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I saw the little broom made just now? Does not the teacher show the child how to put the parts together?" "Oh, yes," she replied, "she usually has to help them as the material is a little difficult for them to handle alone until they have seen it handled by her, but we always have them do their own structing." "May I see some of their transformations from a given pattern or form?" She hesitated a moment, looked around and said, "I fear I have none of them here. They usually make any changes or inventions with paper; it is so much more easily handled. These they generally take home, or if they stay here they are so easily destroyed that we soon have to throw them away." Thus, unconsciously, she was acknowledging Froebel's wisdom in furnishing easily modified material for the child's creative work.

CREATION SHOULD FOLLOW CONSTRUCTION.

Constructive power is good as far as it goes, but creative power is a higher thing and must not be sacrificed for the lower; therefore I cannot but feel that the paper and pasteboard of the kindergarten are not replaced by wood, hammer and nails, though I frankly admit that they may be and oftentimes are abused when used for unchildlike work.

To me the insight of Froebel is nowhere more evident than in his selection of geometric forms and gifts, or playthings, for the child during the creative period of his growth. Geometric construction underlies every form that the human hand can make as well as every form that nature has put forth. In one of our kindergartens not long ago the teacher and class together made a hexagonal prism out of sticks and bits of clay, using it afterwards as a parlor table. The next morning one bright little fellow of five triumphantly brought in a square prism, a triangular prism and an octagonal prism which he had constructed unaided at home. He had learned the principle of construction which underlies all prismatic forms, and therefore was independent and could make any form approaching a prism which he desired. The variation in size makes the child quickly and readily familiar with the one geometric form, emphasized thus by repetition so that no time is lost in confusion of form and a strong impression is easily and quickly made. This followed up by the construction in either clay, paste

work or cardboard of the same form at once places the child in a conscious mastery of spherical and cylindrical, cubical and conical objects, be they market carts, street rollers, babies' cradles or what not. More than that, the gifts of the kindergarten are so simple in form and of such firm structure. that they can easily be arranged and rearranged, adjusted and re-adjusted to the child's changing ideas. The same set of blocks can one minute be the mother and father and little children walking to the station; the next minute the choo-choo cars which take them to the country; then suddenly transformed into the cows seen by the road-side, the church steeple in the distance or any other new object which the command of the young mind bids the hands. bring forth, whereas the laboriously constructed toy must remain that one thing and nothing more. This permanent form of the toy is perfectly legitimate after the child has gained constructive power enough to turn and quickly make his next design, but during the kindergarten period my experience has shown that a quicker transformation than that made of wood and nails. or tin and pinchers is needed.

So we have in the power to express, first, the free, easy, harmonious use of body through training of senses and muscles; and, secondary, the mastery, through play, of the elementary materials and forms of the world. Much more could be said upon this subject but time is passing.

VALUE OF IDEALS.

Let us now turn to the third point on which I think we will, most of us, agree. High ideals, that is, as high as the child can comprehend, are to be encouraged and emphasized; not mere activity, but uplifting activity. In his definition of his idea of education, Frederick Froebel has said, “the whole of nature up to the appearance of man, the whole of history from the beginning of the human race, through all the past up to the present moment and then still onward to the final consummation, stands before my soul as a perfectly accurate representation of true education." Is not this a broad enough definition to cover not only the study of "racial remains" but also of "human ideals?” Are we not to look forward as well as backward in the education of the child? Is it not as essential to understand his possibilities and what he may achieve and become,

scorn and contempt. One or two others imitated him and in derision drawled out also, "The loving mother," thus showing what deep violation had been given to that highest and holiest emotion of the young child's nature. On the other hand, the most beautiful expression of countenance that I have ever seen, was on the face of a little five-yearold girl while playing the part of the motherbird as she hovered over the two little tots crouching down at her side who were play

The result of all this earnest observation and thought was that he felt that the highest thing which a parent or teacher could give to the child was, through the raising of his ideals of his own power and his relationship to his fellow beings, to slowly prepare him for his consciousness of sonship to God. Nor can I see that this is in any way undue development of the child's immature stage of growth. Are not all children gaining ideals of family relationship and family life? Is it possible to prevent them from forming opinions as to how mothers act toward their children and children toward their mothers; husbands toward their wives; brothers and sisters toward each other? Are they not living in the midst of this thing, daily, aye, even hourly impressed by it? Is it therefore too soon to begin to train these impressions toward what is high and noble rather than to leave them with the confused, haphazard and oftentimes debased standards? Has not the race loved and served as well as fought and hated? Do we not see in the child's instinctive play with the doll that racial instincts of family life are active, and as we would teach a boy to throw a ball correctly, to climb without hazard to life or limb, may we not also teach him through play and song and story of the right kind of fatherhood and motherhood? This phase of the work I know is often abused.

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE.

