ficant
blocks and sticks and beans.

How, then, does this change come about? How is it that the same
student who once half-scorned the gifts, now, upon the completion of
her course of training, looks upon them with affection, admiration,
and respect? It is that her eyes have been opened, and whereas she was
blind, now she sees. Her imagination has been awakened, her literary
instinct has been stirred, and she has come to look at things in the
child way, which is always the poetic way.

Effect of Froebel's Gifts upon the Child.

The effect of Froebel's gifts upon the child has been shown directly
and indirectly through the entire series of talks, and need not now be
recapitulated. If they are wisely presented and wisely conducted,
"inward and outward, the limits of their influence and scope lie in
infinity."

Froebel says in one of his letters: "No one would believe, without
seeing it, how the child-soul--the child-life--develops when treated
as a whole, and in the sense of forming a part of the great connected
life of the world, by some skilled kindergartner,--nay, even by one
who is only simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it
blooms into delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower.
Oh, if I could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the
truth that I now tell you in silence. Then would I make the ears
of a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensation,
what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active energy,
what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of perception,
and what calm and patience will not all these things call out in
the children."[89]

[89] Froebel's _Letters on the Kindergarten_, page 145.

It is not that we regard the connected series of gifts as inspired,
nor as incapable of improvement, for it may be that as our
psychological observations of children grow wiser, more sympathetic,
and more subtle, we shall see cause to make radical changes in the
objects which are Froebel's legacy to the kindergarten. This we may
do, but we can never improve upon the motherly tenderness of spirit
with which they were devised by the great pioneer of child-study, nor
upon the philosophic insight which based them on the universal
instincts of childhood.

By Mrs. Wiggin.

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