which will be his permanent stock in life. The child's fancy is
healthily fed by images from outer life, and his curiosity by new
glimpses of knowledge from the world around him.

There are plays and plays! The ordinary unguided games of childhood
are not to be confounded for an instant with the genuine kindergarten
plays, which have a far deeper significance than is apparent to the
superficial observer. "Take the simplest circle game; it illustrates
the whole duty of a good citizen in a republic. Anybody can spoil it,
yet nobody can play it alone; anybody can hinder its success, yet no
one can get credit for making it succeed."

The play is over; the children march back to their seats, and settle
themselves to another period of work, which will last until noon. We
watch the bright faces, cheerful, friendly chatter, the busy figures
hovering over pleasant tasks, and feel that it has been good to pass a
morning in this republic of childhood.

I have given you but a tithe of the whole argument, the veriest
bird's-eye view; neither is it romance; it is simple truth; and, that
being the case, how can we afford to keep Froebel and his wonderful
influence on childhood out of a system of free education which has
for its aim the development of a free, useful, liberty-loving,
self-governing people? It is too great a factor to be disregarded, and
the coming years will prove it so; for the value of such schools is no
longer a matter of theory; they have been tested by experience, and
have won favor wherever they have been given a fair trial But how
important a work they have to do in our scheme of public education is
clear only when we consider the conditions which our public schools
must meet nowadays.

On the theory upon which the state undertakes the education of
its youth at all--the necessity of preparing them for intelligent
citizenship--a community might better economize, if economize it must,
anywhere else than on the beginning. An enormous immigrant population
is pressing upon us. The kindergarten reaches this class with great
power, and increases the insufficient education within the reach of
the children who must leave school for work at the age of thirteen or
fourteen. It increases it, too, by a kind of training which the child
gets from no other schooling, and brings him under influences which
are no small addition to the sum total of good in his life.

The entire pedagogical world watches with interest the educ