch- 
 ing of the arms high over the head in the child's 
 mind. 
 
 Take the first gift, the ball, hold the child on your 
 lap facing you, and move the ball toward the baby and 
 again toward yourself, saying or singing, " To you to 
 me." I have seen and heard this done as it is above 
 described. What must be the result ? The child has 
 the impression of the ball moving toward him, associ- 
 ated with the sound you, and the motion away from him 
 associated with the sound me. This is a palpable con- 
 fusion between ideas and words. If the child sees his 
 dog running away, he will call out me; and when
 
 140 
 
 YOU AND " ME 
 
 doggy comes back, he will receive his pet with the 
 joyful salute, you. 
 
 Such confusion is the natural result of an erroneous 
 application of the words you and me, made at a time 
 when the child had no notion of a personal pronoun. 
 
 FROEBEL'S HOUSE OF BIRTH AS IT is AT PRESENT. 
 
 Showing the Froebel Tower on the mountain, and votive tablets 
 in front of the house.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FROEBEL IN HIS STUDY 
 
 THOUGHTS FROM ARISTOTLE AND CICERO. 
 
 I HAVE in my library a collection of quotations from 
 famous men of all nations and tongues, which book was 
 once in the possession of Froebel and used by him 
 almost daily. He has written notes on the margins in 
 which he says how he understood the quotations. Some 
 of the more instructive of these notes are here given. 
 
 Aristotle says : " Man is conscious of being an un- 
 finished, imperfect, equivocal being, and struggles to 
 reach unity and perfection : this struggle is his proper 
 tendency, his humanity." Froebel writes : " Man 
 is conscious of having been made a perfect being, but 
 that his exterior is imperfect, and his struggle consists 
 in trying to externalize his perfection." 
 
 Cicero says : " Man is distinguished from the animal 
 by his reason enabling him to exchange thoughts with 
 his fellows by means of the faculty of speech." Froe- 
 bel says : " The faculty of speech ought here to be called 
 the faculty of intercommunication. Speech acts by at- 
 tracting or repelling. Speech is a means of communi- 
 cation in the physical sense similar to electrical or 
 magnetic communication. We might say, v and v or 
 A and A understand each other easiest because a drop 
 of the former unites easiest with another drop of the 
 
 same sort to one whole." 
 
 141
 
 142 FROM CICERO, KANT, AND PUFENDORF 
 
 Cicero says : " Man is the only animal that has a 
 sense of order, a conception of decency and morality, 
 a rule for speech and action. No other animal has a 
 conception of the beauty, the grace, or harmony of out- 
 ward shape." Froebel adds : " The full development 
 of this sense and these conceptions is the least which 
 an effective education must set up for its goal. The 
 ideas enumerated may also serve as indicating the 
 steps or periods of human development." 
 
 Kant says : " In order to assign to man his place 
 in the system of animate nature, we have no other 
 criterion than this, that he has a character which he 
 creates himself." Froebel says : " The real question 
 would then be, which character is man able, in and 
 from the highest summit of his development and his 
 knowledge of his own self, to create for himself ? 
 There is nothing to fail back on but the character of 
 God, which makes man's character a likeness of God." 
 
 Sam. Pufendorf says : " In the mind of man is 
 found impressed the tenderest esteem of his own self. 
 The first basis of this esteem the human nature in itself 
 seems to be. There is already a sort of dignity found 
 in the name ' Man.' This human nature being common 
 to all men alike, and no one being able to live in the 
 society of another who should not at least esteem him 
 as a man, it follows according to natural law that every 
 one must treat every other as a man and as his equal." 
 Froebel adds in the margin : " This passage is very 
 remarkable and highly suggestive. Much, very much, 
 is gained for the education of the individual as of a 
 whole nation and of all mankind, if this tender esteem 
 of self takes deep root in the mind. It is the office of
 
 GARVE. CONSCIOUS DIGNITY 143 
 
 the educator of man to give a permanent development 
 to this tender esteem of mankind for its own self, and 
 to make it productive. The sense of woman tends in 
 that direction ; yea, female sentiment is striving for this 
 tender self-esteem. It is developed in the aesthetic 
 education of man, that is, of children and men." 
 
 Ch. Garve says : " If a man shall have the strength 
 to suffer or to achieve anything, he must be conscious 
 of his worth. Without a consciousness of personal 
 dignity he is not capable either of rising above external 
 matters or of manifesting a telling power. Such con- 
 sciousness of his worth may be needed to enable him 
 to make an effort : thus self-esteem becomes a motive 
 to exercise his powers in order to prove the extent of 
 his dignity. In this manner, the sentiment of worth 
 gives strength ; but a feeling of baseness renders power- 
 less." Froebel adds : " Hark, oh Educator ! you shall 
 raise man, yea, all mankind, to a consciousness of their 
 power, which is a spirit emanating from God. Life, 
 suffering, pain, and depression, must serve to elevate 
 man to a consciousness of his worth." 
 
 The following passages from Kant and Rousseau 
 were heavily underlined by Froebel : " Unholy as a 
 man may be, mankind must always be holy to him in 
 his own person. Whatever a man has the will and the 
 power to use anywhere in nature, he is able to use as 
 a means only ; but man alone, and with him every 
 reasonable being, is an end by itself." " Be a man 
 through thyself and for thyself : The mind of man is 
 its own end." 
 
 Herder says : " Everything in nature appears con- 
 nected with man, because man does not perceive nature
 
 144 HERDER, KANT, ROUSSKAU, CLAUDIUS 
 
 but through his own organs. Man is indeed the first, 
 but he is not the only creature. He has dominion over 
 the world, but is not himself the universe. That is why 
 the elements of nature are often opposed to him, for- 
 cing him to struggle against them. Fire will destroy his 
 work ; inundations will cover his acres ; storms will 
 wreck his vessels, and disease will decimate his num- 
 bers. All this is placed in his path that he should 
 overcome it, and to do so he has the requisite weapons 
 in him." Froebel explains this passage, saying : " The 
 elements of nature and, like them, uncivilized man, 
 are opposed to man, not by their essential nature but 
 only on account of their crudeness, their unruly and 
 unmanageable form. It is the business of man to re- 
 fine and restrict, to rule and manage them, uncivil- 
 ized man as well as the other rough parts of nature ; for 
 man in his unrefined condition, or if deformed by incor- 
 rect development, is naturally good and capable of im- 
 provement. He will overcome the opposing forces of 
 nature by overcoming his own self, that is, by studiously 
 observing his own faculties and learning how to use 
 them in an appropriate manner." 
 
 Claudius says : "Man exercises a kind of dominion 
 over outward nature, and seems to be destined to do so 
 above all other creatures. Small as he appears, he 
 will try his strength on anything, and nothing seems 
 impossible to him." Froebel adds : " The end of this 
 dominion is that man should learn to measure his fac- 
 ulties, and by measuring should learn to know himself." 
 
 Leibnitz says : " Man has strength enough in him to 
 control his arbitrary will, but we do not always under- 
 stand how to use it. We can master ourselves, not as
 
 ORIGIN OF THE NAME "KINDERGARTEN 145 
 
 God masters the world, but rather like a wise ruler gov- 
 erning his state, or like a good father ruling his family." 
 Froebel adds : " On this power of self-control over 
 our will depends our submission to the will of God." 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE NAME " KINDERGARTEN." 
 
 It was a beautiful day in the summer of 1839, when 
 Froebel, accompanied by Middendorff and Barop, was 
 walking from Keilhau to Blankenburg. In the latter 
 place he had founded his first institution for the educa- 
 tion of infants, that is, of children that have not yet 
 reached the age at which they could be received in a 
 public school. He was very busy at the time, trying 
 to interest women in his ideas and to establish societies 
 of women interested in and devoted to the further- 
 ance of his system of combining a proper course of 
 education with the duties commonly assigned to the 
 nursery, that is, an infant-school system which should 
 be a nursery attending to the needs of the intellect 
 and character as well as to those of the body. These 
 ideas filled his mind all the time, and during this walk 
 he had exclaimed several times in a low voice : " If I 
 knew only a suitable name for my youngest child ! " 
 meaning the youngest child of his inventive thought, 
 namely, the nursery-school he had founded at Blanken- 
 burg. They had just crossed the ridge of a mountain 
 called " Steiger," and were descending the mountain- 
 side into the beautiful and fresh-looking valley of 
 Blankenburg. Proceeding slowly, Froebel took in all 
 the beauty of mountain-side and forest, of the valley 
 with its fields and houses, its sparkling little water-
 
 146 A LANDSCAPE GIVES THE HINT 
 
 course and the busy life of the people about their farm- 
 steads. The little town beneath him looked like a 
 bouquet of flowers in a circle of green leaves, the 
 bright homesteads representing the flowers, surrounded 
 by meadows and gardens full of fruit-trees, and beds 
 of flowers and greens. The whole looked like an ex- 
 tensive natural park, or rather an immense garden 
 where art had done little, but nature a great deal, to 
 please the eye of the lover of natural scenery. Greatly 
 pleased with the beauty of the landscape, and lost in 
 hopeful forethought of the future of his nursery-school, 
 upon which his mind was lovingly fixed, he suddenly 
 arrested his progress, and with eyes sparkling with en- 
 thusiasm he called out so loud that the echo from the 
 mountains returned the words in distinct and powerful 
 reverberations of the air, 
 
 "Eureka! Kindergarten shall be the name of the 
 new institution ! "
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FROEBEL AND DIESTERWEG54 
 
 AT HAMBURG IN 1850. 
 
