llage children on the green
hills of Thuringia. The intensity of his inward life, the white heat
of his convictions, his absolute blindness to any selfish idea or aim,
his enthusiasm, the exaltation of his spiritual nature, all furnish so
many cogent reasons why the people of any day or of any community
should have failed to understand him, and scorned what they could not
comprehend. It is the old story of the seers and the prophets repeated
as many times as they appear; for "these colossal souls," as Emerson
said, "require a long focal distance to be seen."

At ten years old the sensitive boy was fortunately removed from the
uncongenial atmosphere of the parental household; and in his uncle's
home he spent five free and happy years, being apprenticed at the end
of this time to a forester in his native Thuringian woods. Then
followed a year's course in the University of Jena, and four years
spent in the study of farming, in clerical work of various kinds, and
in land-surveying. All these employments, however, Froebel himself
felt to be merely provisional; for like the hazel wand in the
diviner's hand, his instinct was blindly seeking through these
restless years the well-spring of his life.

In Frankfort, where he had gone intending to study architecture,
Destiny touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and knew her.
Through a curious combination of circumstances he gained employment in
Herr Gruner's Model School, and it was found at once that he was what
the Germans love to call "a teacher by the grace of God." The first
time he met his class of boys he tells us that he felt inexpressibly
happy; the hazel wand had found the waters and was fixed at last. From
this time on, all the events of his life were connected with his
experience as a teacher. Impelled as soon as he had begun his work by
a desire for more effective methods, he visited Yverdon, then the
centre of educational thought, and studied with Pestalozzi. He went
again in 1808, accompanied by three pupils, and spent two years there,
alternately studying and teaching.

There was a year of lectures at Goettingen after this, and one at the
University of Berlin, accompanied by unceasing study and research both
in literary and scientific lines; but in the fateful year 1813 this
quiet student life was broken in upon, for impelled by strong moral
conviction, Froebel joined Baron von Luetzow's famous volunteer corps,
formed to harass the French by constant skirmi