Give the man of esthetic taste an idea of what the kindergarten does in developing the sense of beauty; show him in what way it is a primary art school.

Explain to the musician your feeling about the influence of music; show the physical-culture people that in the kindergarten the body has an equal chance with mind and heart.

Tell the great-hearted man some sad incident related to you by one of your kindergartners, and as soon as he can see through his tears, show him your subscription book.

Give the woman who cannot reason (and there are such) an opportunity to feel.  There is more than one way of imbibing truth, fortunately, and the brain is not the only avenue to knowledge.

Finally, take the utter skeptic into the kindergarten and let the children convert him.  It commonly is a “him” by the way.  The mother-heart of the universe is generally sound on this subject.

But getting money and opening kindergartens are not the only cares of a Kindergarten Association.  At least there are other grave responsibilities which no other organization is so well fitted to assume.  These are the persistent working upon school boards until they adopt the kindergarten, and, much more delicate and difficult, the protection of its interests after it is adopted; the opening of kindergartens in orphanages and refuges where they prove the most blessed instrumentality for good; the spreading of such clear knowledge and intelligent insight into the kindergarten as shall prevent it from deterioration; the insistence upon kindergartners properly trained by properly qualified training teachers; the gentle mothering and inspiring and helping those kindergartners to realize their fair ideals (for Froebel’s method is a growing thing, and she who does not grow with it is a hopeless failure); the proper equipment and furnishing of class-rooms so that the public may have good object-lessons before its eyes; the insistence upon the ultimate ideals of the method as well as upon details and technicalities,—­that is, showing people its soul instead of forever rattling its dry bones.  And when all is said and done, the heaviest of the work falls upon the kindergartner.  That is why I am convinced that we should do everything that sympathy and honor and money can do to exalt the office, so that women of birth, breeding, culture, and genius shall gravitate to it.  The kindergartner it is who, living with the children, can make her work an integral part of the neighborhood, the centre of its best life.  She it is, often, who must hold husband to wife, and parent to child; she it is after all who must interpret the aims of the Association, and translate its noble theories into practice. (Ay! and there’s the rub.) She it is, who must harmonize great ideal principles with real and sometimes sorry conditions.  A Kindergarten Association stands for certain things before the community.  It is the kindergartner alone who can prove the truth, who