the men greeted one another warmly, shaking hands,
and after all misadventures, spent a happy evening.

When Raschke had gone home late, Gabriel said sadly to his mistress,
"This was the new coat; the fowl and the dog have put it in a horrible
plight."

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

(1782-1852)

BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH

[Illustration: FRIEDRICH FROEBEL]

It was Froebel who said, "The clearer the thread that runs through our
lives backward to our childhood, the clearer will be our onward glance
to the goal;" and in the fragment of autobiography he has left us, he
illustrates forcibly the truth of his own saying. The motherless baby
who plays alone in the village pastor's quiet house, the dreamy child
who wanders solitary in the high-walled garden; the thoughtful lad,
neglected, misunderstood, who forgets the harsh realities of life in
pondering the mysteries of the flowers, the contradictions of
existence, and the dogmas of orthodox theology; who decides in early
boyhood that the pleasures of the senses are without enduring
influence and therefore on no account to be eagerly pursued;--these
presentments of himself, which he summons up for us from the past,
show the vividness of his early recollections and indicate the course
which the stream of his life is to run.

The coldness and injustice of the new mother who assumed control of
the household when he was four years old, his isolation from other
children, the merely casual notice he received from the busy father
absorbed in his parish work, all tended to turn inward the tide of his
mental and spiritual life. He studied himself, not only because it was
the bent of his nature, but because he lacked outside objects of
interest; and to this early habit of introspection we owe many of the
valuable features of his educational philosophy. Whoever has learned
thoroughly to understand one child, has conquered a spot of firm
ground on which to rest while he studies the world of children; and
because the great teacher realized this truth, because he longed to
give to others the means of development denied to himself, he turns
for us the heart-leaves of his boyhood.

It would appear that Froebel's characteristics were strongly marked
and unusual from the beginning. Called by every one "a moon-struck
child" in Oberweissbach, the village of his birth, he was just as
unanimously considered "an old fool" when, crowned with the experience
of seventy years, he played with the vi