 FROM 1836 onward Froebel and his co-laborers, 
 among them none more tluui Middendorff, had been 
 active in propagating the principles of his system of 
 infantile education and had had very fair success at 
 many places in Germany. Among the latter no city 
 was more remarkable for its unremitting zeal in the 
 cause than Hamburg. A ladies' society had there 
 been formed for the advancement of the Kindergarten 
 system, and for the higher education of women as the 
 natural educators of childhood. There were already 
 some such institutions in a flourishing condition when 
 the society, recognizing the necessity of spreading this 
 kind of education among the poorer classes, formed a 
 scheme to establish what they called Burger-Kinder- 
 gartens, a name which may, to a limited extent, be con- 
 sidered as corresponding to what are called Free Kin- 
 dergartens with us. In the visitors' book of the first 
 Burger-Kindergarten of Hamburg the following two 
 entries continue to attract the attention of visitors to 
 this day : 
 
 Visiting the first German Kindergarten, not only of 
 Hamburg but of all the world, T again am blessed in 
 
 i47
 
 148 FROEBEL AND DIESTERWEG 
 
 realizing the experience of the fact, that living with 
 children, chiefly with children at play, elevates, clears, 
 and invigorates our own life in feeling as in thought. 
 Would that this experience were brought home to ever- 
 increasing numbers of people, in order to bless all man- 
 kind, that is, to lead them to a consciousness of a gen- 
 uine human existence, by spreading far and wide in the 
 German nation the Kindergarten institutions, most of 
 all the Burger-Kindergarten. 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 
 APRIL 16, 1850. 
 
 A Burger- Kindergarten fills the visitor with a high 
 respect for those who have founded it. It is the work- 
 ing Kindergartener, however, to whom the praise is 
 most properly due. The former have built the house, 
 the latter is storing the honey, and is the working bee 
 in the hive of the Kindergarten, 
 
 DIESTERWEG. 
 
 APRIL 26, 1850. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 54 Dr. T. A. W. Diesterweg was one of the most 
 famous of modern German pedagogues. He was the 
 head master of the Normal school for teachers of the 
 city of Berlin. His chief works are of practical value 
 to teachers in every branch of school tuition. He was 
 one of the most talented and best-known disciples of 
 Pestalozzi.
 
 Hattie Burmeister
 
 FRAU I. VISE FROEIH-I.. 
 
 Born at Osterode, April 15, 1815. 
 
 Living at Hamburg. From a photo taken January, 1892
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 FRAU LUISE FROEBEL 
 
 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 
 
 MY first meeting with Frau Luise Froebel, the widow 
 of that wonderful children's friend, the famous discov- 
 erer of the Kindergarten system, was, perhaps, the 
 most propitious event of my life. It was like the 
 dawn of a new day rising above what till then had 
 been the horizon of my intellectual life. It was 
 the beginning of a friendship rich in happiness and 
 blessings, and destined, I trust, to continue in time 
 and in eternity. 
 
 It was a bright spring morning in 1871. Animated 
 with my morning walk under the beautiful linden trees 
 of the boulevard (just sprouting to put on their spring 
 dress), bound for my day's work at the " Musical " Kin- 
 dergarten founded by Frau Caroline Wiseneder, I had 
 hardly entered the room when the proprietress informed 
 me that Frau Froebel had sent word by mail that she 
 would arrive that morning from Hamburg in order to 
 visit our Kindergarten and acquaint herself with the 
 method of the musical system. 
 
 Could there be anything more joyful ? My heart 
 beat livelier at the cheering expectation of meeting the 
 wife of the great educator, the same lady who was 
 
 149
 
 I5O HER PERSONAL APPEARANCE 
 
 known to be the most accomplished of the assistants 
 of Froebel the one who had realized his ideas with 
 the greatest perfection. 
 
 But I was not allowed much time for either thought 
 or preparation. For while our children were still arriv- 
 ing, the door opened and admitted our revered guest, 
 Frau Froebel. I was charmed with her striking appear- 
 ance. Her figure was tall, erect, and remarkably well 
 proportioned. Her carriage and movements were elas- 
 tic and graceful. Her face had an expression of fresh- 
 ness, I would have said of youthfulness, but for the 
 grayish tint of the hair, indicating her advanced age, 
 and forming a striking frame for a countenance beam- 
 ing with a charming vivacity, producing a conviction that 
 her soul had preserved a youthfulness much greater 
 than her gray hair seemed to indicate for her body. 
 Her beautiful blue eyes bespoke an unusual develop- 
 ment of loving-kindness. Her whole appearance was, 
 in a word, one to win all hearts. 
 
 After the first introductory words, she said she had 
 heard so many expressions of praise of the Musical 
 Kindergarten that she thought it her duty to make 
 herself acquainted with it. Then she turned her 
 kindly eyes upon the children, saying, " I have come 
 early ; a Kindergartener ought always to be at her 
 place in good time." 
 
 At her request, the games and occupations and the 
 musical exercises were gone through in the usual way. 
 The children and the normal pupils of the music school 
 and the Kindergarten had assembled, and the cuckoo- 
 clock sounded its cuckoo-call nine times. That was 
 the signal for beginning, and everybody stood silent
 
 THE MUSICAL KINDERGARTEN 151 
 
 and listened until the sound of the ninth call had passed 
 away. 
 
 The work of the Kindergarten was gone through in 
 the usual way. There was, of course, no time during 
 school-hours for conversation with Frau Froebel, ex- 
 cept some occasional questions and answers or obser- 
 vations in reference to the work going on. Frau 
 Froebel went to and fro, observing everything, and 
 every now and then actively interfering or directing, 
 with the hand and word of a thorough master. She 
 was greatly pleased with the questions and remarks, 
 occasionally very " cute," as she said, of her little 
 "man-buds." Her winning ways proved as powerful 
 an attraction for the little folks as for the grown-up 
 people. 
 
 At the close of the "musical exercises " Frau Froebel 
 expressed her regret at having been unable to become 
 acquainted with Frau Wiseneder herself, who had died 
 two years before, much too soon for her work and the 
 Kindergarten cause in general. Her games and songs, 
 published years ago, were extensively used all over 
 Germany, and in Frau Froebel's Kindergarten at Ham- 
 burg among the rest. The mature judgment of Frau 
 Froebel had not failed to appreciate their value, and 
 she was much pleased to be able to perceive by a 
 personal inspection how well adapted this musical 
 method was to form and develop the sense of time. 
 She said she would introduce the little instruments in 
 Hamburg and use them, as she saw them used by our 
 children both in bands and solos. 
 
 After the close of the Kindergarten Frau Froebel 
 asked me if I would accompany her to her hotel, as she
 
 I$2 INTIMATE UNION OF PUPILS 
 
 was a stranger in the city of Brunswick. I was proud 
 to be allowed to go with her. I asked her to tell me 
 what should be done to improve our Kindergarten. 
 
 " What I missed most," she answered, " is the union 
 of all the children and Kindergarteners in a circle at 
 the beginning and the close, and the song in which all 
 should join. The Kindergarten," she continued, " is 
 the first community or state organization into which 
 the child is introduced. It is not enough that he 
 should merely learn to do his duty there as an individ- 
 ual, but he must be led to feel and experience that he 
 is a member of an organic whole; and must do his share 
 toward making and keeping it a harmonious whole. He 
 must feel himself a necessary member in his class, or 
 section, as the smaller whole to which he belongs, and 
 feel as well that this lesser whole is again a member of 
 the larger whole constituted by the entire Kindergar- 
 ten. In that way, the Kindergarten must be made the 
 prototype of human society. This idea is made a 
 living sentiment and an active motive in the child, 
 by the daily reunion of all the members of the Kinder- 
 garten in the circle and song at the commencement 
 and the close of the exercises. And I am further of 
 opinion," she added, " that a similar reunion of the 
 whole school ought to take place at the beginning and 
 the close of every day in every educational institution, 
 from the first primary grade to the upper grades of the 
 high school (Gymnasium)." 
 
 I felt the strength of her argument, and answered 
 that I should follow her advice and begin immediately 
 in the morning to open and close our Kindergarten 
 with a " Froebelish reunion."
 
 FRAU FROEBEL AS A GUEST 1 53 
 
 We arrived at the hotel too soon to please me, and 
 we parted with a cordial " au revoir ! " 
 
 I hastened home and found dinner waiting for me. 
 I had hardly entered the room when I exclaimed, " Just 
 think, Frau Froebel was at the Kindergarten ! I have 
 just accompanied her to her hotel, but I should much 
 rather have brought her home with me." 
 
 " If you think she will feel comfortable with us, why 
 did you not bring her ? " asked my mother. And my 
 father, in his short and decided manner, said, " We 
 shall wait for dinner. Go for her and tell her she 
 would be welcome." 
 
 You can imagine how I hastened to do his bidding. 
 I had not yet taken off my shawl and bonnet, and in 
 less than a minute was in the street again quickening 
 my steps toward the hotel. I had hardly spoken my 
 words of invitation when Frau Froebel took my hand, 
 pressed it cordially, and said, in her most insinuating 
 tones, " Oh, how glad I am to go with you ! For I can 
 tell you, it would have been the first time in my life that 
 I had to remain at a hotel. Wherever I travel there 
 are kind people meeting me, and they always take me 
 to their own homes. I had just made up my mind to 
 depart this day and go back to Hamburg. But now 
 things look different. I am quite ready to go with you 
 right away." 
 
