Nor does the sex extend traces of its sway in this direction alone.  A garden of quite another kind, meant for blossoms other than those of melody, and still more dependent upon woman’s nurture, finds a place in the exposition grounds near the Pavilion.  Of the divers species of Garten—­Blumen-, Thier-, Bier-, etc.—­rife in Vaterland, the Kinder- is the latest selected for acclimation in America.  If the mothers of our land take kindly to it, it will probably become something of an institution among us.  But that is an If of portentous size.  The mothers aforesaid will have first to fully comprehend the new system.  It is not safe to say with any confidence at first sight that we rightly understand any conception of a German philosopher; but, so far as we can make it out, the Kindergarten appears to be based on the idea of formulating the child’s physical as thoroughly as his intellectual training, and at the same time closely consulting his idiosyncrasy in the application of both.  His natural disposition and endowments are to be sedulously watched, and guided or wholly repressed as the case may demand.  The budding artist is supplied with pencil, the nascent musician with trumpet or tuning-fork, the florist with tiny hoe and trowel, and so on.  The boy is never loosed, physically or metaphysically, quite out of leading-strings.  They are made, however, so elastic as scarce to be felt, and yet so strong as never to break.  Moral suasion, perseveringly applied, predominates over Solomon’s system.  It is a very nice theory, and we may all study here, at the point of the lecture-rod wielded by fair fingers, its merits as a specific for giving tone to the constitution of Young America.

At the side of the Kindergarten springs a more indigenous growth—­the Women’s School-house.  In this reminder of early days we may freshen our jaded memories, and wonder if, escaped from the dame’s school, we have been really manumitted from the instructing hand of women, or ever shall be in the world, or ought to be.

Is the “New England Log-house,” devoted to the contrasting of the cuisine of this and the Revolutionary period, strictly to be assigned to the women’s ward of the great extempore city?  Is its proximity to the buildings just noticed purely accidental, or meant to imply that cookery is as much a female art and mystery as it was a century ago?  However this may be, the erection of this temple to the viands of other days was a capital idea, and a blessed one should it aid in the banishment of certain popular delicacies which afflict the digestive apparatus of to-day.  This kitchen of the forest epoch is naturally of logs, and logs in their natural condition, with the bark on.  The planking of that period is represented by clap-boards or slabs.  Garnished with ropes of onions, dried apples, linsey-woolsey garments and similar drapery, the aspect of the walls will remind us of Lowell’s lines: