In this fashion our damaged credit
was restored, and as the receipts grew happily greater and greater, I
began to gain ground. Eventually I was able to send help to the other
branches of our community, to increase my help as time went on, and to
prepare a place of refuge for them if anything went wrong elsewhere.

In Switzerland our enterprise did not develop as rapidly as we desired,
in spite of the sanction of the Council of the Canton. The institution
at Willisau gained unlimited confidence there; but the malevolent
opposition of the clerical party secretly flourished as before, and
succeeded in depriving it of all aid from more distant places. Under
these circumstances we could not attain that prosperity which so much
activity and self-sacrificing work on the part of our circle must
otherwise infallibly have brought.

Ferdinand Froebel and Middendorff remained in Willisau. Froebel and his
wife went to Burgdorf, to found and direct the proposed Orphanage.[139]
In his capacity as Director, Froebel had to give what was called a
Repetitive Course to the teachers. In that Canton, namely, there was an
excellent regulation which gave three months' leave to the teachers once
in every two years.[140] During this leave they assembled at Burgdorf,
mutually communicated their experiences, and enriched their culture with
various studies. Froebel had to preside over the debates and to conduct
the studies, which were pursued in common. His own observations and the
remarks of the teachers brought him anew to the conviction that all
school education was as yet without a proper foundation, and, therefore,
that until the education of the nursery was reformed nothing solid and
worthy could be attained. The necessity of training gifted capable
mothers occupied his soul, and the importance of the education of
childhood's earliest years became more evident to him than ever. He
determined to set forth fully his ideas on education, which the tyranny
of a thousand opposing circumstances had always prevented him from
working out in their completeness; or at all events to do this as
regards the earliest years of man, and then to win over the world of
women to the actual accomplishment of his plans. Pestalozzi's "Mothers'
Book" (_Buch der Muetter_) Froebel would replace by a complete
theoretical and practical system for the use of women in general. An
external circumstance supervened at this point to urge him onwards.
His wife grew alarmingly