 A welcome as cheerful as it was cheering greeted the 
 illustrious guest, the days of whose presence at our 
 house were esteemed true festivals by all of us. I 
 shall never forget this afternoon with its never-flagging 
 conversation and the wonderful light it threw into 
 many recesses of my mind which had before been in
 
 154 SHE VISITS SCHOOLS 
 
 obscurity more or less dense, in spite of the presence 
 in the room of a great many educational books in our 
 library, to which Frau Froebel paid her most careful 
 attention. 
 
 During the days which Frau Froebel spent with us, I 
 hardly ever left her side. In our room, in the Kinder- 
 garten, on her walks, in the visits she made, I was her 
 inseparable companion, and during this companionship 
 she imperceptibly enlightened and confirmed in me 
 every essential principle of the educational teachings 
 of Friedrich Froebel. What a study of books could 
 not have taught me in years of untiring industry, these 
 few days of viva voce intercourse with this living source, 
 sprung from the original fountain head of Kindergar- 
 tenism, imparted to me in a manner similar exactly to 
 the method which Froebel had elaborated for the 
 Kindergarten work itself. 
 
 Of the walks we took, and the educational institu- 
 tions we visited, I have only space to mention a few. 
 There was a masonic children's refuge, or creche, re- 
 markable for its exceeding cleanliness and the care 
 and attention paid to the babies intrusted to it. Health 
 and cheerfulness were visible on every side, and Frau 
 Froebel was much pleased. 
 
 In another part of the same building, children a little 
 older were assembled, namely, those too old to be 
 among the babies and too young to go to the public 
 school ; that is, those who ought to have been at Kinder- 
 gartens. There was a great noise when we entered 
 the room. The so-called teacher tried to restore order 
 by telling the children to sit still and keep quiet. Her 
 success was as great as it usually is in such cases,
 
 A TACTLESS TEACHER 155 
 
 the children never relinquishing their unruly behavior. 
 They had nothing to do, were not occupied in any work 
 or play provided by the teacher, and had too much life 
 in them to sit still like dead dolls. When they perceived 
 the presence of visitors, they became quiet to a limited 
 extent, held by a feeling of curiosity, but not so com- 
 pletely as to permit, at any moment, the teacher to 
 discontinue her stereotyped order to keep quiet and sit 
 still. Awed by our presence, they took their seats and 
 sat still for a few seconds, except one little boy, whose 
 intense want of activity would not let him sit still. 
 So, while sitting in his place, he rapidly made four 
 knots in the corners of his red handkerchief, put it on 
 his head in lieu of a cap, and stood up again smiling 
 with satisfaction at his success. At this, the lady, mis- 
 named a teacher, grew excited and began expostulating 
 with the little mischief-maker, but only succeeded in 
 causing all the children to turn their eyes upon this 
 impromptu specimen of little Red Ridinghood, which 
 produced a resumption of the general noise of amuse- 
 ment and playfulness. This scene was too much for 
 Frau Froebel ; she could not restrain herself, but lead- 
 ing me quickly out of the room, she whispered to me, 
 " That is right ; it is exactly what the child is naturally 
 compelled to do ; he is not able to sit idle ; he has too 
 much life in him to be crushed out by any teacher's 
 order to sit still ; he is the best specimen of mankind 
 I have seen in the room. But I felt the necessity to 
 leave. I should not have been able to look upon that 
 maltreatment of childhood much longer without actively 
 interfering in their behalf, which, I am afraid, would 
 not have been welcome to the teacher. It would only
 
 156 BEAUTY IN LEAVES AND BLOSSOMS 
 
 have disconcerted and annoyed her, I suppose, without 
 doing any good either to the teacher or to the poor 
 children." I think, however, I ought here to add that 
 that refuge is no longer in the same unsatisfactory con- 
 dition, but that the room for older children has since 
 been transformed into a regular Kindergarten. 
 
 With a number of friends we took a walk one day to 
 the neighboring village of Melverode. On the way I 
 had an opportunity to perceive and admire Frau Froe- 
 bel's thorough acquaintance with botany. The leaves 
 of the trees were just coming out, which gave her an 
 occasion to speak of the buds of leaves just opening, 
 and of the " flora in winter dress" in general. Find- 
 ing buds of the willow and chestnut trees, she said, 
 " Were I at home I should gather a number of them to 
 give to my children in the morning. I seldom have a 
 walk without finding something and taking it home for 
 my little ones. Every Kindergartener ought to do 
 likewise." And taking up a number of buds, she 
 added, " Froebel frequently pointed out the beauties 
 of the curved lines of nature which have never yet re- 
 ceived the amount of attention they deserve. There 
 are no straight lines in animate nature, you see. You 
 must go to the mineral kingdom, to the rock and crys- 
 tal, to find straight lines in nature. In the vegetable 
 and animal kingdom none but curved lines are found. 
 And here you will discover the principle for the dis- 
 tinction between the beauty of architecture and the 
 beauty of other kinds of art. Beauty in architecture 
 depends on the use of the straight line chiefly : beauty 
 in the arts of painting, sculpture, etc., depends upon 
 the curve almost exclusively."
 
 EASY STEPS TOWARD BOTANY 157 
 
 She arranged the buds in the hollow of her hand in 
 a sort of rosette, and continued, " Look here, what a 
 beautiful form can be got out of these buds. Such, you 
 see, is true Kindergarten work ; it not only makes 
 the child conversant with nature, but it produces or 
 strengthens the love of nature, and, last not least, de- 
 velops the sense of beauty. Besides, the stories of the 
 growth of buds, of their development and conditions 
 during the successive seasons of the year, of their inner 
 arrangement of parts and their outer coverings, of their 
 relation to the life of the entire plant, and so on, may 
 be made to convey some of the fundamental principles 
 of the science of botany. 
 
 " Botany," she proceeded to say, " is one of the most 
 essential, if not the most necessary, of all the secondary 
 accomplishments which a Kindergartener ought to 
 have. And the local flora should be known more par- 
 ticularly. Wherever we are, we are able to find plants 
 to be used as material for object lessons in botany ; and 
 it is of the utmost importance to begin this, as any other 
 branch of study, as near home as possible. By connect- 
 ing the knowledge of the child with his immediate and 
 nearest surroundings, we produce in him the feeling of 
 being at home in the world. If wild flowers can be 
 gathered in the fields, they are the best material for 
 study. But, in case of need, garden flowers can be 
 substituted for them. If there are weeds in the garden, 
 they ought not to be overlooked, as they are among the 
 most beautiful products of nature ; and a knowledge of 
 them will prevent a child from regarding them as noxious 
 things of no value but to be destroyed when and where 
 they can be seized. Such a feeling of hatred against
 
 158 OUR NEARNESS TO PLANT LIFE 
 
 any product of nature will, more frequently than is com- 
 monly supposed, engender or greatly strengthen the 
 disposition of destructiveness which is closely akin to 
 that of cruelty. 
 
 " In teaching botany, trees and shrubs and fruits 
 and vegetables of every kind ought not to be neglected. 
 In observing the life of shrubs and trees through the 
 seasons of the year, not only most useful lessons can 
 be practically inculcated, but a habit of order, of steady 
 and permanent observation may be educated. 
 
 " In crowded neighborhoods of large cities, where the 
 children of the poor can neither go out into the fields 
 to gather wild flowers, nor have parks or gardens near 
 their homes to supply plants, they may go to green- 
 grocers' stores to buy or beg a few specimens to be 
 used for an object lesson in botany. If the Kinder- 
 gartener is well prepared for her office, such lessons 
 can be made eminently useful. 
 
 " It must be kept in mind that the study of botany 
 should not merely serve to teach the children a knowl- 
 edge of the vegetable kingdom by itself, but should im- 
 plant in them a love of nature in general. Wherever 
 a man may be, he is always surrounded by vegetation. 
 A knowledge of it will, therefore, resemble the knowl- 
 edge which a child has of his paternal dwelling which 
 by such knowledge becomes his home. Thus, by a 
 knowledge of the vegetable kingdom the child learns 
 to be at home in nature. And further, a knowledge of 
 the beauties of plants will produce an admiration and 
 love of them. It will, consequently, prevent children and 
 men from wantonly breaking or destroying vegetable 
 products. And he who has learnt to respect the rights
 
 NO WANTON DESTRUCTION 159 
 
 of plants to live and bloom and grow, will surely not 
 fail to respect also animal life, and will refrain not 
 only from cruelty toward animals, but also from 
 neglecting such living creatures as may be intrusted to 
 his care." 
 
 I wondered not merely at the knowledge of the sci- 
 ence of botany displayed by Frau Froebel, but even 
 more at her enthusiastic love of the flowery kingdom, 
 and at the profound philosophical view she took of the 
 whole of nature, which seemed to lend a soothing glow 
 to everything she spoke ; and I expressed my feelings 
 to her. 
 
 " That is so," she replied. " I believe, if I had been 
 a boy, I should have become a gardener." 
 
 And that is what she has become, indeed, a true 
 nursery gardener ; only, hers is not a nursery of trees, 
 but a nursery of men. 
 
 MARIE HEINEMANN.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL AND HIS FAIR HELP- 
 MATES 
 
 A SKETCH WRITTEN FOR THE ONE HUNDRED AND 
 TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH. 
 
