your own. Thus many things which give us pleasure cannot be materially grasped. The deepest spiritual truths, the emotions. of the heart and of the soul cannot be handled as tangible things.

We can only garner them as we do the sunshine safely into the storehouses of our

memories, where they will lie until the proper time and conditions are fulfilled, then spring into life bearing, perhaps, in their turn a sheaf of golden deeds filling our hearts with love and gratitude toward the Giver of all life and light.

ELLA WHEATLEY.

Do you see them, Lambkin and Mothersheep? Miss Pauline comes every morning to pet them and to bring warm milk. Lambkin is hungry enough by the time she comes, for they waken early,-oh, so early! This morning, when Mother-sheep opened her eyes, the sun had not yet shown his face above the hills, and the birds in the trees were singing to waken Lambkin. They sang: "Lambkin, Lambkin, wake and see All the birds upon the tree.

Tree, tree,

Tree, tree,

Wake and see!

"See, we have to line our nest

Dainty fleece from off your breast. White fleece,

Soft fleece,

From your breast."

Lambkin opens her sleepy eyes, rubs her head against her mother's side and pricks up her little sharp ears. The birds flutter about joyously and sang again and again. "Mother-sheep," says Lambkin, "do they really mean me?"

"Yes, listen!"

"Oh, Mother-sheep, I didn't know they had any of my wool. Do you think the baby-birds find it soft and warm at night? Poor, little baby birds. They have no wool of their own. Oh, I am so happy! I must run and jump, I am so glad!"

Away scampers Lambkin, and away goes her mamma after her, and down come the birds in a flock, twittering and chirping all through the meadow, such a merry crew.

Wherever Mother-sheep and Lambkin go, the birds follow. Pretty soon the little lamb runs into a corner of the fence where some briers are growing. Ah! what will the briers do? They reach out their little sharp fingers and pluck from Lambkin's breast and back tiny tufts of wool. But she does not know it; she scampers out again in a great frolic. But the birds know it, and into the cosy corner they fly and pick from the sharp-fingered brier the bits of wool. How glad they are to get them, and how quickly they fly to put a new, soft lining in the nest where their little ones are!

Lambkin's nimble feet have carried her to the other end of the meadow before she notices that her playmates are not following her. Then she runs back to where Mother-sheep stands under their own tree and watches the birds as they fly to and fro, bringing every little speck of wool that lambie left in the fence corner.

Mother-sheep is now browsing. She loves. the sweet grass, and when she finds a very tender bit she calls lambie to eat it.

She knows that when the sun is up long enough to dry the grass Miss Pauline, their dear lady, will come with the sweet, new milk. Her lovely smile and tender words and gentle hand will be as welcome as the milk. But what sound is this? Lambkin cries, "Ba-a, ba-a!" so pitifully. Where is she? Mother-sheep runs wildly back and forth and cannot find her. Where can she be? Her cry says that she is either hurt or

It

frightened. Oh, here is a hole in the fence. She must have gone through it. is too small for her mamma to pass. She can only stand there and cry aloud for help. The kindly birds fly to their distressed friends. Down they go into the pit which lies just outside the broken fence. They chirp and chipper to little Lambkin. who lies there in the sand. Then they flutter back to cheer Mother-sheep. But they cannot bring back the little wanderer. Oh, here comes Miss Pauline. She hears the cries and sees the wild flutter of the birds. She sets down the milk and runs to them. "Never mind, Mother-sheep," with a kind pat, "I'll bring back your little one all safe." Through the fence she goes. "Don't cry, Lambkin, I'm coming." She quickly runs around the sand pit and down into it. With poor Lambkin in her arms she is soon back again. The happy Mother-sheep licks the dirt from her darling's wool, and loudly bleats her joy. Now Pauline leads them back to where she

left the milk. Close to the woven fence she waits for them.

"Come, Lambkin, climb this little hillock by my side."

Mother-sheep presses against the fence, now she crops the leaves, now she looks at her dear Lambkin, so contentedly lapping milk from the pan, and again at the beautiful face above, which shines down upon them. As Lambkin licks up the last drop of milk, Mother-sheep says, "The birdies and our dear lady, too, know what a comfort it is to help others."

"Yes, Mother-sheep," says Lambkin, and off she runs for another frolic.*

EMILY A. Kellogg.

The woven fence can

*After the story is quite familiar to the children, they can play it, one representing Pauline, others the Mother sheep. and Lambkin, the children enjoy making the milk pan. (KINDERGARTEN, Vol. II, page 187). Cut off the upper part, leaving the design in the shape of a pan, be reproduced with the weaving slats and set in the sand pile. Do not fail to have the fence corner, the broken fence and the sand pit. Make the tree with twigs. The bird's nest of clay Then some Kindergarten songs may be sung, as "A Little Bird Once Built a Nest."

In a recent copy of Life the following conversation is reported: Query: "Why does a dude only use one eye-glass?" Answer: "Because he wishes to see no more than he can comprehend."

