A kindergarten a children's garden. We have accepted 

 the term for our language, but have not absorbed its fullest 

 meaning. With this I do not say that Frcebel, the most 

 fundamental of all reformers, understood a kindergarten to 

 consist of walks and lawn and plants with happy children as 

 the fortunate possessors. I mean more. The writer of these 

 paragraphs, who never attended an established kindergarten 

 and yet enjoyed the kindergarten in its most unrestricted 

 meaning, who developed in a profession on just such lines as 

 Froebel laid down, feels it his duty to build upon and build 

 out Froebel's lines with the aid of his professionalism. I 

 have in mind a kindergarten which has added to all of 

 Froebel's methods the fullest complement which nature can 

 place within a child's reach and comprehension. 



This land of vast dimensions must do more than merely 

 accept Froebel's teachings. We must improve upon them, 

 and bestow upon them that liberality which is ours, as soon 

 as an occasion appeals to us. The time is drawing close 

 when the kindergartens will be made part of our free 

 school system. How will we be prepared for such 

 change? Shall we move from the empty stores and vacant 

 flats, now set aside for our children, to the basements of the 

 school buildings? Let us give the matter our most earnest 

 study, and let us realize that it is easier to direct the run of 

 a brooklet than to change the volume of a deeply bedded 

 river. The broad acres of our United States are yet com- 