 A HUNDRED and ten years have passed away since 
 August Wilhelm Friedrich Froebel was born (April 21, 
 1782), at a small woodland village in the uplands of the 
 Thuringian forest in central Germany. His father was a 
 clergyman, a devout Christian, and never weary in pursu- 
 ing the duties of his office. He was not one of those 
 who preach on Sundays and take their rest during the 
 remaining six days of the week, but a working pastor 
 in the true sense of the word. He considered it his 
 duty to be an all-round adviser and helper to his 
 parishioners in their daily life and struggles ; to watch 
 and exhort such as were morally weak ; to visit the 
 sick ; to weep with and console them that weep, and 
 rejoice with them that rejoice ; to remember the poor, 
 and plead for and help the fatherless and the widow ; 
 and last, not least, to provide for the welfare of the 
 coming generation by looking, with particular care and 
 attention, after the education of childhood. 
 
 160
 
 b -5 
 
 S 5
 
 HIS RELIGIOUS EDUCATION l6l 
 
 His son August, at a later period of life called Fried- 
 rich, seems to have been a child of an uncommonly sen- 
 sitive and observant disposition. With his open eyes and 
 expectant heart he received the seeds of faith ripened 
 and strewn by the active religion of his father, in a well- 
 adapted and fertile soil, from which sprang a tree of 
 religious peace and confidence of uncommon vigor and 
 beauty, animating and sanctifying the whole life and 
 being of the great Kindergartener. In all the severe 
 trials of his life, and whenever a hope of his was frus- 
 trated, as happened many a time, Friedrich Froebel would 
 quietly say to himself that obstacles and difficulties are 
 the means by which Providence seeks to strengthen and 
 elevate man. Trials and disappointments he received 
 as necessary dispensations, and never lost his hopes of 
 final success. His father could not bestow upon Froe- 
 bel either wealth or an education sufficiently liberal 
 and thorough to greatly facilitate his journey through 
 life. But he left him a better portion a deep religious 
 sense, which was the rock upon which Froebel was 
 able and successful to securely lay the foundation of a 
 life of greatest usefulness to all mankind and ideal con- 
 tentment to himself. His religion was his code of 
 ethics throughout his active life. Sacred hymns and 
 scripture passages had a powerful influence on him, 
 and became his practical rules of conduct. The most 
 powerful in its. action upon him, and the most beneficial 
 to all mankind through the application which Froebel 
 made of it, was the command of Christ, " Suffer little 
 children to come unto Me." Do we, does the profess- 
 ing Christian of our times, act up to this command ? 
 was a question which Froebel moved in his mind and
 
 l62 "LET US LIVE FOR OUR CHILDREN " 
 
 tried to answer. He was convinced that, under present 
 circumstances, little children are not suffered to freely 
 approach the Christ who is the Almighty Origin of life. 
 A strong fence of erroneous views surrounds them, 
 which ought to be broken through to let in the light of 
 nature as it is, and as it is found realized in Christ's word 
 and life. Who can break through that fence and suffer 
 little children to move through it ? Who are they to 
 whom Christ is calling to suffer little children to tread 
 the path of true salvation ? They can be no others 
 than those that have power over children to direct 
 them, which are parents and guardians. It is to them 
 in their own sphere and rule, that is in the family and 
 home, that the call sent forth by Christ must be con- 
 sidered addressed. 
 
 " In order to render the command of Christ effec- 
 tive," says Froebel, "education in the family must first 
 be reformed, otherwise there will be no solid founda- 
 tion for subsequent education to stand on." It is the 
 mothers that must first be educated, and it is chiefly 
 for them that Froebel has remodelled the words of Christ, 
 saying, " Come, let us live for our children." But it 
 is not enough, he adds, to suffer children to go; all 
 adults, male and female, ought to show children the 
 right way. Neither is it enough to merely point out 
 the way without going in it yourself, for children will 
 imitate what they see their superiors doing. To guide 
 them, we must act as we want them to act, we must 
 live as we wish they would live. It is in accordance 
 with such, considerations that Froebel thought it ex- 
 pedient to expand the words of Christ into the sum- 
 mons, " Come, let us live for our children ! "
 
 DAWNING OF HIS IDEAS 163 
 
 He further argued that not only mothers are naturally 
 well qualified, and have the most frequent and most 
 effective occasions to guide children, that is to educate 
 them, but that the same must be said, though not quite 
 so generally, of the future mothers, or young women. 
 Having clearly recognized the great vocation of woman 
 as the true, yea, he thought, almost the only, educator 
 of man, Froebel thenceforward devoted all his time and 
 energy to the problem of winning the adhesion of 
 woman to his educational scheme ; of interesting and 
 training her in the art, and, as far as feasible, also in 
 the science of education ; of persuading her to take up 
 the great task of educating man, and to recognize in 
 it the sublime mission and heavenly blessedness of a 
 woman's life. 
 
 Was it a revelation that had come through Froebel's 
 spirit ? The response seemed to prove that it was : 
 women from every side responded to his summons with 
 great enthusiasm. It was as if Froebel had really 
 struck the keynote of the tune to which the life and 
 destiny of women were ordained to move. If we look 
 over the long array of names that call themselves dis- 
 ciples prepared by the master himself, under his own eyes, 
 and through hearing the living word from his mouth, 
 they are nearly all females. And they all acknowledge 
 that nobody, either male or female, has ever recognized 
 and indicated the true vocation, the life work, the 
 destiny of woman to form and elevate and bless man- 
 kind, as clearly and distinctly as Froebel did. He 
 never sided with the partisans of what was then called 
 the emancipation of woman ; but he said that woman 
 would have to work out her own salvation by her own
 
 164 MARRIAGE IN SPITE OF POVERTY 
 
 labor, which was indicated to consist in the work of 
 educating man. 
 
 Froebel had a grand conception of woman, and, 
 although he never emerged from a condition of poverty, 
 he was married twice. Difficult would it be, indeed, 
 to say anything more honorable of woman. For 
 Froebel was not able to guarantee a certain income, 
 or, for that matter, any income at all, to feed his wife 
 and himself. All he possessed was his ideal of the 
 education of man. There was no certainty that there 
 would ever be any pupils to be educated by him 
 who would or could pay for their education. And re- 
 peatedly Froebel and his assistants had had to pawn 
 whatever there was of silver or gold in the house in 
 order to raise the money for buying bread. Such was 
 his situation when Froebel asked Mrs. Henrietta VVilhel- 
 mina Klepper, nee Hoffmeister, of Berlin, to be his 
 wife. The lady had lived all her life in the most com- 
 fortable, almost affluent circumstances. But she relin- 
 quished everything, even a house of which she was the 
 light and joy, a dear mother and a greatly beloved 
 father who adored her, in order to devote her whole 
 life and being to the apostle of a new education, whose 
 ideas and schemes had elevated her soul as with the 
 light of divine inspiration. She was married to Froebel 
 on Sept. 20, 1818, the thirty-eighth anniversary of her 
 birth. 
 
 Never has man found a better helpmate than this 
 woman was to Froebel. She devoted herself to the 
 assistance of the Keilhau teachers and their educational 
 mission with her whole being ; made willingly every 
 necessary sacrifice ; submitted smilingly to every priva-
 
 THE SELF DENIAL OF HIS WIFE 165 
 
 tion ; lived through days of the most painful struggles 
 with poverty and want, and did all this with a courage 
 and devotion that was a shining example to all the 
 women who had devoted their lives to the realization 
 of Froebel's ideals. They all admired and adored 
 her. She had not, like them, entered the poverty- 
 stricken household of Keilhau quite young, that is, 
 before having seen and tasted the enjoyments and 
 luxuries of a comfortable home ; but she had passed 
 more than half a life-time already in comparative afflu- 
 ence when she became the companion for life of the 
 poor pioneer of a new education of mankind. But she 
 never seemed in the least to miss her former luxuries, 
 but joyfully and heroically suffered want and care and 
 anxiety. After a time, when the circumstances of the 
 school had grown easier, they all enjoyed greater com- 
 forts of life. The wonderful enthusiasm of the teachers, 
 and the wisdom of the educational methods employed, 
 had, in a few years, made the average pupil of the 
 Keilhau school so greatly superior to the average pupil 
 of all other educational establishments of the country, 
 that the number of pupils at Keilhau increased rapidly, 
 and money began to flow more freely in the households 
 of all the teachers. 
 
 This outward success of the Keilhau school was due, 
 to a considerable extent, to the labors of Henrietta 
 Froebel. The noble lady knew exactly the duties of a 
 wife that has become one with her husband, not only 
 bodily, but more fully even in the spirit. She had not 
 only understood the ideas and aims of Froebel, but had 
 so completely made them her own as to partake of all 
 his tendencies and keep up an enthusiasm as ardent and
 
 l66 HER COURAGE AND RESIGNATION 
 
 ever active as his. And it was this very enthusiasm 
 which had enabled her for longer than a decade to live 
 from day to day with the questions ever present, and 
 but rarely answered with certainty, What shall we eat ? 
 Wherewith shall we be clothed ? She had cheerfully 
 borne the brunt of these anxieties and cares, and pro- 
 vided for the needs of Froebel as best she could. Her 
 hopefulness and quiet trust in God under all circum- 
 stances had been like an inspiration to the whole 
 scholastic colony, and served to keep their minds as 
 free from cares as possible, and thus to enable them 
 to devote themselves entirely to their educational duties. 
 In this way she had been all the time the true help- 
 mate and support of Froebel in his great work. 
 
