el became tutor in the Von
Holzhausen family. He was twenty-five years old, and this was his first
interview with wealth and leisure. That he was hungry enough to
appreciate it need not be emphasized.

He got goodly glimpses of Gottingen, Berlin, and was long enough at
Jena to rub the blot off the 'scutcheon. A stay at Weimar, in the Goethe
country, completed the four years' course.

The boys had grown to men, and proved their worth in after-years; but
whether they had gotten as much from the migrations as their teacher is
very doubtful. He was ripe for opportunity--they had had a surfeit of
it.

Then came war. The order to arms and the rush of students to obey their
country's call caught Froebel in the patriotic vortex, and he enlisted
with his pupils.

His service was honorable, even if not brilliant, and it had this
advantage: the making of two friends, companions in arms, who caught the
Pestalozzian fever, and lived out their lives preaching and teaching
"the new method."

These men were William Middendorf and Henry Langenthal. This trinity of
brothers evolved a bond as beautiful as it is rare in the realm of
friendship. Forty years after their first meeting, Middendorf gave an
oration over the dead body of Froebel that lives as a classic, breathing
the love and faith that endure.

And then Middendorf turned to his work, and dared prison and disgrace by
upholding the Kindergarten System and the life and example of his dear,
dead friend. The Kindergarten Idea would probably have been buried in
the grave with Froebel--interred with his bones--were it not for
Middendorf and Langenthal.

* * * * *

The first Kindergarten was established in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six,
at Blankenburg, a little village near Keilhau. Froebel was then
fifty-four years old, happily married to a worthy woman who certainly
did not hamper his work, even if she did not inspire it. He was
childless, that all children might call him father.

The years had gone in struggles to found Normal Schools in Germany after
the Pestalozzian and Gruner methods. But disappointment,
misunderstanding and stupidity had followed Froebel. The set methods of
the clergy, accusations of revolution and heresy, tilts with pious
pedants as to the value of dead languages, all combined with his own
lack of business shrewdness, had wrecked his various ventures.

Froebel's argument that women were better natural teachers than men o