Haines's Kindergarten and training-school in Grammercy Park. Meantime the former teacher of this school, Mrs. Kraus-Boelte

arrived after a life-time of study and experience, but who have never taken the trouble to understand the alphabet of his system.

*

an able and experienced Kindergartener, also -has started further up town a Kindergarten of her own, with a training-school. Miss Blow, daughter of the late Hon. Henry T. Blow, of St. Louis, was a pupil of Mrs. KrausBoelte at Miss Haines's. After her graduation she returned to her own city and consecrated freely to the work of promoting the new education her time, her large intelligence, and her means. She succeeded very early in enlisting the ardent coöperation of Mr. Harris, the superintendent of the city schools, and to-day St. Louis is the foremost. . city of the country in the number of Kindergartens in connection with the public schools.

There are several difficulties which the promoters of Kindergarten work have to contend with. America is a land of dabblers. Everywhere there are people who pretend to have Kindergartens, without even knowing what a Kindergarten is. Quacks, both German and American, seek to make money out of the popularity of the name. There are people who claim to have improved on the method at which Froebel

York; that of Mrs. Kraus-Boelte, in New York; that of Misses Garland and Weston in Boston; that of Miss Blow, in St. Louis, and that of Miss Marwedel, in Washington. There are a large number of trained Kindergarteners in active service in the country. Of course they differ widely in natural aptitude, and even a trained Kindergartener, not fitted by nature for the care and instruction of little children, is capable of doing the cause a great injury. There is a constant demand for Kindergarteners, far exceeding the supply. But it is not a work for a selfish, a money-getting, or an indolent person to do. It is not a trade, but a mission.

We have great lack of a good Kindergarten literature in the English language; but this lack is likely to be abundantly supplied, for here too there is an enthusiastic laborer, ready to do all that he can for the cause. Mr. E. Steiger, the German bookseller in Frankfort street, has made it his "mission" to import all the German, French, and English works, to publish such good American books on the subject as were offered, and to manufacture the material. The earliest publication in this country was Miss Peabody's "Kindergarten Guide," a book full of good thoughts, as is everything that Miss Peabody writes; but written before she was thoroughly acquainted with Froebel's system. Two of her lectures, recently published through the liberality of an enthusiastic Pittsburg clergyman, are much better. Miss Peabody issued for some years past a little monthly magazine, "The Kindergarten Messenger," now merged in the "New England Journal of Education." Very early in the history of the movement, Mr. Milton Bradley, of Springfield, Mass., a manufacturer of children's games, undertook, from disinterested motives, the publication of Wiebé's "Paradise of Childhood," a book chiefly valuable for its fine lithographic illustrations

and some important matter transferred from the German works. The best statement of the fundamental principles of the Kindergarten, especially in its application to the smallest children, is to be found in Mrs. Kriege's "The Child," a free rendering of a German work by the Baroness Marenholtz. Of the German text-books, Köhler's "Praxis des Kindergartens" is one of the latest, amplest, and best. Karl Froebel's Kindergarten Drawing-books need no translator to commend themselves to the eye at a glance. Those who read no German, but who understand French, will find Jacobs' "Manuel Pratique des Jardins d'Enfants," a most serviceable manual. Ronge's "Practical Guide to the English Kindergarten," is a good London publication, but somewhat out of date. It may be well to say that no one can become a Kindergartener from books alone. The art can only be acquired in the training-school.

Like their founder himself, the teachers and promoters of the Froebellian reformation are all enthusiasts. To be interested in the Kindergarten is to be enthusiastic. The teachers, the lecturers, the writers, the very booksellers who handle the books, make a sort of religion out of it. The millennium to which they look is the day when the primary school for little children shall be no more, the day in which all little children shall learn according to God's law in their own natures. And of all the sayings of the great Apostle of Infancy, the favorite one is that watchword which is graven on his tombstone. For you must know that the tomb of Froebel is just the most appropriate in the world—it is a cube, a cylinder, and a sphere-the "second gift." And on the cube, which serves for pedestal, they have graven his own battle-cry: Kommt, läszt uns unsern kindern leben." Come, let us live for our children!