 Although Henrietta Froebel was not exactly a busi- 
 ness woman, she had bravely helped in building up the 
 institution and had rejoiced in its temporary success. 
 She had outlived the first period of gloom and uncer- 
 tainty, which had surrounded the work from the start, 
 and was conscious of having done her share toward 
 bringing about the happy result. And it was not either 
 her fault nor the fault of any of the co-workers at Keil- 
 hau, that the number of pupils had fallen from sixty to 
 five in 1829. The decline of the institution at that time 
 was the result of the oppressive persecution of every 
 reformatory movement which characterized the period, 
 and placed the liberal education of Keilhau on the 
 index of institutions to be suppressed. 
 
 The unfortunate conditions of his school had given 
 Froebel the time and occasion to reconsider his educa- 
 tional principles. He had become convinced that the 
 system which he had introduced at Keilhau did not
 
 GROWTH OF HIS SYSTEM 167 
 
 rest upon a solid foundation. Such a foundation must 
 be laid, he thought, in an institution where the pupils 
 should develop their intellect and character by their 
 own labor. He planned an institution at Helba in 
 Thuringia to be composed of what may be best charac- 
 terized a "Manual Training School," and a "prepara- 
 tory institute for children of from three to seven years." 
 The scheme was not realized, but it arose again in a 
 new form in the Kindergarten seven years later. 
 
 Henrietta Froebel had faithfully advanced with her 
 husband in the evolution of his educational ideal. 
 When the new idea of the "Infants' Preparatory Insti- 
 tute" and the "Manual Training School " assumed 
 shape, she hailed the idea as a greater and sublimer 
 goal than his former ideas, with a cheerful courage 
 proving that the decade of labor and trouble at Keil- 
 hau had not been able to crush her spirit or nip the 
 buoyant hope of her soul, that the idea must succeed 
 and be realized in the end. 
 
 She knew that the end might be a long way off, and 
 that, during the pursuit of it, poverty and privations 
 would again be her daily experience. She realized 
 more clearly than Froebel that the pursuit of ideal 
 schemes will strew obstacles thick as pebbles in the 
 path of life, rendering progress difficult, and the duties 
 of life a heavy burden. But this conviction did not 
 lessen her heroic enthusiasm. Having devoted her life 
 to the cause of elevating mankind by educating youth, 
 she did not now hesitate to follow Froebel farther on 
 his thorny path of duty. She followed him to Switzer- 
 land, and there again enjoyed a few years of compara- 
 tive comfort, until the new ideal of the Kindergarten
 
 168 THE BEAUTY OF KE1LHAU 
 
 drove him back to his old haunts in the Thuringian 
 mountains, where another period of uncertainty and 
 privations followed. 
 
 Yet her uplifting enthusiasm did not forsake her. She 
 shared the hope of Froebel that he was approaching 
 the realization of his hopes. But she was not destined 
 to accompany him to the end of this, his third expedi- 
 tion into the unknown realm of ideals. She had to 
 leave him at a time when the sympathy which a great 
 many people offered to his endeavors to establish the 
 Kindergarten System, held out a first promise and hope 
 of early success. She died May 13, 1839. And Fried- 
 rich Froebel stood alone again in his labors for the 
 education of childhood. 
 
 Keilhau is one of the most attractive spots in the 
 Thuringian Forest, which is not a region of great 
 height, but famous for its beautiful and fertile valleys, 
 offering a great variety of the most beautiful scenery 
 found anywhere. But nowhere has it a true highland 
 character. That is different in the so-called Harz 
 Mountains, which may be said to form the north-west- 
 ern part of the territory of Thuringia. The two moun- 
 tain systems are separated by a comparatively narrow 
 valley of renowned fertility called the Golden Aue 
 (prairie). The Harz is of the nature of a real high- 
 land, reminding the tourists of the high crests, the 
 steep slopes, and the precipitous valleys of the Alps. 
 It does not rise to a great height, its highest summits 
 being little more than half the height of Mount Wash- 
 ington, in New Hampshire. But the valleys between 
 the mountain spurs are deep and narrow. 
 
 I would now lead the reader to one of these valleys
 
 THE HOME OF HIS SECOND WIFE 169 
 
 in order to introduce him to the lady that was destined 
 to become Froebel's second wife. From the north- 
 western boundary line of the Harz Mountains a valley 
 stretches about twenty miles long to the foot of the 
 highest mountains of the range, in a direction nearly 
 due east and west. The upper half of the valley is nar- 
 row, being taken up in its entire width by the mountain 
 current flowing through it. Nearly midway of its 
 length the valley begins widening, until it measures 
 across two miles and more. At the point where the 
 widening of the valley begins, a dam runs across 
 the river-bed, raising the water a few feet, and turning the 
 current into a canal which runs along the south side of 
 the valley for a length of three or four miles before re- 
 entering the bed of the stream. All along this canal a 
 number of factories of woollens, flour-mills, metal-works, 
 etc., are located. Along the stream and the canal the 
 city of Osterode is located. 
 
 At the time when Friedrich Froebel established his 
 first school at Griesheim, his elder brother, Christian, 
 was the owner of one of the factories in Osterode. He 
 had always been a loving brother, sympathizing deeply 
 with the educational ideals of Friedrich. To him Fried- 
 rich travelled when, in 1816, he had decided to start 
 his school. His brother Christoph had died in 1813, 
 and the widow was at a loss how to provide a good 
 education for her four children. She knew that her late 
 husband had frequently spoken and exchanged letters 
 with Friedrich on educational questions, and that he 
 had always been glad to receive and be guided by 
 Friedrich's advice. So the widow wrote to Friedrich, 
 asking him to advise and assist her in her dilemma.
 
 I/O HER ASSOCIATION WITH HIS FAMILY 
 
 Friedrich took this letter as a hint from on high. He 
 had hardly finished reading it when his latent interest 
 in the education of man suddenly manifested itself in 
 all its power and energy, and pushed him irresistibly 
 forward to take up his natural vocation and be a 
 teacher. He resolved to devote himself to the educa- 
 tion of his nephews. He resigned his office as assist- 
 ant superintendent of the mineralogical museum of 
 Berlin, and travelled directly to Griesheim in Thuringia, 
 where his sister-in-law lived. She had three sons, of 
 whose education Friedrich promised her to take care. 
 But he wanted more than three pupils. So he went to 
 his brother Christian at Osterode, and soon persuaded 
 him to let his two sons go with their uncle to Gries- 
 heim to be there educated. 
 
 The family of Christian Froebel lived on intimate 
 terms with the neighboring family of Levin, where 
 there were also a number of children, among them a 
 baby girl of the name of Luise, eighteen months old 
 when Friedrich Froebel, her future husband, saw her 
 for the first time. 
 
 When Luise learned to walk, her first wanderings 
 took her across the street to the house of Christian 
 Froebel, whose children became her daily playmates. 
 But these happy days of babyhood were suddenly cut 
 short when Christian Froebel, with his whole family 
 and household, removed to Keilhau in 1820. This 
 removal caused the thoughts of little Luise, even at 
 that early age, to turn toward Keilhau. She was in- 
 duced to write letters to her former playfellow, Elise 
 Froebel ; she exchanged with Elise seeds for their gar- 
 dens ; they sent flowers to each other, and in many
 
 SHE REVERENCES HER MASTER I/I 
 
 similar ways kept up the friendly sentiments they had 
 had for one another in former years. 
 
 After a time there occurred a visit of the Froebel 
 boys to their old friends at Osterode. Little Luise 
 was much interested in her friends, who appeared to 
 her greatly superior to all her acquaintances among the 
 boy natives of Osterode. Then the brothers of Luise 
 returned the visit ; and after having come back, they 
 never tired of talking of the wonderfully happy life of 
 the boys at Keilhau and of the unparalleled kindness 
 of " Uncle Froebel," a title which they adopted from 
 the children of Christian to apply to Friedrich Froebel. 
 They also brought home a heap of things which the 
 Keilhau boys had made and given, chiefly models of 
 toys, of furniture, houses, machines, etc., cut out of 
 wood, or of cardboard pasted together. These were 
 handled daily by Luise, who knew each of the things by 
 the name of the boy that had made and sent it. In 
 this manner the thoughts of Luise Levin were, from 
 her earliest childhood, and step by step, as though 
 guided by a superior intelligence, kept turned steadily 
 toward Keilhau and its school, and toward him who 
 was the founder and the soul of it. Luise Levin knew 
 Friedrich Froebel long before she saw him in the body. 
 An invisible bond of sympathy united her soul with his. 
 So when they met within the walls of the same institu- 
 tion which he had called into existence, he soon felt 
 that there lived a kindred spirit in her, and that she was 
 destined to take the place of her who had been his 
 faithful helpmate in former years. 
 
 It was in July, 1845, tnat Luise first set foot on the 
 ground of Keilhau. She was thirty years old. Although
 
 1/2 HE FOLLOWS AFTER HIGH IDEALS 
 
 she had been separated from the family of Christian 
 Froebel when she was only five years old, she had no 
 difficulty in making friends with the three daughters of 
 Christian Froebel, who were then Mrs. Middendorff, 
 Mrs. Barop, and Miss Elise Froebel, the former corre- 
 spondent of the child Luise. Friedrich paid her a visit a 
 few days after her arrival, and gave her much friendly 
 counsel which she remembered well, and rendered use- 
 ful in her duties and relations to those around her. 
 
