utter was made into pats and finally sent to
market. Then came the payment, which required little accounts. When
the game was over, a different one followed, perhaps something which
rendered the little hands skilful by preparing fine weaving from strips
of paper; for Froebel had perceived that change brought rest.

Every kindergarten should have a small garden, to afford an opportunity
to watch the development of the plants, though only one at a time--for
instance, the bean. By watching the clouds in the sky he directed the
childish intelligence to the rivers, seas, and circulation of moisture.
In the autumn the observation of the chrysalis state of insects was
connected with that of the various stages of their existence.

In this way the child can be guided in its play to a certain creative
activity, rendered familiar with the life of Nature, the claims of the
household, the toil of the peasants, mechanics, etc., and at the same
time increase its dexterity in using its fingers and the suppleness of
its body. It learns to play, to obey, and to submit to the rules of the
school, and is protected from the contradictory orders of unreasonable
mothers and nurses.

Women and girls, too, were benefitted by the kindergarten.

Mothers, whose time, inclination, or talents, forbade them to devote
sufficient time to the child, were relieved by the kindergarten. Girls
learned, as if in a preparatory school of future wife and motherhood,
how to give the little one what it needed, and, as Froebel expresses it,
to become the mediators between Nature and mind.

Yet even this enterprise, the outcome of pure love for the most innocent
and harmless creatures, was prohibited and persecuted as perilous to
the state under Frederick William IV, during the period of the reaction
which followed the insurrection of 1848.

CHAPTER XIII. THE FOUNDERS OF THE KEILHAU INSTITUTE, AND A GLIMPSE AT
THE HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL.

I was well acquainted with the three founders of our institute--Fredrich
Froebel, Middendorf, and Langethal--and the two latter were my teachers.
Froebel was decidedly "the master who planned it."

When we came to Keilhau he was already sixty-six years old, a man of
lofty stature, with a face which seemed to be carved with a dull knife
out of brown wood.

His long nose, strong chin, and large ears, behind which the long locks,
parted in the middle, were smoothly brushed, would have rendered him
positively ugly, had