in the anecdote narrating Frau Von Marenholz’s first meeting with the founder of kindergartens. The anecdote begins the book, and it is the key-note of the sorrowful undertone throughout.

“In 1849 Frau Von Marenholz went to the baths of Liebenstein. She happened to ask her landlady what was going on in the place, and in answer the landlady said that a few weeks before a man had settled down near the springs who danced and played with the village children, and was called by people “the old fool.” A few days afterwards Madame Von M. was walking out, and met “the old fool.” He was an old man, with long gray hair, who was marching a troop of village children two and two up a hill. He was teaching them a play, and was singing with them a song belonging to it. There was something about the gray-haired old man, as he played with the children, which brought tears into the eyes of both Madame Von M. and her companion. She watched him awhile, and said to her companion:

“‘This man is called ‘old fool’ by these people. Perhaps he is one of those men who are ridiculed or stoned by contemporaries, and to whom future generations build monuments.’”

“I knew,” says Madame Von M., “that I had to do with a true man—with an original and unfalsified nature. When one of his pupils called him Mr. Froebel, I remembered having once heard of a man of that name who wished to educate children by play, and that it had seemed to me a very perverted view, for I had only thought of empty play, without any serious purpose.”

“Froebel met with violent opposition and ridicule all his life, and just when at last he thought he had successfully planted his ideas, there came a sudden death-blow to his hopes, which was also a death-blow to the good and great man. The Prussian Government was and is as tyrannical as William the Conqueror, who made the English people put their lights out at dark, and suddenly, in August, 1851, the Prussian Government immortalized itself by passing a decree forbidding the establishment of any kindergartens within the Prussian dominions. In unguarded moments, Froebel had used the expression “education for freedom,” in referring to his beloved plans, and that was enough for Prussia, in the ferment of fear in which she has been ever since 1848. Kindergartens in Germany have not yet recovered from this blow, and Froebel himself sunk under it and died. But a little time before he died, he said: “If 300 years after my death, my method of education shall be completely established according to its idea, I shall rejoice in heaven.”

“Froebel’s life was full of strange vicissitudes and disappointments. The few friends who understood him, and the children whom he taught, and who, perhaps, understood him better than anybody else, reverenced him, and loved him as father, prophet, and teacher.

“On his seventieth birthday, two months before his death, his beloved pupils gave him a festival, which is beautiful to read about. It must have gladdened the pure-hearted old man immeasurably. Froebel was wakened at sun-rise by the festal song of the children, and as he stepped out of his chamber to the lecture-room, he saw that it had been splendidly adorned with flowers, festoons, and wreaths of all kinds. The day was celebrated with songs and rejoicing, and gifts were received from pupils and friends in various parts of the world, and in the evening, after a song, a pupil placed a green wreath upon the master’s head.

“Two months after this he died peacefully. One of his strongest peculiarities was his passionate love for flowers, and during his illness he repeatedly commended the care of his flowers to his friends. He had the window opened frequently, so he could gaze once more on the out-door scenes he loved so well. Almost his last words were: ‘Nature, pure, vigorous Nature!’”

John Fitch, the inventor of steamboats, was even less fortunate than Froebel. No patron took him by the hand, and although his invention was successfully demonstrated at Philadelphia in 1787, by a small steamboat, the trial being witnessed by the members of the convention that formed the Federal constitution, he could not obtain sufficient co-operation to introduce the invention, and finally left his boat to rot on the shores of the Hudson and returned to his home at Bardstown, Ky., where he died in 1798. The unsuccessful struggles of Fitch make a melancholy history. In his last appeal he used this language: “But why those earnest solicitations to disturb my nightly repose, and fill me with the most excruciating anxieties; and why not act the part for myself, and retire under the shady elms on the fair banks of the Ohio, and eat my coarse but sweet bread of industry and content, and when I have done, to have my body laid in the soft, warm, and loamy soil of the banks, with my name inscribed on a neighboring poplar, that future generations when traversing the mighty waters of the West, in the manner that I have pointed out, may find my grassy turf.”

In the lives of Pythagoras, Copernicus, Galileo, Ericson, Bruno, Harvey, Kepler, Newton, Hunter, Gall, Young, Froebel, Gray, Fitch, Stephenson, and many others, we learn that he who assails the Gibraltar of conservative and authoritative ignorance must expect to conduct a very long siege, to maintain a resolute battle, and perhaps to die in his camp, leaving to his posterity to receive the predestined surrender of the citadels of Falsehood and Darkness, for the eternal law of the universe declares that all darkness shall disappear, and Light and Peace shall cover the earth, as they already fill the souls of the lovers of wisdom.