 But why did Froebel not live in the Keilhau school ? 
 Why did he leave the management of that institution 
 to his assistants ? Luise failed to understand the con- 
 dition of things. She did not know anything of his 
 Kindergarten ideas, and had no conception of the fact 
 that he had sacrificed his position at the head of the 
 school at Keilhau, and subsequently also that at Burg- 
 dorf in Switzerland, in order to " devote himself alto- 
 gether to the training of women for the scientific 
 development of the dawning faculties of infancy." 
 She failed to understand what was going on when she 
 saw Froebel, Barop, and Middendorff one day walking 
 up and down the yard engaged in earnest conversation. 
 Mrs. Middendorff, perceiving the curious look on the 
 face of Luise, proffered the explanation, " Uncle wants 
 more money for a journey to propagate his new ideas, 
 but Barop will not let him have any." This explana- 
 tion was more puzzling to Luise, because she still 
 thought that Froebel was the head and owner of the 
 school ; and if he was, why did he go to Barop to ask 
 for money ? 
 
 There was a mystery which she could not fathom. 
 But as she was a woman, and a true woman, for that
 
 SHE ADMIRES HIS WORK: "MUTTER LIEDER 1/3 
 
 matter, everything mysterious attracted her powerfully. 
 Friedrich Froebel grew more and more interesting to 
 her. She had always looked upon him as a great man, 
 but surely he was greater than she had believed him 
 to be. She must wait in patience. A time would 
 come when she could look through the mystery. 
 
 In the year following, Froebel again taught a normal 
 class of young ladies. One of them repeated to Luise 
 the lectures which Froebel delivered to the class. 
 Luise listened to them at first because they came, in- 
 directly at least, from Froebel. She also loved to 
 listen to the conversations among the normal pupils, 
 for there fell every now and then a word about Froebel. 
 Once she heard one of his pupils say, " Here at Keil- 
 hau you do not know what Froebel really is : you ought 
 to see the veneration which people at other places 
 bestow on him." So she longed to know all that was 
 actually said about him. 
 
 Her next step toward a comprehension of the 
 new ideas of Froebel was taken when she saw the 
 " Mutter and Kose-Lieder," that wonderful book of in- 
 structions for the mother, how to lead her baby the 
 first steps in the course of the development of body 
 and soul. She was greatly struck with the book, and 
 exclaimed, "This book is beautiful beyond compari- 
 son ! " Frau Middendorff answered, " It is no doubt, and 
 it has cost money enough ; more, in fact, than will ever 
 come out of it again." Luise felt these words like a 
 stab at her heart. Supposing Froebel had spent more 
 money on the book than it would yield again, had he 
 not done so in the service of education, for the welfare 
 of mankind? And was not his book a monument
 
 174 SHE BECOMES A NORMAL PUPIL 
 
 erected to the memory of his wife ? Who was there 
 that should have dared to blame him to his face for so 
 generous a deed in the service of mankind, and so ten- 
 der a memorial to her who had been his faithful com- 
 panion and sister genius in the most trying years of 
 his life ? All these questions and considerations were 
 awakened in her soul. And had she not known that 
 Middendorff was a true and self-denying friend of 
 Froebel, she might have been angry with her friend, 
 Frau Middendorff. But it became clear to her beyond 
 a doubt, that Friedrich Froebel was a man of mark, 
 immeasurably above the ken of all those surrounding 
 him. 
 
 On her birthday, on April 15, 1847, Friedrich was 
 already so well acquainted with her that he gave her a 
 little present, accompanied by verses. During his 
 absence from Keilhau he wrote letters to her, and 
 when she had gone away for a short time he did the 
 same ; and she, of course, answered. 
 
 Luise was now very anxious to become well taught 
 in the educational principles which Froebel was then 
 trying to disseminate, and joined a normal class in the 
 winter of 1847-48. She worked hard, and was greatly 
 profited by the course. When Froebel, in the summer 
 following, went on a lecturing tour to a number of 
 places in the country all around Keilhau, Luise Levin 
 was able to accompany him and take charge of the 
 play and games of the children that were to illustrate 
 the lectures. 
 
 In the fall of the year Miss Levin went to Rends- 
 burg, a city north of Hamburg, for the education of 
 the little children of a family related to Mrs. Luetkens
 
 THE PUPIL BECOMES ASSISTANT 1/5 
 
 at Hamburg, one of the greatest admirers and friends 
 of Froebel. At Christmas, the same year, she met 
 Froebel again at the house of a relation of his at 
 Bergedorf, a small city a few miles east of Hamburg. 
 
 At the beginning of the summer season of 1849, 
 Froebel went to the fashionable watering-place of 
 Liebenstein, in Thuringia, trying to obtain the lease 
 of Marienthal, a mansion near Liebenstein, belonging 
 to the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. He intended holding 
 his normal courses there. He finally succeeded in 
 obtaining the lease. Until the contract was closed he 
 found temporary lodgings at a farmhouse in the 
 neighborhood. 
 
 He communicated his new move to his old friend 
 and assistant, Luise Levin at Rendsburg, indicating, of 
 course, that her help was needed in Liebenstein. True, 
 he had with him a grand niece who had also studied 
 under him and was a very apt pupil. She kept house 
 for him, and aided in taking the normal pupils through 
 the practical work of the occupations and games. Never- 
 theless, he knew that Luise would work more in unison 
 with him ; and she herself felt that her old friend was 
 not as comfortable as he might be. They both felt a 
 lively desire to be reunited in their work. It held Luise 
 no longer at her comfortable place at Rendsburg. She 
 determined to leave the situation and rejoin Froebel as 
 soon as a substitute was found to step into her place. 
 
 She left Rendsburg and went to Liebenstein in July, 
 1849. 
 
 From that time forward Luise lived at Liebenstein 
 and Marienthal, and had her hands full of work. She 
 had to keep house not only for herself and Froebel, but
 
 176 LIFE AT LIEBENSTEIN 
 
 also for a number of normal pupils. Besides, there 
 were numbers of people every day visiting the institu- 
 tion in order to see and be profited by the educational 
 work carried on by Froebel. Liebenstein was at that 
 time one of the most fashionable watering-places of 
 Central Germany. During the fine season there were 
 always many visitors, among whom Froebel was a never- 
 ending theme of conversation. The most remarkable 
 among the visitors that went to study Froebelism at its 
 fountain head, were Adolf Diesterweg, next to Froebel 
 the most renowned educator of Germany of this cen- 
 tury, and Baroness Bertha von Marenholtz-Biilow, who 
 has since published a number of books treating of the 
 Froebel education. 
 
 Except the period of care and want during the first 
 years of the school at Keilhau, when he was still of the 
 opinion that he was launched on the right current of 
 education, there was probably not another period in the 
 life of Friedrich Froebel that afforded him so much 
 satisfaction as his normal school at Marienthal. "I 
 have now found the locality," he says, "where I am 
 able to carry the fundamental thought of my method 
 to its final conclusions. In Keilhau it will never be 
 possible to establish an institution for the training of 
 women. Look at the mountains and the whole neigh- 
 borhood there, and you will feel with me that nature 
 refuses to have it there." 
 
 Froebel still travelled a good deal. The greater part 
 of the winter 1849-1850 he was at Hamburg, lectur- 
 ing and conducting the work in Kindergartens, a num- 
 ber of which were established during the time. He 
 went home to Marienthal when the spring of 1850
 
 THEY GRAVITATE TOWARD MARRIAGE 
 
 commenced. After that time he took no more long 
 journeys, but devoted nearly all his time to his normal 
 school. " Now followed," writes Luise, " a sweetly 
 regular time of steady work, interrupted only by walks, 
 refreshing alike to pupils and teachers, to body and 
 soul." 
 
 This quiet life continued uninterrupted to near the 
 end of Froebel's life. At the beginning of the next 
 year Froebel made preparations for his marriage to 
 Luise Levin. Not that he expected that the marriage 
 relation would greatly affect the mutual understanding 
 and co-operation between them. But he wished to 
 honor his best assistant, who had assimilated his ideas 
 so completely as to deserve being called his other self, 
 by bestowing on her his name, that name which was 
 forever identified with his educational ideas. Luise 
 Levin had already, in her capacity as his girl assistant, 
 grown to be his helpmate to an extent as great probably 
 as his first wife had ever been, though in an entirely 
 different manner. She had imbibed his ideas and prin- 
 ciples, his views of life and principles of ethics, his 
 profound religious convictions and perfect trust in God, 
 and had assimilated it all so thoroughly that there was 
 hardly anything left of her own original nature. She 
 was the most perfect reproduction of Froebel's own 
 self that can be conceived, taking into account that he 
 was a nature altogether original and creative, and she 
 was to the same extent receptive and reproductive. 
 
 " In childlike veneration," says she, " I had at first 
 tried to approach him in thought. His ineffable kind- 
 ness of heart toward the weak, managed to draw out to 
 him all my confidence and trust. At length both sides
 
 1/8 THE MONARCHY DEALS A HEAVY BLOW 
 
 felt a desire to be legally linked by the closest ties. 
 His age was no drawback at all with me. In my eyes he 
 was the greatest and the best of men, and I only won- 
 dered how he could condescend to care for a girl so 
 much beneath his level in every respect. The only anx- 
 iety I had was to make sure that the rather unusual 
 step of a marriage at this time of life should have no 
 damaging influence upon the great work he had to ac- 
 complish in the world." 
 