I remember being in a kindergarten one morning when, after the morning songs and greetings were over, the kindergartner in a hollow, artificial tone said, "Well, now, let's talk a little while about somebody who is not here. Whom did you leave at home this morning?" "Aw, the loving mother," drawled out one child in a tone of supreme

artist have caught the Madonna-like expression of that child's face and placed it upon canvas he would have made himself immortal. Can such joy and consecration be exhibited upon a face except that like emotions are stirred within the heart? Again, I have seen in one of the poorer districts of our city a five-year-old girl insist upon it that she could march as well with her little year-old baby brother astride of one hip as she could without him. When the kindergartner protested that he was heavy she answered, "Oh, no, he isn't. I love him so. Was not the mother instinct astir within her? Many like visions of past experiences with children come before me at this moment. I know whereof I speak when I say the presentiment of the future relationships of life stir deeply and vividly within the child when the occasion suited for them calls them forth. Is it not as legitimate to make occasion for them as to make occasion for the examination of street-cleaning?

TEACHERS MAY CREATE IDEALS.

In speaking of high ideals, I would again earnestly call your attention to the fact that all children live in the midst of the world of labor and trade activity; that there is no child of five who has not passed through the experience of seeing the market man, the coal dealer, the car conductor, serve the community. Shall these impressions be left hazy and oftentimes false or can they be made clear, and labor and capital, service and wages, be placed upon the right basis? Where this has been attempted, many such real transformations as the following have been recorded. In one of our kindergartens, in a poor Italian district, the term "farmer" was used as a title of contempt, odious enough to draw forth blows from the stronger boys and tears from the weaker. "You old farmer, you!" was one of the chief taunts which one boy could heap upon

another. Little by little the kindergartner led the children to realize that their bodily comfort and strength came from the food they ate and that most of this food was produced in the country, and after duly impressing them with the wonderful mystery of growth in the vegetable world, she introduced pictures of men plowing the field, reaping the grain, stacking the hay and other agricultural pursuits, and not until they had looked at, talked about and admired its activities did she introduce the term "farmer!" Before a month had passed half the boys in her kindergarten had avowed their intention to some day become farmers, and once, when a load of hay was passing by, she called the children to the window to see it and some of them jumped for joy at having seen a real farmer.

An intimate friend of mine was going home one afternoon in the street car with her little niece. A laundress entered the A laundress entered the car with a large bundle of clothes in her arms. My friend whispered to the little niece and said, "You had better get up, Annette, and let that woman have your seat. You can stand and she has a heavy bundle." The child glanced at the woman and then in a tone of scorn said, "'deed I won't she is nothing but an old washerwoman." The kindergartner made no reply but after they reached home that night, at the supper table she said, "What a nice, fresh table cloth we have on the table to-night." The child, who was a fastidious little creature, passed her hand gently over the smooth damask and replied, "Yes." "After all," said the kindergartner, "we would have to eat off dirty table cloths if there were no wash women to wash them for us." Next morning as the snow-white linen apron of the little girl was being buttoned up, this same wise aunt remarked, "How pretty and clean your apron

is this morning, Annette." "Yes," said the child, "I love clean aprons." "Yet, after all," added the aunt, "you could not have clean aprons if there was not somebody to wash them, could you, and we could not have clean towels on which to wipe our faces, or clean sheets and pillow cases." The child made no remark but the following day as they walked home they saw across the street a laundress with a basket of clothes. "Dear me, aunty," said the child; "just look at what a big basket that nice washerlady has to carry. What a pity it is she hasn't a buggy to ride in." Thus a few judicious remarks had changed the "old washerwoman" into a "nice washlady." Could this have been done if the child had not had within her some consciousness, at least, of the idea of the relative values of service and served?

I will not speak here upon that deepest of all subjects, the training of the little child in reverence toward a Divine Being greater than self, from the very beginning of his conscious existence. If the child's right arm has been bound to his body so that he cannot use it until he is seven or eight years of age, it can never attain unto the possibilities which it would have acquired if used from the beginning of the child's activities. To me the religious training of the child from the beginning is as necessary as the bodily training, for all increased reverence is increased capacity for religion and all increased religion (by that I do not mean theology nor ceremony, but vital faith in the existence of the Divine without and the Divine within) is the measure of man's greatness, and the end and aim of all education is to make each individual child as great a man or as great a woman as that child is capable of becoming.

CHICAGO KINDERGARTEN COLLEGE.

through his statuary; the business man in his mercantile establishment. Mr. Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia is very different from Mr. Field's store in Chicago, or from that of Mr. Barr in St. Louis. Each

is individual, and each is the outward expression of the life of its owner. Again, the clear, vigorous sentences found in the orations of Samuel Adams show the dogmatic character of the man; but Richard Henry Lee, speaking upon the same subjects, uses the long, flowing sentences which distinguish the classical scholar. The terse, crisp sentences of Emerson bespeak a man who is an acute, vigorous thinker; while the meditative, romantic, unpractical nature of Irving shines out on every page of the Sketch Book and the Alhambra. Alexander embodied his life in the mighty empire he established; Dante in his immortal epic; Livingston in his search for the sources of the Nile; Nero in the shocking barbarities he committed while emperor of Rome.

