hing of Kaiserswerth testify to
the strong affection for the common home, the "mother-house," as they
beautifully term it, felt by all its children. Every pains is taken to
preserve it. There is correspondence, frequent and regular, from here to
every sister. No matter in what distant land she may be, her birthday is
remembered, and she is taught to look to this as a waiting refuge for
the days of trouble, sickness, and old age.

There was soon arranged a series of house regulations and instructions
for work which became the basis for after regulations in nearly all
existing institutions.

Almost contemporary with the mother-house arose the normal school for
infant-school teachers. It had first started as a child's school, and
afterward young women who had taste for the care of children were
received to be taught their duties. Fliedner took great interest in the
instruction of children. He devised little games for them, and arranged
stories to be told. His simplicity and his child-like nature led him to
disregard formalities, and to think solely of the end he had in view.
On one occasion, when picturing the combat of David and Goliath,
reaching that point in the narrative when the young shepherd lad slings
the stone that brings the giant to the ground, he cast himself headlong,
to the great delight and amazement of his little audience, who enjoyed
to the full this object-lesson that made the story so vivid to them.

Then he took special pains that his teachers should learn to tell the
stories of the Bible so as to make them clear and interesting to the
youngest child. Every day a story was told in school, and each evening
the teacher whose turn it was to relate the story the following day came
to Fliedner and rehearsed it to him as though he were a child, afterward
receiving his suggestions as to how the narrative could be improved. The
work went along quietly, ever growing, ever advancing. "Among all
others, and more than all others, was Fliedner's wife his best help. Her
keen glance, made pure and holy by her Christian faith, preserved him
from mistakes. With the household virtues of cleanliness, order,
simplicity, and economy she united large-hearted compassion toward those
needing help of any kind, yet knowing withal how, with virile sense and
energy, to prevent the misuse of ministering love. She became a model
for the deaconesses, as well as a mother to them, and her name deserves
to be mentioned with honor, as