 And surely it was the very reverse of an impediment 
 to his life-work. This pure union of two kindred intel- 
 lects was the greatest possible help to the Kindergarten 
 cause. The marriage ceremony was performed July 
 9, 1851, Froebel being sixty-nine, and Luise thirty-six 
 years old. 
 
 Less than a month after the marriage, a terrible 
 stroke was aimed at Froebel and his life-work. The 
 Minister of Education in Prussia, Von Raumer, on 
 August 4, prohibited Kindergartens in the kingdom. 
 Grieved as Froebel naturally was at the obstacle to the 
 progress of his work, his trust in God did not waver for 
 a moment. " Such opposition," said he, " forces us 
 back upon our principles. I lived through such a 
 storm in Switzerland. We came out of that persecu- 
 tion victorious." 
 
 True, in this case also, victory was achieved, but 
 Froebel had to pay for it with his life. 
 
 He was not the man to throw up his hands. He 
 wrote to the Prussian Minister, and sent copies of all 
 his writings, books and pamphlets, asking for a thorough 
 examination of the papers and books, and for an inves- 
 tigation of his work at Marienthal. And forestalling
 
 WILL NOT RECONSIDER ITS ACTION 179 
 
 action on the part of the government, he sent out invi- 
 tations to a great many people interested in education 
 to meet at Liebenstein and investigate his proceedings. 
 The meeting occurred Sept. 27 to 29, 1851. The as- 
 sembly, after having gained a thorough insight into the 
 educational principles and practice of Froebel, resolved 
 to publish a Kindergarten review in order to instruct 
 the people and the teachers and governments in the 
 principles of the new education. 
 
 The Prussian Ministry refused to spend time upon 
 an investigation into the Kindergarten education. They 
 simply sustained their order of prohibition. What else 
 could have been expected of a government blind to 
 everything but its own selfish and sordid pecuniary 
 and military interests ? Froebel was deeply aggrieved 
 at so manifest an absurdity, and he seriously consid- 
 ered the question of emigrating across the Atlantic 
 Ocean, to this land of the free. Mrs. Froebel had a 
 brother living at Philadelphia. To him Froebel sent a 
 scheme outlining the establishment of a Kindergar- 
 ten, and a normal school connected with it, at the 
 Quaker City. It was too late. His course was nearly 
 run. 
 
 The yoth birthday of Froebel had been celebrated 
 on April 21, 1852, in a manner to awaken in him a feel- 
 ing of true elevation of spirit. Still under the influence 
 of the festival, he received letters with clippings from 
 newspapers in Hamburg containing attacks upon his 
 religious principles. He was deeply affected by it, and 
 found no rest until he had written a lengthy reply. All 
 these troubles affected the old man, and shook his 
 health powerfully ; and, for the first time in his life, his
 
 ISO THE BLOW FATAL TO FROEBEL 
 
 body refused to do what his intellect demanded as 
 necessary. 
 
 In Whitweek, 1852, the general congress of German 
 teachers at the city of Gotha honored Froebel by an 
 invitation to attend their meeting. He went, was 
 greatly honored, and enjoyed the event. His reception 
 by his pupils on his return to Marienthal was also of a 
 cheering influence. Nevertheless he seemed unable to 
 shake off and forget the injustice which he had suffered, 
 and the false accusations against his religion which had 
 been made at Hamburg. He did not recover his full 
 strength, and was taken seriously ill on June 6. The 
 strong man had never before had a serious illness, and 
 could not understand why a slight cold should affect 
 him so greatly. He grew weaker and weaker from day 
 to day, until the end came on June 19, 1852. 
 
 With the most unshaken trust in his wife he had ex- 
 pressed his conviction that the Kindergarten was safe 
 in her care and in that of his old and tried friend Mid- 
 dendorff. He had also commended his wife to the care 
 of that good friend of his. But uppermost in his 
 thoughts during the closing days of his life was his re- 
 ligious belief. He had his godfathers' letter read to 
 him, calling it his letter of credit for heaven, and re- 
 peating again and again the words used in the letter, 
 that "the Saviour should thenceforward hold immediate 
 communion with him in justice, grace, and mercy." He 
 said he had " labored to make Christianity a reality," 
 and he repeated many times with great emphasis the 
 words that he was " a Christian man." All this was 
 proof how deeply rooted his religious ideas were, and 
 how painful the slur had been to him which those
 
 FROEBEL'S MONUMENT.
 
 FRAU FROEBEL IN WIDOWHOOD l8l 
 
 Hamburg newspapers had thrown on his religious sen- 
 timents. 
 
 His death was peaceful. Deeply afflicted as his 
 widow was, she had profited enough under his tuition 
 to look for work as the only solace in so great a be- 
 reavement. And since that time Luise Froebel has 
 devoted her whole life and energy to the active propa- 
 gation of his system of education. The city of Ham- 
 burg, where she has been residing since his death nearly 
 all the time, holds the foremost rank among the cities 
 of the world as a Kindergarten centre, having, in pro- 
 portion to its size, the greatest number, and, probably, 
 the most Froebelish Kindergartens in the world. 
 
 Frau Froebel was seventy-seven years old on the i5th 
 of April, 1892. She has, like her late husband, pre- 
 served a freshness of sentiment, of sympathy and activ- 
 ity, which all her friends greatly admire. Her looks 
 also are comparatively fresh, allowing us to hope that 
 she may be spared for many years yet to assist the 
 world in the active work of propagating the New Edu- 
 cation according to the principles of Friedrich Froebel. 
 
 The present life of Frau Froebel is as comfortable 
 and pleasant as a lady of her age and aspirations can 
 expect. She is living in the city of Hamburg where 
 her residence is located in the pleasantest and most 
 fashionable quarter. She has been for years, and is at 
 present, in receipt of an allowance large enough to en- 
 able her to satisfy all her legitimate desires and wants, 
 and to leave something to give toward the numerous 
 charities and needy Kindergarten institutes with which 
 her active life of beneficence brings her in contact. 
 Her circle of acquaintance is large, and there are many
 
 1 82 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL AND HIS HELPMATES 
 
 whom she calls her intimate friends. There are few 
 people of her age so happy as she is, not only through 
 the comforts of her private condition and her social 
 affiliations, but through her consciousness of having 
 lived a life of service and usefulness to mankind by 
 doing to the fullest extent her duty to the memory of 
 her husband, whose spirit she has kept actively marching 
 on.
 
 BOOKS FOR KINDERGARTENERS. 
 
 NUMBER WORK FOR YOUNG CHILDREN By HORACE GRANT 
 
 American edition edited by William Small 50 cents (Former title, 
 
 " Arithmetic for Young Children.") 
 
 " This little book belongs to the best class of agencies which are being 
 brought forward by the new ideas and natural methods of education. The 
 author understands young children, their need of simplicity, repetition, 
 variety, and concrete or picture-like presentation ; and he believes in making 
 mental exertion a pleasure. We commend this book to all primary teachers 
 and to mothers who would like to give the little people a play-spell while in 
 the very act of training them to ' easy reckoning." " Christian Register. 
 
 TRAINING OF THE SENSES OF YOUNG CHILDREN By 
 
 HORACE GRANT 50 cents (Former title, " Improvement of the Senses.") 
 " This excellent little work has been prepared for the amusement in in- 
 struction of the younger children, who are too young to learn to read and 
 write. Its special object is to excite them to examine surrounding objects 
 correctly, so that valuable knowledge may be obtained, while the attention, 
 memory, judgment, and invention are duly exercised. It instructs while it 
 pleases, and the acquiring of knowledge by the little one is closely connected 
 with many pleasant bits of memory, always likely to be retained." Salem 
 Observer. 
 
 PHYSIOLOGY FOR LITTLE FOLKS By ALBERT F. BLAISDBLL 
 M.D. A revised edition of " The Child's Book of Health " Indorsed 
 by Mrs Mary H. Hunt of the W. C. T. U. Boards 30 cents net By 
 mail 35 cents 
 
 " This book presents, in a manner interesting and intelligible to the youngest 
 reader, the simplest physiological facts, the aim being to stimulate the little 
 ones to learn and practise things which will promote their bodily health. The 
 matter is arranged in easy lessons for schools. The print is large, and words 
 simple and easily understood. Special reference is made to the effects of 
 stimulants on the bodily health. The book is useful in what it suggests as 
 well as what it contains." Norwich Bulletin. 
 
 NATURAL HISTORY PLAYS DIALOGUES AND RECITA- 
 TIONS FOR SCHOOL EXHIBITIONS By LOUISA P. HOPKINS 
 supervisor in Boston public schools Boards 30 cents net By mail 35 cents 
 These are written for a class of pupils of from seven to twelve years of age, 
 and are designed for concerts or part-recitation and reading. The " move- 
 ment plays " combine with the text many imitations of the natural movementi 
 of animals represented, after the manner of the Froebel kindergarten plays. 
 incidentally the children are taught facts concerning the structure, habits 
 txxl, and haunts of birds, beasts, and insects. 
 
 Sold by alt booksellers or tnt by mail postpaid on receipt of prfct 
 
 LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers Boston
 
 KINDERGARTEN JREASURES 
 
 MOTHER-PLAY AND NURSERY SONGS By FRIEDRICH FROB. 
 