As the court jesters of old used to give their royal masters some most serious words of wisdom wrapped up in a jest, so there is a large grain of truth hidden in this answer, namely: that the outward eye can see no farther than the mind's eye, or, as an old rhyme has it, "What hears is mind, what sees is mind, the ear and eye are deaf and blind." Mrs. Whitney's country-woman, who thinks "the White Mountains is a clear hummux," and that the mountains are "all in the way of each other and don't show

*Extracts from a paper read by Lucy Wheelock, at the National Educational Association at St. Paul,

for nothing to speak of," has as good a visual organ as any artist who paints the glories of the Presidential Range; but her mind cannot rise above the loss of "a black alpacky," and so as her more appreciative spouse informs her, "She doesn't take 'em in."

The botanist visits Mont Blanc, fills his tin box with the red balls of the snowplant, watches the rapid growth of the tiny fungus until an entire slope is flushed with rose, and he has seen the mountain.

To the geologist, the mountain is simply the birthplace and home of the glacier whose action he is studying; but to the poet it is "the king of mountains with its wreath of clouds and diadem of snow."

We speak of training the senses in the Kindergarten and school; but the real

training is to enlighten the eyes of the understanding, to lead the child to truly hear and see, because he thinks.

It was Helen Keller, and not a seeing child, who said of the apple trees in bloom, that they looked "like ladies dressed for a party."

It is "a great, wide, wonderful, beautiful world" into which these children of ours come, and the Kindergarten is to be the open door, leading to all its wonders and beauties, letting the child "hear the wind. among the trees, playing celestial symphonies," and all the "various language" which Nature speaks to him, letting him see unrolled "The splendid scenery of the sky," and, best of all, making him feel everywhere the spirit of the Creator. The Kindergarten puts a living voice and meaning into all that is seen, touched and heard. "The primrose by the river's brim," is not simply a primrose and nothing more, but at revealer of God's great law of symmetry.

The blocks the child uses to construct his tower or his wall, tell him a story of the waving forest upon the distant mountain, of the woodman with his ax, of the rushing mountain stream, the saw-mill, the busy carpenter, and all the helpful work of human-kind which ministers to his pleasure.

The steel rings, with which the young artist lays beautiful star and flower figures, tell him a fascinating tale, more wonderful than the magic ring of the Arabian Nights.

The worsted balls bring to the eye of imagination, the green fields and "the young lambs playing in the meadows," and Annie says that a good mother-sheep gave her a dress and Jack some stockings. The fingersong of the Lambkins introduces the sheepshearers; and the interwoven worsted threads on the sewing-cards, and the weaving of the paper mat, make the process of manufacture of the cloth interesting, so that henceforth every woven fabric has a history. (German boy making web. History of weaving.)

But Mary's dress is not made of wool. How did it come to her? The story of this dress will carry us to sunny France or Italy, or, perhaps, far away to the country where the children say "good-morning" to the sun when we say "good-night." We must look at the box of cocoons, fastened in place by the finest of silk threads; we must learn about Pen-se, our Chinese sister, who helps her father tend the silk-caterpillars on the mulberry bushes, and be very sure we call them silk-caterpillars, and not silkworms. A worm is a worm always; but the crawling creature that spins itself a silken house in which to sleep, comes out with wings, ready to fly. The children know this, for they sing:

"Now the soft cocoon is stirring;
Now a tiny head we spy!

What! is this our caterpillar

Spreading gauzy wings to dry?

Now the bright and happy creature
Flitters gaily by."

But here is little Katie, who has a dress which is neither silk nor wool. Ah! now we must go to the warm Southern country, where the oranges grow, and see the great cotton fields, to find out how her dress is made.

Another day, Philip shows his collar and asks for a story about that. This brings us to the plant-world again, and Anderson's "Story of the Flax," will give the whole process of the manufacture of linen.

It is lunch-time and the baskets are opened. What has Jack brought? "Nothing but bread." Nothing but bread! How did you get the bread? Cook made it. Yes, of what? Mary knows, for she has seen the pan of flour. How did she get the flour? Why, from the grocer, of course. Where did he get it? Some one has been at a flour mill. How did it get to the mill? No one knows. See! I will show you something on the end of this needle. What is it? Some one thinks it is a seed. Yes, a wheat seed. How many can you see here

on this head of wheat? We count and find how one has been multiplied into fifty or sixty in the marvellous underground factory of Nature, and sometimes there are three or four such heads from one little grain. Can you ever again say, "Nothing but bread?" But there is another wonder in the making of bread. When the bread is mixed and has risen and been made into loaves, is that all? No, it must be baked. Where? How? Let us take a piece of black coal from the hod, and ask it for a story.

A wonderful tale from the fairyland of science, this-of the two busy workers, Light and Warmth, hiding themselves away in the trunks and branches of the great trees of the world of long ago, lying buried for ages until the hand of man should free them and use them to drive trains of cars, move great steamers over the water, and to bake bread for hungry children. In many of the songs of his Mother-Play, Froebel shows how the child is to be led to really see the thing by going back of the outward appearance or activity. to the cause or reality of the object. In his handling of the typical forms of nature, presented in the Gifts and Occupations, the child is stimulated to close observation of the great world of form.

