FullReads

“It is marvellous! I could adopt twenty of them! I cannot account for it,” said another of the Trustees.

“I can,” I answered. “Any tolerably healthy child under six who is clean, busy, happy and in good company looks as these do. Why should they not be attractive? They live for four hours a day in this sunny, airy room; they do charming work suited to their baby capacities–work, too, which is not all pure routine, but in a simple way creative, so that they are not only occupied, but they are expressing themselves as creative beings should. They have music, stories and games, and although they are obliged to behave themselves (which is sometimes a trifle irksome) they never hear an unkind word. They grow in grace, partly because they return as many of these favors as is possible at their age. They water the plants, clean the bird’s cage and fill the seed cups and bath; they keep the room as tidy as possible to make the janitor’s work easier; they brush up the floor after their own muddy feet; the older ones help the younger and the strong look after the weak. The conditions are almost ideal; why should they not respond to them?”

California children are apt to be good specimens. They suffer no extremes of heat or cold; food is varied and fruit plentiful and cheap; they are out of doors every month in the year and they are more than ordinarily clever and lively. Still I refuse to believe that any other company of children in California, or in the universe, was ever so unusual or so piquantly interesting as those of the Silver Street Kindergarten, particularly the never-to-be-forgotten “first forty.”

As I look back across the lapse of time I cannot understand how any creature, however young, strong or ardent, could have supported the fatigue and strain of that first year! No one was to blame, for the experiment met with appreciation almost immediately, but I was attempting the impossible, and trying to perform the labor of three women. I soon learned to work more skillfully, but I habitually squandered my powers and lavished on trivial details strength that should have been spent more thriftily. The difficulties of each day could be surmounted only by quick wit, ingenuity, versatility; by the sternest exercise of self-control and by a continual outpour of magnetism. My enthusiasm made me reckless, but though I regret that I worked in entire disregard of all laws of health, I do not regret a single hour of exhaustion, discouragement or despair. All my pains were just so many birth-pangs, leaving behind them a little more knowledge of human nature, a little wider vision, a little clearer insight, a little deeper sympathy.

There were more than a thousand visitors during the first year, a circumstance that greatly increased the nervous strain of teaching; for I had to train myself, as well as the children to as absolute a state of unconsciousness as possible. I always jauntily described the visitors as “fathers and mothers,” and told the children that there would soon be other schools like ours, and people just wanted to see how we sang, and played circle games, and modelled in clay, and learned arithmetic with building blocks and all the rest of it. I paid practically no attention to the visitors myself and they ordinarily were clever enough to understand the difficulties of the situation. Among the earliest in the late autumn of 1878 were Prof. John Swett and Mrs. Kincaid of the San Francisco Normal School who thereafter sent down their students, two at a time, for observation and practical aid. The next important visitor in the spring of 1879 was Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper. She possessed the “understanding heart” and also great executive ability, so that with the help of her large Bible class she was able to open a second free Kindergarten on Jackson Street in October, 1879. Soon after this date the desert began to blossom as the rose. I went to the Eastern cities during my summer vacation and learned by observation and instruction all that I could from my older and wiser contemporaries Miss Susan Blow of St. Louis, Dr. Hailman of LaPorte, Mrs. Putnam of Chicago and Miss Elizabeth Peabody and Miss Garland of Boston. Returning I opened my own Kindergarten Training School and my sister Miss Nora Archibald Smith joined me both in the theoretical and practical spreading of the gospel.