What a happy hour it is, this one of story-telling, dear and sacred to every child-lover!  What an eager, delightful audience are these little ones, grieving at the sorrows of the heroes, laughing at their happy successes, breathless with anxiety lest the cat catch the disobedient mouse, clapping hands when the Ugly Duckling is changed into the Swan,—­all appreciation, all interest, all joy!  We might count the rest of the world well lost, could we ever be surrounded by such blooming faces, such loving hearts, and such ready sympathy.

THE RELATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN TO SOCIAL REFORM

“New social and individual wants demand new solutions of the problem of education.”

“Social reform!” It is always rather an awe-striking phrase.  It seems as if one ought to be a philosopher, even to approach so august a subject.  The kindergarten—­a simple unpretentious place, where a lot of tiny children work and play together; a place into which if the hard-headed man of business chanced to glance, and if he did not stay long enough, or come often enough, would conclude that the children were frittering away their time, particularly if that same good man of business had weighed and measured and calculated so long that he had lost the seeing eye and understanding heart.

Some years ago, a San Francisco kindergartner was threading her way through a dirty alley, making friendly visits to the children of her flock.  As she lingered on a certain door-step, receiving the last confidences of some weary woman’s heart, she heard a loud but not unfriendly voice ringing from an upper window of a tenement-house just round the corner.  “Clear things from under foot!” pealed the voice, in stentorian accents.  “The teacher o’ the Kids’ Guards is comin’ down the street!”

“Eureka!” thought the teacher, with a smile.  “There’s a bit of sympathetic translation for you!  At last, the German word has been put into the vernacular.  The odd, foreign syllables have been taken to the ignorant mother by the lisping child, and the kindergartners have become the Kids’ Guards! Heaven bless the rough translation, colloquial as it is!  No royal accolade could be dearer to its recipients than this quaint, new christening!”

What has the kindergarten to do with social reform?  What bearing have its theory and practice upon the conduct of life?

A brass-buttoned guardian of the peace remarked to a gentleman on a street-corner, “If we could open more kindergartens, sir, we could almost shut up the penitentiaries, sir!” We heard the sentiment, applauded it, and promptly printed it on the cover of three thousand reports; but on calm reflection it appears like an exaggerated statement.  I am not sure that a kindergarten in every ward of every city in America “would almost shut up the penitentiaries, sir!” The most determined optimist is weighed down by the feeling that it will take more than the