Polly Oliver's Problem

by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

Her "literary passions" were the Arabian Nights, Scottish Chiefs, Don Quixote, Thaddeus of Warsaw, Irving's Mahomet, Thackeray's Snobs, Undine, and the Martyrs of Spain. These volumes, joined to an old green Shakespeare and a Plum Pudding edition of Dickens, were the chief of her diet.

But stay! while I am talking of literary tendencies, I do remember a certain prize essay entitled "Pictures in the Clouds,"--not so called because it took the prize, alas! but because it competed for it.

There is also a myth in the household (doubtless invented by my mother) that my sister learned her letters from the signs in the street, and taught herself to read when scarcely out of long clothes. This may be cited as a bit of "corroborative detail," though personally I never believed in it.

Johnson's Sister,
N. A. S.

Like many who have won success in literature, her taste and aptitude showed themselves early. It would be unfair to take Polly Oliver's Problem as in any sense autobiographical, as regards a close following of facts, but it may be guessed to have some inner agreement with Mrs. Wiggin's history, for she herself when a girl of eighteen wrote a story, Half a Dozen Housekeepers, which was published in St. Nicholas in the numbers for November and December, 1878. She was living at the time in California, and more to the purpose even than this bright little story was the preparation she was making for her later successes in the near and affectionate study of children whom she was teaching. She studied the kindergarten methods for a year under Emma Marwedel, and after teaching for a year in Santa Barbara College, she was called upon to organize in San Francisco the first free kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. She was soon joined in this work by her sister; and the enthusiasm and good judgment shown by the two inspired others, and made the famous "Silver Street Kindergarten" not only a great object lesson on the Pacific Coast, but an inspiration to similar efforts in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia, and the Hawaiian Islands.

This school was, and is at the present time, located in a densely inhabited and poverty-ridden quarter of the city. It was largely among the very poor that Mrs. Wiggin's full time and wealth of energy were devoted, for kindergartening was never a fad with her as some may have imagined; always philanthropic in her tendencies, she was, and is, genuinely and enthusiastically in earnest in this work. It is interesting to know that on the wall of one apartment at the Silver Street Kindergarten hangs a life-like portrait of its founder, underneath which you may read these words:--

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.

In this room was born the first free Kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. Let me have the happiness of looking down upon many successive groups of children sitting in these same seats.

We are told that the children love that room the best; it is pictured as a bright, cheery spot, where the children used to gather with "Miss Kate" in the bygone days. By the window there is a bird-cage; the tiny occupant bearing the historical name of "Patsy." Connected with this kindergarten is a training-school, organized by Mrs. Wiggin in 1880, and conducted by Miss Nora Smith for several years afterward. The two sisters in collaboration have added much valuable matter to kindergarten literature, notably the three volumes entitled The Republic of Childhood, Children's Sights, and The Story Hour.

On her marriage, Mrs. Wiggin gave up teaching, but continued to give two talks a week to the Training Class. She was also a constant visitor in the many kindergartens which had sprung up under the impulse of herself and her associates. She played with the children, sang to them, told them stories, and thus was all the while not only gathering material unconsciously, but practicing the art which she was to make her calling. The dozen years thus spent were her years of training, and, during this time she wrote and printed The Story of Patsy, merely to raise money for the kindergarten work. Three thousand copies were sold without the aid of a publisher, and the success was repeated when, not long after, The Birds' Christmas Carol appeared.