y built from the
play-material, harness in the horses (taken from a Noah's Ark), and
prepare to carry off the logs. Now here come the road-makers, and they
lay out a smooth, hard road for the teams, reaching to the very bank
of the river, which another party of little ones has made. The logs
are tumbled into the stream; they float downward, are rafted, carried
to the mill; little sticks are furnished to represent the boards into
which they are sawn; and the lumber is taken to the cabinet-maker,
that he may fashion our furniture.

Though there be twenty children around the sand-box, yet all have been
employed. Each has enjoyed his own work, yet appreciated the value of
his neighbor's. They have worked together harmoniously and the doing
has reacted upon the heart, and strengthened the feeling of unity
which is growing within.

Such exercises cannot fail to teach the value and power of social
effort, and the necessity of subordinating personal desires to the
common good. Yet the development of individuality is not forgotten,
for "our power as individuals depends upon our recognition of the
rights of others."

It is true that the social problem is an intricate one and cannot be
worked out, even partially, at any stage of education, unless the
leader of the children be a true leader, and be enthusiastically
convinced of the essential value of the principles on which the
problem is based. Yet this might be said with equal truth of any
educational aim, for the gospel must always have its interpreters, and
some will ever give a more spiritual reading and seize the truth which
was only half expressed, while others, dull-eyed, mechanical, "kill
with the letter."

"After all," says Dr. Stanley Hall, "there is nothing so practical in
education as the ideal, nor so ideal as the practical;" and we may
be assured that the direction of the social tendencies of the child
toward high and noble aims, toward the sinking of self and the
generous thought of others,--that this is not only ideal, not only a
following after the purest light yet vouchsafed to us, but is at the
same time practical in its detailed workings, and in its adaptation to
the needs and desires of the day.

THE RELATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

"The nature of an educational system is determined by the manner in
which it is begun."

The question for us to decide to-day is not how we can interest people
in and how illustrate the true kind