cient to solve it. Everyone, seeing these letters, would be
obliged to confess, "Yes, indeed, here is plain need of training for
parents." Yet, at the same time, these same persons would be tempted
to inquire, "But can any training meet such a difficult situation?"

Here is despair; and some cause for it. When one's own mother has not
understood one; when one has lived lonely in the midst of brothers and
sisters who are more strange than strangers; when one's childhood is
full of the memory of obscure but intense sufferings, one flies for
relief, perhaps, to any one who offers it hopefully enough; but
one does not really expect to get it. _Can_ training, especially by
correspondence, meet the need?

Not wholly, of course, let us be frank to admit. No amount of theory,
however excellent, can take the place of the drill given only in the
hard school of experience. But when the theory is not merely theory,
but sound principle, based on scientific observation, confirmed by the
wide experience of many persons, it is as valuable in practical life
as any rule of mathematics to the practical engineer. We all know that
the technical correspondence schools really do fit young mechanics
to move on and up in the trade. By correspondence he is given what
Froebel calls the interpreting word. The experience in application the
student has to supply himself.

So in the matter of education. There are genuine principles which
underlie the development of every child that lives--even the
feeble-minded, deaf, and blind. Read Helen Keller's wonderful life,
if you want to see the proof of it. Just as surely as a child has
two legs and has to learn to walk on them by a series of prolonged
experiments, just so surely he has (a) a sense of justice, (b) an
instinct for freedom, (c) a love of play. Every kind of child has all
these instincts, as much as he has love for food and drink; and to
educate him consists in developing these instincts into (a) the habit
of dealing justly by others, (b) the right use of freedom, (c) love
of work. The particular methods may differ. The principles _do not and
CANNOT DIFFER_.

She who would succeed in child training must hold to these truths with
all her might and main--making them, in fact, her religion, for they
are the doctrines of the Christian religion as applied to motherhood.
To hold them lightly, or even experimentally, will not do. One most
walk in faith. And that the faith may not be blind, but may