in selecting his gifts, looked far
back into the past of humanity, and there sought the thread which from
the beginning connects all times and leads to the farthest future."

Froebel's Monument.

And here we leave the second gift, that trinity of forms which,
wrought in marble, marks the place dear and sacred to all
kindergartners, the grave of Froebel,--a simple monument to one so
great, yet so connected with our study and the child's experience that
with all its simplicity it is strangely effective. A still more
enduring monument he has in the millions of happy children who have
found their way to knowledge through the door which he opened to them;
indeed, if half the children he has benefited could build a tower of
these tiny blocks to commemorate his life and death, its point would
reach higher than St. Peter's dome and draw the thoughts of men to
heaven.

Suggestions of the Gift.

This gift can hardly be studied but that an inner unity, born of these
reconciled contrasts, suggests itself to the imagination.

The cube seems to stand as the symbol of the inorganic, the mineral
kingdom, with its wonderful crystals; the cylinder as the type of
vegetable life, suggesting the roots, stems, and branches, with their
rounded sides, and forming a beautiful connection between the cube,
that emblem of "things in the earth beneath," and the sphere which
completes the trinity and speaks to us of a never-ending and perfect
whole having "Unity for its centre, Diversity for its circumference."

The cube seems to suggest rest, immobility; the cylinder, in this
connection, growth; and the sphere, perfection, completeness,--so
delicately poised it is,--only kept in its proper place by the most
exquisite adjustment. And so to us, sometimes, the things that are
visible become luminous with suggestions of greater realities which
are yet unseen; and in the least we discern a faint radiance of the
greatest.

Things that are small mirror things that are mighty. The tiny sphere
is an emblem of the "big round world" and the planetary systems. The
cube recalls the wonderful crystals, and shows the form that men
reflect in architecture and sculpture. As for the cylinder it is
Nature's special form, and God has taught man through Nature to use it
in a thousand ways, and indeed has himself fashioned man more or less
in its shape.

Mr. Hailmann says: "The second gift presents types of the principal
phases of human development; from