e
loved the bell's song; he wondered about it just as the little boy had
done.

One evening, I think, he went alone beyond the village and through the
wide brown fields; he saw the light in the sky, and the birds going
home, and the steeple far off. It was all very still and wonderful, and
as he looked away on every side, thinking many holy thoughts, he saw a
man and a woman working together in the dim light. They were digging
potatoes; there was a wheelbarrow beside them, and a basket. Sometimes
they moved about slowly, or stooped with their hands in the brown earth.
And while they worked, the sound of the evening bell came faintly to
them. When they heard it they rose up. The mother folded her hands on
her breast and said the words of a prayer, and thought of her little
ones. The father just held his hat in his hand and looked down at their
work. And the painter forgot all the wonder of the sky and the wide
field as he looked at them, for there was a deeper mystery. And it was
plain to him.

But the man and the woman stood there listening; they did not know that
the bell was singing to them of their very own work, of every loving
service and lowly task of the day.

The bell sang on and on, and the peace of the song seemed to fill the
whole day.

Come, let us with the children live.

--_Friedrich Froebel_

FRIEDRICH AND HIS CHILD-GARDEN.

Friedrich Froebel--"Little Friedrich," they called him long ago. Is it
not strange to think that the great men who bring the beautiful deeds to
the world were once little children? Do you know how these children grow
so great and strong that they can do a loving deed for the whole world
at last? They do little loving deeds every day.

This gentle Friedrich loved more and more things every day that he
lived. But when he was a little boy he was very lonely sometimes,
because he had no playmates except the flowers in the old garden. It
seemed to him these flowers were always playing plays together. The
little pink and white ones on the border of the beds seemed always
circling round the sweet tall rose, and laughing and swaying in the
wind. It was so gay sometimes that he laughed aloud to see them all
nodding and bowing, and the rose bowing too.

Friedrich was so gentle that his doves would flutter around his head and
settle on his outstretched arms, and even the little mother bird, with
her nest in the hedge, would let him stand near when she t