WHEN a corps of Sherman's Army, marching northward after the close of the Civil War, came to the vicinity of Mount Vernon, the soldiers were surprised at the sight of the village of Accotink, which in its appearance and inhabitants seemed to be a New England town. The white cottages with green window-blinds, the neatly kept yards, the Quaker meeting-house, and particularly the absence of the bar-room-that invariable feature of all the Southern towns-produced quite a home-like feeling on the heroes of the March to the Sea, and such as

they had not expected to experience short of those distant homes where those who were left behind were doubtless singing "When Johnnie comes marching home."

This village was founded in 1850 by a settlement of New England Quakers; and under their auspices the country around recovered from that look of faded prosperity which it had worn for many decades previous to their coming. A century ago this district was called, under the régime of the English Church, Truro Parish,-a name bestowed by the family of Cockburn, who

came from the town of Truro in Cornwall, England.

Old Pohick Church, as the parish church is called, stands on the old stage road, five miles from Mount Vernon, and the same distance from Gunston Hall, the mansion of Col. George Mason-known in history as "George Mason of '76," the author of the Bill of Rights and also of the Constitution of Virginia.

This "stately edifice" (as it has been called by some patriotic antiquarians who invested it with the grandeur of the Father of his Country as soon as they saw his illustrious name in gilt letters on one of the pew doors), was built in the most solid fashion, of imported brick, and up to 1861 had withstood decay and neglect. It had been left for years without any properly constituted guardian, and except on chance occasions its solemn echoes were not awakened by the voice of the preacher or the sound of anthems. Up to that time it had been preserved entire; but at the very commencement of hostilities it became a picket post, alternately held by the cavalry outposts of the opposing armies, and in 1865 but little of the interior remained; the capacious chancel on one side, and the high, elaborately carved pulpit on the other, had disappeared as completely as the wigs and queues of the Colonial gentry whose names were inscribed on the doors of the highbacked pews. The improvised cicerone, in the person of a rustic vagrant, told the writer that the door of General Washington's pew had served to stop the chink of a cabin,—the same ignoble end to which the dust of Cæsar may have been destined. The stone pavement of the aisles, dinted by the hoofs of the light Virginia thorough-bred and the heavy Pennsylvania charger, was all that remained of the interior; and but for the pious care of a wealthy gentleman of New York, who has partially restored the building, we might find to-day only the bare ruin of this ancient Colonial

relic.

The first Pohick Church, built sometime during the governorship of Spotswood, stood some distance south of the present one, and on the bank of a creek which still retains its Indian name of Pohick. This is the extreme point reached by Captain John Smith in 1608 in his expedition in canoes, and the grave of one of his party, Lieut. Wm. Herris, a few miles below, marks the spot where that "Goode Stoute Soldiere" lost his life in a skirmish with "those tall and proper sal

vages," as the bold adventurer terms them in his history.

In the year 1769 this church became untenable, and Col. Washington and Col. Mason having selected the new location, the building was planned by the former, and erected under his immediate supervision. The drawings of the ground-plan and front elevation are still extant, and may serve to prove that, though the designer may have been "a poor young surveyor," he could not have been a poor architect.

The church was completed in 1773, and from a deed conveying a pew to Parson Massey we find that the Vestry at that date was composed as follows:

Geo. Washington, Geo. Mason, Daniel McCarty, Alexander Henderson, Thos. Ellzy, Thos. Withers Coffer, Martin Cockburn, Wm. Payne, Jr., Jno. Barry, Ino. Gunnell.

At that time, as we see from the originals of some of the accounts that have been preserved, the rector's salary was £650, independent of that of the clerk. And the assemblage at Pohick on a Sunday morning was so suggestive of wealth and prosperity that the traditional description of it might well have drawn a sigh from the breast of that representative individual, known by his familiar initials of F. F. V., when fifty years later he heard his grandsire tell the story, and tell also how the Virginia Leaf in those days brought eighty cents per pound in the markets of Liverpool and Bordeaux.

