came to England in 1854.  Already one Kindergarten had been opened by a Madame Ronge, to which Rowland Hill sent his children, and to which Dickens paid frequent visits.  In the same year there was held in London an “International Educational Exposition and Congress,” and to this Madame von Marenholz sent an exhibit, which was explained by Madame Ronge, and by a Mr. Hoffmann.  Dickens, who had watched the actual working of a Kindergarten, gave warm support to the new ideas, and wrote an excellent article on “Infant Gardens” for Household Words, urging “that since children are by Infinite Wisdom so created as to find happiness in the active exercise and development of all their faculties, we, who have children round about us, shall no longer repress their energies, tie up their bodies, shut their mouths....  The frolic of childhood is not pure exuberance and waste.  ‘There is often a high meaning in childish play,’ said Froebel.  Let us study it, and act upon the hints—­or more than hints—­that Nature gives.”

Dr. Henry Barnard represented Connecticut at this Congress, and he took the Kindergarten to America, in whose virgin soil the seed took root, and quickly brought forth abundantly.  But the soil was virgin and the fields were ready for planting, for America in these days had nothing corresponding to our Infant Schools.  The Kindergarten was welcomed by people of influence.  Dr. Barnard found his first ally in Miss Peabody, one of whose sisters was married to Nathaniel Hawthorne, while another was the wife of Horace Mann.  Miss Peabody began to teach in 1860, but eight years later, after a visit to Europe, she gave up teaching for propaganda work.  Owing to her efforts the first Free Kindergarten was opened in Boston in 1870.  Philanthropists soon recognised its importance as a social agency, and by 1883 one lady alone supported thirty-one such institutions in Boston and its surroundings.  In New York, Dr. Felix Adler established a Free Kindergarten in 1878, and Teachers’ College was influential in helping to form an association which supports several.  Another name well known in this country is that of Miss Kate Douglas Wiggin,[12] who was a Kindergarten teacher for many years before she became known as a novelist.  It is Miss Wiggin who tells of a quaint translation of Kindergarten heard by a San Francisco teacher making friendly visits to the mothers of her children.  While she stood on a door-step sympathising with one poor woman she heard a “loud, but not unfriendly” voice from an upper window.  “Clear things from under foot!” it pealed in stentorian accents.  “The teacher o’ the Kids’ Guards is comin’ down the street.”

[Footnote 12:  Writer of Penelope in England, etc., and of a capital collection of essays entitled Children’s Rights.]