Even the humblest individual expresses his life in his business or professional work. We are continually receiving impressions, and these impressions, re-acting upon us, form character. The character of the man who gives his whole life to physical labor while neglecting the development of his higher moral and intellectual nature, must of necessity be stunted and unsymmetrical. The educated farmer succeeds where his ignorant neighbor fails, because he lives a more complete life, and therefore can better express himself. Homes bare of ornament or comfort, in which no books are found and where men and women and children live like animals, are but the outward expression of the barren, unthinking character of those who live in them. In other words, whether one speaks, or walks, or transacts business, or writes books, he expresses the essential character of his life. We can judge of a man's character by the company he keeps; not less certainly may it be judged by the way in which he expresses his life in his daily acts and by his surroundings.

the giant locomotive, instinct with all but human intelligence, does not appeal as a wonderful expression of man's thought. But the building and the locomotive exist primarily for another purpose than that of self-expression. Not so with sculpture, or painting, or music, or literature, which are ends in themselves, and which have more than merely practical value. Of literature it has been said that "it is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." It is the highest form of self-expression, and it has value in proportion as it ascends above the plane of the commonplace and trivial into that diviner ether which is the realm of true art.

It is apparent, then, that literature is the written expression of personality. It has its rise in the fact that one of the most striking characteristics of human nature is the impulse to record and preserve whatever is best worthy of recording and preservation. We would not call a dry-goods catalogue literature; nor a railway timetable, nor a hotel bill-of-fare. That only is literature which possesses a more or less general human interest, or which appeals to that which is permanent in human nature. The reason why the dramas of Shakespeare are read with such perennial interest, while those written by his contemporaries are rarely referred to, is that Shakespeare touches the permanent elements of character, instead of reflecting merely the ephemeral life of the day.

Lastly, literature bears an intimate relation to human life. We are interested in nothing so much as in human nature. The politician who scans the papers; the gossip retailing bits of information about her neighbors; the novel-reader greedily devouring all the fiction she can find; all these illustrate the interest which men take in men. Again, the reader must re-experience the author's life as it is expressed in the literary work, and thus what he reads bears an intimate relation to his own life. They who think great thoughts will be great in action, and high literature, by causing men to think the best thoughts, exerts a powerful influence upon character.

Thought makes character. The thinker carries force, domination, weight written

upon his forehead. And he to whom the mighty masters of thought are friends, who is acquainted with the very best of their lives, as expressed in their books, is immeasurably above the one who uses his power to read only for glancing over the columns of the daily paper, or for idling away an hour with a sensational story.

* * *

But character is developed, never through sloth or in idleness, but in struggle. The man who has been reared in luxury and to whom honest toil is a stranger, lacks fibre. The rebuffs that turn rough earth's smoothness give strength to the soul. We gain nothing truly valuable without effort, and this law holds good not less in the world of art and letters than in the material world. There is a vast difference between reading "Macbeth" merely to get the story, and studying it until the masterpiece, with its tremendous moral lessons, becomes a part of one's life. Strong, manly men have nothing but contempt for the shirk who thinks that the world owes him a living, and who searches for some easy place where the duties are light and the pay liberal, for such a person lacks character, and shirks his lesson in the great school of life. So is it with the polite

dawdler with literature, the person who aspires to be called literary, but who can do nothing more than lounge in a hammock with a fashionable novel in hand. To get value from the works of great writers one must put forth the same effort he would expect to use in the search for gold. Pearls of thought are no more to be appropriated without effort than are the jewels themselves to be picked up along the highway during a careless morning walk. It follows, therefore, that those books are best which challenge the student to work. The dictum "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" is as applicable to him who would think the thoughts of a master-thinker after him as to the man who searches for means of physical existence.

SINCE meteoric showers probably ate their

ace what I have to say of meteors by some explanation of the structure and peculiarities of comets.

CZAR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.

Every year there visit the solar system from three to seven bodies which are unlike the planets or any other of its members. These bodies remain visible for a few weeks, sometimes for a few months, while traveling in a path around the sun, and then vanish. They have some properties in common: they are extremely rare; usually one point seems denser than the rest, and this point is called the nucleus. This nucleus is surrounded by envelopes and jets of light, which

et. All of the brighter comets, and many of the fainter ones, have a tail of light extending always away from the sun. It is commonly believed that these comets consist, not, as once supposed, of heated gases, but of solid particles, stones it may be, each surrounded by an envelope of gas. These stones are always small (not exceeding perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and in many cases not a thousandth of an inch), always widely separated, and traveling in groups, chiefly because of their attraction for each other. Nor do they form a stable system; no overmastering power is among them. The solar system, for example, is composed of a great number of bodies, nearly half a thousand, and the system is an absolute monarchy with the sun