On this spot, where the hungry riders of Pleasonton and Stewart looked around in vain for " grub" and forage, where the last of the F. F. V.'s had stood and bewailed his desolate fields and fallen fortunes, the Mount Vernon coach, driving four, with liveried coachman and footman, and with the ancient arms of de Hertburn emblazoned on the panel, had drawn up amidst a crowd of powdered beaux, who always came to church early and were ever ready to vie with each other for the honor of handing Mrs. Washington from her coach. This carriage, which Barrington, or some other distinguished Irishman, would have called "a specimen of Gothic architecture on wheels," was built to order in London, and for a long period served as a model after which those old Colonial swells had their equipages made. The running gear and lower section of the body were cream color, with gilt moldings; the "top hamper" mahogany, with green Venetian blinds, and

the interior finished in black leather; two great "head lights" on the box served at night to let the curious traveler know that "a person of quality" was on the road, and aided West Ford to keep his bearings on the dangerous highways not yet smoothed by the magic hand of McAdam. Our great prototype republican also had his coatof-arms on the door panel, fully emblazoned and "tricked." As the crest is emblazoned on a ducal coronet, we may perhaps accept the story that these are the armorial bearings of William de Hertburn, a Norman baron, who was lord of the manor of Washington in the 13th century. On the four side panels were pictures representing the seasons. This coach came into the possession of Bishop Meade of Virginia, who, with one eye to business and the other to charity, had it cut up and sold in pieces at a church fair.

The Fairfaxes, Masons, Lewises, and others of the county drove similar turnouts whenever they "went abroad,"-a phrase which signified any place beyond the limits of their own domain.

Not the least important feature of the congregation of Pohick was the crowd of negro lackeys in liveries and great periwigs: much more consequential in their bearing than any of their masters.

In this iconoclastic age we may venture to say, without being profane, that the traditions of this neighborhood do not substantiate those authorities who dressed the character of The Great Republican for an audience much more severe than the one before which he actually performed. As we shall see by the characters of some of the rectors of Truro, the morals and manners of the time were far from being "in accord" with the habits and sentiments of an ascetic.

The dress in which Colonel Washington generally appeared at church was a laced. hat, stone-colored coat with gilt buttons, blue surtout, buff knee-breeches, boots and gilt spurs. Being held the best horseman and boldest fox-hunter in Virginia, it was natural that he followed the fashion prevalent among the young gallants and came to church on horseback. He used a Pelham bit, and generally rode with holsters at his saddle-peak. The portrait by Peale, which is considered by his relatives the most correct one, represents him at the age of forty in the uniform of Colonel of the Twentysecond Virginia Militia. There is no trace of resemblance to the grand-motherly portrait by Stuart, even allowing for the differ

ence of age. The former agrees in personal appearance with the character given him by neighborhood tradition,-a bold, dashing gallant, even after his marriage; rather foppish in dress, and safe, according as occasion offered, to win a lady's smile, or the fox's brush.

The business administration of this parish, though on the same plan, was perhaps more thorough than that of any of the other Colonial parishes. The two wardens, as executive officers of the vestry, kept a corps of weavers, cobblers, blacksmiths, and other mechanics, at work for the parish, the hands being either hired, apprenticed, or furnished by the county authorities from the paupers and persons condemned to hard labor for petty offenses. The assessments and voluntary contributions of the congregation were paid in tobacco, but all disbursements were in money. The tobacco on hand was sold according to special orders of the vestry. One of these orders, dated Colchester, August 22d, 1769, directs the sale of fifteen hogsheads at Pohick Warehouse; the designations are in the same method used in Virginia at the present day. In one of the vestry accounts of the same year we find the following items:

As the last ditto is repeated seven times in the same account, we might suppose that there was a corps of gay Lotharios in Truro Parish.

In Parson Massey's letter of resignation, two years after the commencement of hostilities, he states that his salary had been cut down to £150, and refers to the decline in the price of tobacco. We find here the secret of that decline in the agricultural wealth of the Old Dominion, about which her politicians have talked so much, and which has been so often attributed to the fostering of New England interests, to the prejudice of the Middle and Southern States. The price-current, published by Fenwick, Mason & Co., of Bordeaux, and another by Crosbies & Trafford of Liverpool,-two houses to which the planters on the Potomac shipped tobacco,-quote Virginia Leaf at thirty and sixty pence. This price held in France during the French Revolution; but after the close of our Revolution, with that exception, the price steadily declined. The