r instance, with their red roofed coloured houses and
green curly trees, toys that would tell an imaginative child a story
every time they were set up. It is to be hoped they never will change,
but in this sense I have no faith in Germany. The nation is so
desperately intent on improvement that some dreadful day it will
improve its toys. Indeed, I have seen a trade circular threatening
some such vandalism; and in the last Noah's ark I bought Noah and his
family had changed the cut of their clothes. So the whole ark had lost
some of its charm.

Everyone who is interested in children and their education, and who
happens to be in Berlin, goes to see the _Pestalozzi Froebel Haus_, the
great model Kindergarten where children of the working classes are
received for fees varying from sixpence to three shillings a month,
according to the means of the parents. There are large halls in which
the children drill and sing, and there are classrooms in which twelve
to sixteen children are taught at a time. Every room has some live
birds or other animals and some plants that the children are trained
to tend; the walls are decorated with pictures and processions of
animals, many painted and cut out by the children themselves, and
every room has an impressive little rod tied with blue ribbons. But
the little ones do not look as if they needed a rod much. They are
cheerful, tidy little people, although many of them come from poor
homes. In the middle of the morning they have a slice of rye bread,
which they eat decorously at table on wooden platters. They can buy
milk to drink with the bread for 5 pf., and they dine in school for 10
pf. They play the usual Kindergarten games in the usual systematised
mechanical fashion, and they study Nature in a real back garden, where
there are real dejected-looking cocks and hens, a real cow, and a
lamb. What happens to the lamb when he becomes a sheep no one tells
you. Perhaps he supplies mutton to the school of cookery in connection
with the Kindergarten. Some of the children have their own little
gardens, in which they learn to raise small salads and hardy flowers.
There are carpentering rooms for the boys, and both boys and girls are
allowed in the miniature laundry, where they learn how to wash,
starch, and iron doll's clothes. You may frequently see them engaged
in this business, apparently without a teacher; but, as a matter of
fact, the children are always under a teacher's eye, even when they