finally closed by the Westphalian peace in 1648.

This letter being addressed to a faithful minister of the Lutheran denomination, Froebel evidently thought he could enlist the pastor's interest in his cause most effectually by showing up what he conceived to be the points of contact between the Lutheran reformation of the church and the Froebelian reformation of the school.

(2) To Martin Luther the German nation is indebted for its long standing educational institutions. It was he who introduced the first public schools and wrote his catechism of the Protestant faith as the first school book of Germany. He impressed upon all the Protestant princes and States of Germany the necessity of having the youth of the land publicly and regularly instructed in the faith, if they would stand firm against Roman Catholicism.

(3) The Wartburg is an old castle of the Landgraves of Thuringia located close to the city of Eisenach. After Luther had had his hearing and his famous speeches before the reichstag (imperial congress) at Worms on the Rhine, in 1521, he was, on his return journey, suddenly seized by a band of masked knights and taken to the Wartburg with orders to remain there. Here he began his translation of the Bible. While engaged in the work, the devil (so says the legend) appeared to him and threatened him. But Luther, nothing daunted, threw an inkstand at his Satanic majesty, and the black spot on the wall made by the ink, the visitor to the Wartburg is shown to the present day. It is to this translation of the Bible that Froebel refers. The Wartburg, bythe-bye, is also the place where the great singing contest occurs in Richard Wagner's opera "Tanuhaeuser."

"Fieldmouse Mamma! came a tiny squeak from between the tall spears of wheat," where are you?"

"Right here, my babies," called a high, piping voice back again; and spry Mamma Fieldmouse frisked up to them, even quicker than usual and quite out of breath.

"Just think what I have learned ! They are cutting the grain to carry it all away.

We must hurry and get our things together and be off."

And the little mice were so startled that they hardly knew what to do. They flew in and out of their house; they ran into each other and tumbled and rolled over and over, and Mamma Fieldmouse found her hands so full in making all the preparations for leaving that it grew quite late.

And the men in the harvest field could be heard coming nearer and nearer, and soon a great big foot stepped quite close to them.

With a shrill cry the brave little mother called all her wee babies to her and as they stood in a group she ran around and around them to keep them from harm.

What would happen next!

"This is a fine patch of wheat," called out the farmer. "I think we had better make up a sheaf of it to exhibit at the Fair. Cut me that patch, right there, my boy," he called to a young man who carried a scythe; and he pointed at the exact spot where the mouse family lived.

The wheat was cut and carried off, and the home, the mamma and the wee baby fieldmice were all carried off with it. It was tied snugly together and set into a large basket.

And right there in the midst of the sheaf were cuddled Mamma Fieldmouse and her family all clinging to each other, and their hearts were beating very fast as they waited and listened, wondering

They did not try to run away, for it would have been very hard to manage the whole family without losing some of them. Besides they had plenty to eat and the granary floor was wide, and they ran and played and were quite happy.

One morning bright and early, basket and sheaf and mousies and all were carried to the big wagon and trundled over a long, rough road to the "Fair."

Who has ever been at a fair? Ah! almost all of us; and what would you have thought, when you were looking at the beautiful sheaves of wheat and oats, had a wee bit of a mousie peeped out from one of them, snapping his sharp little eyes at you?

Quite a number of the children saw these little fellows at the Fair, although they were very shy. The little folks would stand and watch and wait and when a brave mousie showed his nose from between the stalks a little scream of delight would send him running back to his mamma, and the boys and girls

would be very sorry that they had frightened him away.

Every one wondered why the children loved to go and watch the wheat and other grains, for they would stand long and wait for the mice to peep out again. One little boy told his papa about it and he was the very same farmer who had brought the sheaf in which Mamma Fieldmouse and her babies were hidden.

It was the last day of the Fair, so he took down the sheaf and cut the twine which bound it, and there, right in the very middle the wee mouse family had set up housekeeping. They had spent a very happy week at the Fair and had had plenty to see and to eat and everything was very comfortable. How they must have enjoyed it!

The children followed the farmer to the door of the building and he laid the sheaf on the ground and the Fieldmouse Mamma and her children scampered off all together, back to the sweet Autumn fields again. Next year we hope they will all have little homes of their own, and go to the county fair together, where perhaps we shall see them.

A. H.

Oh, who will go a-nutting
This bright October day,
Then bring your bags and baskets
And to the woods away!

We'll be a merry party

Of frisky squirrel sprites, And climb and run and gather nuts To eat on Winter nights.

A. H.

It was a beautiful day in the Summer of 1839 when Froebel, accompanied by Middendorff and Barop, was walking from Keilhau to Blankenburg. In the latter place he had founded his first institution for the education of children, younger than the age at which they could be received in a public school. He was very busy at the time, trying to interest women in his ideas and to establish woman societies devoted to the furtherance of his system of combining a proper course of education with the duties commonly assigned to the nursery only. These ideas filled his mind all the time, and during this walk he had exclaimed in a low voice: "If I knew only a suitable name for my youngest child!" meaning the youngest child of his inventive thought, namely, the nursery-school he had founded at Blankenburg. They had just crossed the ridge of a height called "Steiger," and were descending the mountain-side into the beautiful and fresh-looking valley of Blankenburg. Proceeding slowly Froebel took in all the beauty of mountain-side and forest, of

the valley with its fields and houses, its sparkling, little water course and the busy life of the people about their farmsteads. The little city beneath him looked like a bouquet of flowers in a circle of green leaves, the bright homesteads representing the flowers, surrounded by meadows and gardens full of fruit trees, and beds of flowers and greens. The whole made the impression of an extensive, natural park, or rather an immense garden where art had done little, but nature a great deal to please the eye of the lover of natural scenery. Greatly pleased with the beauty of the landscape and lost in hopeful forethought of the future of his nursery-school, upon which his gaze was lovingly fixed, he suddenly arrested his progress, and with eyes sparkling with enthusiasm he called out so loud that the echo from the mountains returned the words in distinct and powerful reverberations of the air:

"Eureka! Kindergarten shall be the name of the new institution!"

A. H. HEINEMANN.