Come, let us with the children live.
—Friedrich Froebel
FRIEDRICH AND HIS CHILD-GARDEN.
Friedrich Froebel—"Little Friedrich," they called him long ago. Is it not strange to think that the great men who bring the beautiful deeds to the world were once little children? Do you know how these children grow so great and strong that they can do a loving deed for the whole world at last? They do little loving deeds every day.
This gentle Friedrich loved more and more things every day that he lived. But when he was a little boy he was very lonely sometimes, because he had no playmates except the flowers in the old garden. It seemed to him these flowers were always playing plays together. The little pink and white ones on the border of the beds seemed always circling round the sweet tall rose, and laughing and swaying in the wind. It was so gay sometimes that he laughed aloud to see them all nodding and bowing, and the rose bowing too.
Friedrich was so gentle that his doves would flutter around his head and settle on his outstretched arms, and even the little mother bird, with her nest in the hedge, would let him stand near when she told little stories to her babies. Friedrich had no dear mother, but he had a tall, strong brother who would sometimes take him to the sweet wide meadows and tell him beautiful stories about the strange little bugs and busy bees, and stones and flowers.
But after awhile Friedrich's father thought he was growing too old to play all day long. So he said to him one day, "Friedrich, you must begin to learn." When Friedrich heard this he was glad, because he wanted to know about all the wonderful things in the world. But when he had to sit still for long hours and learn out of large books that hadn't a single picture, it was very hard. "But there is no other way, little Friedrich," his teachers told him.