rily restored his
portion of the property, but, as he himself told me long after, the
quarrel with one so dear to him saddened his life for years. For the
sake of the "fidelity to one's self" which he required from others he
had lost his father's love, but he had obeyed a resistless inner voice,
and the genuineness of his vocation was to be brilliantly proved.

Success followed his efforts, though he assumed the management of the
Keilhau Institute under the most difficult circumstances.

Beneath its roof he had found in the niece of Friedrich Froebel a
beloved wife, peculiarly suited both to him and to her future position.
She was as little as he was big, but what energy, what tireless activity
this dainty, delicate woman possessed! To each one of us she showed
a mother's sympathy, managed the whole great household down to the
smallest details, and certainly neglected nothing in the care of her own
sons and daughters.

A third master, the archdeacon Langethal, was one of the founders of the
institution, but had left it several years before.

As I mention him with the same warmth that I speak of Middendorf and
Barop, many readers will suspect that this portion of my reminiscences
contains a receipt for favours, and that reverence and gratitude, nay,
perhaps the fear of injuring an institution still existing, induces me
to show only the lights and cover the shadows with the mantle of love.

I will not deny that a boy from eleven to fifteen years readily
overlooks in those who occupy an almost paternal relation to him faults
which would be immediately noted by the unclouded eyes of a critical
observer; but I consider myself justified in describing what I saw in
my youth exactly as it impressed itself on my memory. I have never
perceived the smallest flaw or even a trait or act worthy of censure in
either Barop, Middendorf, or Langethal. Finally, I may say that, after
having learned in later years from abundant data willingly placed at my
disposal by Johannes Barop, our teacher's son and the present master of
the institute, the most minute details concerning their character and
work, none of these images have sustained any material injury.

In Friedrich Froebel, the real founder of the institute, who repeatedly
lived among us for months, I have learned to know from his own works and
the comprehensive amount of literature devoted to him, a really talented
idealist, who on the one hand cannot be absolved from an amazing