o action. Much so-called "busy
work," where pupils of the "A class" are allowed to stick a thousand
pegs in a thousand holes while the "B class" is reciting arithmetic,
is quite fruitless, because it has so little thought behind it.

Unless we have a care, manual training, when we have succeeded in
getting it into the school, may become as mechanical and unprofitable
as much of our mind training has been, and its moral value thus
largely missed. The only way to prevent it is to borrow a suggestion
from Froebel. Then, and only then, shall we have insight with power
of action, knowledge with practice, practice with the stamp of
individuality. Then doing will blossom into being, and "Being is the
mother of all the little doings as well as of the grown-up deeds and
heroic sacrifices."

The kindergarten succeeds in getting these interesting and valuable
free productions from children of four or five years only by
developing, in every possible way, the sense of beauty and harmony and
order. We know that people assume, somewhat at least, the color of
their surroundings; and, if the sense of beauty is to grow, we must
give it something to feed upon.

The kindergarten tries to provide a room, more or less attractive,
quantities of pictures and objects of interest, growing plants and
vines, vases of flowers, and plenty of light, air, and sunshine. A
canary chirps in one corner, perhaps; and very likely there will be
a cat curled up somewhere, or a forlorn dog which has followed the
children into this safe shelter. It is a pretty, pleasant, domestic
interior, charming and grateful to the senses. The kindergartner
looks as if she were glad to be there, and the children are generally
smiling. Everybody seems alive. The work, lying cosily about, is neat,
artistic, and suggestive. The children pass out of their seats to the
cheerful sound of music, and are presently joining in an ideal sort of
game, where, in place of the mawkish sentimentality of "Sally Walker,"
of obnoxious memory, we see all sorts of healthful, poetic, childlike
fancies woven into song. Rudeness is, for the most part, banished. The
little human butterflies and bees and birds flit hither and thither
in the circle; the make-believe trees hold up their branches, and the
flowers their cups; and everybody seems merry and content. As they
pass out the door, good-bys and bows and kisses are wafted backward
into the room; for the manners of polite society are observed i