seemingly difficult later on! It seems to be only
books afterward; and "books are good enough in their own way, but they
are a mighty bloodless substitute for life."

The most superficial observer values the industrial side of the
kindergarten, because it falls directly in line with the present
effort to make some manual training a part of school work; but twenty
or twenty-five years ago, when the subject was not so popular,
kindergarten children were working away at their pretty, useful
tasks,--tiny missionaries helping to show the way to a truth now fully
recognized. As to the value of leading children to habits of industry
as early in life as may be, that they may see the dignity and
nobleness of labor, and conceive of their individual responsibilities
in this world of action, that is too obvious to dwell upon at this
time.

To Froebel, life, action, and knowledge were the three notes of one
harmonious chord; but he did not advocate manual training merely that
children might be kept busy, nor even that technical skill might be
acquired. The piece of finished kindergarten work is only a symbol of
something more valuable which the child has acquired in doing it.

The first steps in all the kindergarten occupations are directed or
suggested by the teacher; but these dictations or suggestions are
merely intended to serve as a sort of staff, by which the child can
steady himself until he can walk alone. It is always the creative
instinct that is to be reached and vivified: everything else is
secondary. By reproduction from memory of a dictated form, by taking
from or adding to it, by changing its centre, corners, or sides,--by a
dozen ingenious preliminary steps,--the child's inventive faculty is
developed; and he soon reaches a point in drawing, building, modeling,
or what not, where his greatest delight is to put his individual ideas
into visible shape. The simple request, "Make something pretty of your
own," brings a score of original combinations and designs,--either the
old thoughts in different shape or something fresh and audacious which
hints of genius. Instead of twenty hackneyed and slavish copies of
one pattern, we have twenty free, individual productions, each the
expression of the child's inmost personal thought. This invests labor
with a beauty and power, and confers upon it a dignity, to be gained
in no other way. It makes every task, however lowly, a joy, because
all the higher faculties are brought int