 BEL Translated from the German by Miss Jnrvis and Miss Dwlght 
 
 Edited by ELIZABETH P. PEABODV Quarto Boards $1.50 net By 
 
 mail $1.75 
 
 " It is a lrge quarto in form, and is filled with illustrations and music. It 
 ts charmingly adapted for mothers who wish to develop their children's facul- 
 ties in the highest and best manner. It commences with songs appropriate 
 for the first movements of the little limbs, and pictures the play that accom- 
 panies the music. It carries on the delightful process in harmony with the 
 growth of the child, making the limbs, the features, the senses, birds and 
 animals, and the simple sports of children the teachers in this system of train- 
 ing, the inspiration for the bright nursery songs. The process is pleasantly 
 illustrated in the pictures, the quaintness and simplicity of the German 
 sketches adding to the attraction of the text. Wise are the mothers who bring 
 up their children with ' Mother-Play ' for a teacher, and fortunate the children 
 who enjoy such instruction; for self-respect and politeness, kindness and gen- 
 erosity, rhythmical motion, music and poetry grow with their growth, ami 
 strengthen with their strength." Providence Journal, 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF FRIEDRICH FROEBEL By BARONESS B. 
 VON MARENHOLZ-BULOW Translated by Mrs. Horace Mann With a sketch 
 of the life of Friedrich Froebel by Miss Emily Shirreff 12010. Cloth $1.50 
 
 " A most delightful work: one that possesses all the absorbing interest of a 
 first-class German romance, while it presents pencil sketches and remini** 
 ccnces connected with the distinguished author of the kindergarten system 
 that most beautifully illustrate the honesty, simplicity, and earnestness of his 
 lovely character, which so admirably combined the sterner elements of indomi- 
 table perseverance with the tender, loving nature of a child. The kindergar- 
 ten has been adopted by the civilized world, and 'he name of Frocbel has 
 become immortal. Attached to these ' Reminiscences ' is a sketch of the lifo 
 of Froebel, by Emily ShirrefT, president of the Froebel Society of London." 
 
 HOW SHALT, MY CHILD BE TAUGHT? Practical Pedagogy 
 or the Science of Teaching By Mrs. LOUISA PARSONS HOPKWS super- 
 visor in Boston public schools Cloth $1.00 net. By mail, f 1.15. 
 
 "The author of this excellent work, in the body of the book, answers very 
 satisfactorily the question, ' How shall my child be taught?' Mrs. Hopkins 
 has had a large and very successful experience in the training of children, and 
 her work and its results are sufficient proof that children love to learn, that 
 they are eager for knowledge, and that, with proper methods, based upon 
 correct principles, they will learn, and will accomplish a wonderful amount 
 of work. An essay by Thomas W. Higginson in which he indorses tlv 
 authoress' methods, and pronounces a high encomium upon her work, is em 
 bodied in the book. This book is worthy of careful study by every primarj 
 teacher who seeks to employ approved methods in her work with younj 
 children." School Teacher. 
 
 9ld by a// booksellers or snt by mall postpaid on receipt of price 
 
 LEE AND SHEFAED Publishers Boston
 
 QTORIES AMERICAN V 
 
 Oj^r^Liflv HISTORY 
 
 Three Books. Cloth, Illustrated. Price for each book, 50 cents. Boards, 
 30 cents net. By mail, 35 cents 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 STORIES OF AMERICAN HISTORY. By N. S. DODGE. 
 
 As a reading-book for the younger classes in public and fprivate schools (by 
 
 many of which it has been adopted), it will be found of great value. 
 
 " Nobody knows better than the author how to make a good story out 
 of even the driest matters of fact. . . . Here are twenty-two of such 
 stories ; and they are chosen with a degree of skill which of itself would 
 indicate its author's fitness for the task, even if we had no other evidence 
 of that fitness. There is no better, purer, more interesting, or more instruc- 
 tive book for boys." New York Hearth and Home. 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 NOBLE DEEDS OF OUR FATHERS. As told by Soldiers 
 of the Revolution gathered around the Old Bell of Independence. 
 Revised and adapted from HENRY C. WATSON. 
 
 " Every phase of the struggle is presented, and the moral and reli- 
 gious character of our forefathers, even when engaged in deadly conflict, 
 is depicted with great clearness. The young reader indeed, older readers 
 will like the stories will be deeply interested in the story of Lafayette's 
 return to this country, of reminiscences of Washington, of the night before 
 the battle of Brandywine, of the first prayer in Congress, of the patriotic 
 women of that day, stories of adventure regarding Gen. Wayne, the traitor 
 Arnold, the massacre of Wyoming, the capture of Gen. Prescott, and in 
 other narratives equally interesting and important." Norwich Bulletin. 
 
 THIRD SERIES 
 
 THE BOSTON TEA PARTY, and other Stories of 
 the Revolution. Relating many Daring Deeds of the Old 
 Heroes. By HENRY C. WATSON. 
 
 "The tales are full of interesting material, they are told in a very 
 graphic manner, and give many incidents of personal daring and descrip- 
 tions of famous men and places. General Putnam's escape, the fight at 
 Concord, the patriotism of Mr. Borden, tho battle of Bunker Hill, the 
 battle of Oriskany, the mutiny at Morristown, and the exploits of Peter 
 Francisco are among the subjects. Books such as this have a practical 
 value and an undeniable charm. History will never be dull so long as it 
 is represented with so much brightness and color." Philadelphia Record. 
 
 STORIES OF THE CIVIL WAR. By ALBERT M. BLAIS- 
 DELL, A.M., author of " First Steps with American and British 
 Authors," " Readings from the Waverley Novels," " Blaisdell's Physi- 
 ologies," etc. Illustrated. Library Edition, Cloth, $1.00. School 
 Edition, Boards, 30 cents, net; by mail, 35 cents. 
 
 " An exceedingly interesting collection of true stories of thrilling events 
 and adventures of the brave men who fought during the Civil War. The 
 author aims to present recitals of graphic interest and founded on fact ; 
 to preserve those written by eye-witnesses or participants in the scenes 
 described; and especially to stimulate a greater love and reverence for 
 our beloved land and its institutions, in the character of the selections 
 presented. 
 
 LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers Boston
 
 THE 
 
 CLEMENTS -F -PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 By GABRIEL COMPAYRE 
 
 Translated by WILLIAM H. PAYNE, Ph.D., LL.D., 
 
 Chancellor of the University of Nashville, and President of th 
 
 Peabody Normal College 
 
 Price, $1.00 Net by mail, $1.10 
 
 " This work is scholarly without many technicalities ; it is modern 
 without the conceit of 'newness; 1 it is comprehensive without being 
 vague; it contains only the essentials without eliminating the essential 
 of vivacity; it gives the results of research without the tedious details of 
 scientific investigation ; it has the inspiration that disseminates psycho- 
 logical truth ; it is readily intelligible, and does not require any ' extraor- 
 dinary scientific acumen ; ' it is reverent in its attitude to truth ; it is 
 
 of Education. 
 
 OBSERVATION PRIMARY 
 IESSONSINTHE 1 SCHOOLS 
 
 By LOUISA P. HOPKINS, 
 
 Supervisor of Elementary Science in Boston Public Schools 
 
 Parts f, 2, 3 & 4. Price, 20 cents net per part. 
 
 Complete in one volume, cloth, 75 cents net. 
 
 ONE of the well-established principles in modern methods of impart, 
 ing instruction to the young is embodied in these useful educational 
 works by Mrs. Hopkins, namely : Seeing an object helps to think 
 about it, and develops the power of expression. These observation 
 and elementary science lessons have for their first object the Cultivation 
 of the Powers of Observation. Parts I, 2, and 3 in the interesting 
 and valuable scries are already published, and include within their range 
 of primary instruction suggestions on " Education through Self-Activity 
 in Observation, Thought, and Expression ; " giving " General Directions 
 for Lessons," the " Programme for the Work in Boston Public Schools ; " 
 "Suggestions for Lessons to Develop Ideas of Color;" "Lessons on 
 Form ; " " Lessons to Develop Ideas of Place ; " " Suggestions for Les- 
 sons to Develop Ideas of Size," to develop " Qualities of Objects," etc. 
 Part 2 treats of suggestions as to how to impart instruction on Plant Life 
 and Animal Life, giving examples indicating how to utilize out-door 
 material in the school-room ; model lessons with reference to " Observa- 
 tions of Animal Life," including oral lessons on birds, telling with clear, 
 ness and detail how the child should be taught. Part 3 " Physical Phe- 
 nomena of Nature; the Human Body." These elementary books are 
 in harmony with the advanced intelligence displayed in the highest 
 educational methods employed, and are of inestimable value to the 
 progressive teacher in meeting the actual requirements of our time. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers and sent by mail postpaid on receipt of price 
 
 LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers Boston
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 EDUCATION AND PSYCHOLOGY LIBRARY 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 )UARTER LOAN 
 SEP 27 1976 
 
 RFCFFVEL 
 
 AUG31 19 
 
 EDU./PSYCH. 
 LIBRARY 
 
 RECEIVE 
 
 ED/PSYCH LIE 
 
 ?onnL9-20m-7,'72(Q4038s8)4939A 3.59
 
 UCLA-ED/PSYCH Library 
 
 LB1156F92E 
 
 L 005 598 720 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 994 582 5