Charley, who was sewing a Greek border pattern, said: "If I should forget my pattern, I could go home and look at the table-cloth, for it has the same thing."

"And it is on baby's afghan, too," said her neighbor. Some children who have been working out geometric forms with the tablets, are much interested in tracing out. the same forms at home and on the street. Two of them told me that there was a square at the first landing of Helen's stairway, and that there were rhombs where horse car tracks crossed each other. One of the older children came one morning radiant with the information that her room a hexagon, for it had six sides, and

was

that the window was a trapezoid. A boy of five asked "if a thing with six sides was a hexagon or a pentagon," and when the answer was given, said: "Then my tumbler is a hexagon." By the combination of these geometric forms into figures havingthebeauty of symmetry, the artistic sense is awakened and the eye is ready to perceive the beauful. The rose-window and carving of a church, the decorations of buildings, the frost-pictures on window and sidewalk, and the cloud-pictures in the sky, do not fail to attract the child who has been a creator of beautiful forms himself. "Why, there are pictures everywhere," said a child to whom a bit of slate from a coal-mine with a fern impression upon it had been shown. "There are pictures up in the sky, and Jack Frost makes pictures on the windows, and pictures even buried in the ground." Will not

many a child, whose sense of the beautiful is so awakened, be able later to discover and set free the angel in a block of marble, or to spread the colors of a sun-set sky upon his canvas?

The balls of the First Gift furnish the standard of color, and from the early exercises, in connection with these balls, leading to the observation of the red and blue and yellow in flowers, in the sky, and in the leaves of autumn, to the later combinations of color in the parquetry and paper-cutting, there is constant opportunity for the cultivation of taste in combining colors. A child of four who had drawn a butterfly and colored its wings with a yellow crayon, attempted to put blue spots on the same and made a wonderful discovery, which he joyfully announced to the class: "I made my butterfly yellow, and then I marked over it with blue, and it turned green."

The children personate the rainbowfairies, wearing tissue-paper caps of the different colors, and then they are ready to lay rows of fairies with colored sticks or slats, or to make them rainbow chains with

Painting gives an opportunity for combining the study of form and color. Mr. Tilton, of Boston, has issued sets of cards with fundamental forms outlined and their modifications in vegetables, fruits, flowers, and leaves, which form a series of easy steps for little painters. An artist sees color and beauty where an untrained eye fails to detect it. The little child who is working with color every day, is learning not only to name and combine different hues, but to feel the beauty of sky and mountain wall, where "God's great pictures are hung."

Not only does the Kindergarten child learn to know and appreciate form and color, but his eye is trained to recognize number, which Froebel agreed with Pestalozzi in making a foundation stone in education. From his early handling of the cube of the Second Gift to the later study of fractional parts in the Fifth Gift leading to a wide field of knowledge, the eye is trained by repeated exercise to recognize groups of number at a glance.

The Finger Plays of "Five Little Chickadees," and "Ten Little Soldiers," teach subtraction of ones, objectively, so that eye and mind act together. The apple-tree or the Christmas tree are favorite representations with sticks or slats with colored counters for fruit and presents. Eight sticks are given for branches, and, of course, four must be placed on each side, so that the experience of two fours, gained from the cube, is extended. An apple on each bough will give two fours again, and if it is a Christmas tree, oranges and pop-corn balls may be added in the shape of orange and white counters, and three fours presented. Again, a square garden is made with slats. Blue-bells are planted in each corner, red tulips along by the fence on each side, and four yellow tulips in a square

priate counters, and three fours are seen again and counted. Not only are concepts of form, color and number gained by these exercises in producing forms of beauty, but the attention must be fixed upon the directions given, in order that the form may be made, and so the habit of listening is acquired. Harry Heedless is not often found in a Kindergarten. Were it not for the stimulus that arises from the joy of creation, this close mental application for the time might become wearisome; but fingers work out the desires of the mind and the interest rarely flags. I was sitting in church recently near a boy of eleven, and wondered at the intense interest with which he followed every word of the speaker. I said to his father, that such power of attention was remarkable in a boy of his age. "He owes that to the Kindergarten," was the reply. "An enthusiasm was aroused in him there which he has never lost."

The Kindergarten, too, leads its children along the avenues of song to the great realms of music, which someone has called "the art pathway to God." Surely the heart that has sung with all the joy of the returning spring,

"Wake," sings the air from the blue sky above, "Wake, for the world is all beauty and love," or the song of "the Brown Thrush,"

"Oh, I am as happy as happy can be!" has begun to mount higher.

A boy who had gone from a Kindergarten to a primary school, complained to his mother that he did not wish to stay there, because they did not sing anything but do, re, mi.

The Kindergarten puts even do, re, mi, into the fairyland of music. The balls are the red, blue and yellow fairies who sit in some mossy dell and sing, each her own song. The red always sings do, and the blue, who is a very cheerful fairy, always sings sol, and quiet yellow sings mi. Some