ft it no other legacy, was too
preposterous to the beautiful spirit of Paul Robin. He believed that
whatever part heredity may play, there are other factors equally
great, if not greater, that may and will eradicate or minimize the
so-called first cause. Proper economic and social environment, the
breath and freedom of nature, healthy exercise, love and sympathy,
and, above all, a deep understanding for the needs of the
child--these would destroy the cruel, unjust, and criminal stigma
imposed on the innocent young.

Paul Robin did not select his children; he did not go to the
so-called best parents: he took his material wherever he could find
it. From the street, the hovels, the orphan and foundling asylums,
the reformatories, from all those gray and hideous places where a
benevolent society hides its victims in order to pacify its guilty
conscience. He gathered all the dirty, filthy, shivering little
waifs his place would hold, and brought them to Cempuis. There,
surrounded by nature's own glory, free and unrestrained, well fed,
clean kept, deeply loved and understood, the little human plants
began to grow, to blossom, to develop beyond even the expectations of
their friend and teacher, Paul Robin.

The children grew and developed into self-reliant, liberty loving men
and women. What greater danger to the institutions that make the
poor in order to perpetuate the poor. Cempuis was closed by the
French government on the charge of co-education, which is prohibited
in France. However, Cempuis had been in operation long enough to
prove to all advanced educators its tremendous possibilities, and to
serve as an impetus for modern methods of education, that are slowly
but inevitably undermining the present system.

Cempuis was followed by a great number of other educational
attempts,--among them, by Madelaine Vernet, a gifted writer and poet,
author of L'AMOUR LIBRE, and Sebastian Faure, with his LA RUCHE,[1]
which I visited while in Paris, in 1907.

Several years ago Comrade Faure bought the land on which he built his
LA RUCHE. In a comparatively short time he succeeded in transforming
the former wild, uncultivated country into a blooming spot, having
all the appearance of a well kept farm. A large, square court,
enclosed by three buildings, and a broad path leading to the garden
and orchards, greet the eye of the visitor. The garden, kept as only
a Frenchman knows how, furnishes a large variety of vegetables