All the younger children had gone home, but she took us through the empty schoolrooms, which were anything but attractive. We found an unhappy small boy locked in one of them. I slipped behind the concierge to chat with him, for he was so exactly like all other small boys in disgrace that he made me homesick.
“Tu étais méchant, n’est ce-pas?” I whispered consolingly; “mais tu seras sage demain, j’en suis sûre!”
I thought this very pretty, but he wriggled from under my benevolent hand, saying “Va!” (which I took to be, “Go ’long, you!”) “je n’étais méchant aujourd’hui et je ne serai pas sage demain!”
I asked the concierge if the general methods of Pestalozzi were still used in the schools of Yverdon, “Mais certainement!” she replied as we went into a room where twenty to thirty girls of ten years were studying. There were three pleasant windows looking out into the street; the ordinary platform and ordinary teacher’s table, with the ordinary teacher (in an extraordinary state of coma) behind it; and rather rude desks and seats for the children, but not a single ornament, picture, map, or case of objects and specimens around the room. The children were nice, clean, pleasant, stolid little things with braided hair and pinafores. The sole decoration of the apartment was a highly-coloured chart that we had noticed on the walls of all the other schoolrooms. Feeling that this must be a sacred relic, and that it probably illustrated some of the Pestalozzian foundation principles, I walked up to it reverently,
“Qu’est-ce-que c’est cela, Madame?” I inquired, rather puzzled by its appearance.
“C’est la méthode de Pestalozzi,” the teacher replied absently.
I wished that we kindergarten people could get Froebel’s educational idea in such a snug, portable shape, and drew nearer to gaze at it. I can give you a very complete description of the pictures from memory, as I copied the titles verbatim et literatim. The whole chart was a powerful moral object-lesson on the dangers of incendiarism and the evils of reckless disobedience. It was printed appropriately in the most lurid colours, and divided into nine tableaux.
These were named as follows:—
I—La Vraie Gaîté
Twelve or fifteen boys and girls are playing together so happily and innocently that their good angels sing for joy.