"In 1849 Frau Von Marenholz went to the baths of Liebenstein. She happened to ask her landlady what was going on in the place, and in answer the landlady said that a few weeks before a man had settled down near the springs who danced and played with the village children, and was called by people "the old fool." A few days afterwards Madame Von M. was walking out, and met "the old fool." He was an old man, with long gray hair, who was marching a troop of village children two and two up a hill. He was teaching them a play, and was singing with them a song belonging to it. There was something about the gray-haired old man, as he played with the children, which brought tears into the eyes of both Madame Von M. and her companion. She watched him awhile, and said to her companion: "'This man is called 'old fool' by these people. Perhaps he is one of those men who are ridiculed or stoned by contemporaries, and to whom future generations build monuments.'" "I knew," says Madame Von M., "that I had to do with a true man--with an original and unfalsified nature. When one of his pupils called him Mr. Froebel, I remembered having once heard of a man of that name who wished to educate children by play, and that it had seemed to me a very perverted view, for I had only thought of empty play, without any serious purpose." "Froebel met with violent opposition and ridicule all his life, and just when at last he thought he had successfully planted his ideas, there came a sudden death-blow to his hopes, which was also a death-blow to the good and great man. The Prussian Government was and is as tyrannical as William the Conqueror, who made the English people put their lights out at dark, and suddenly, in August, 1851, the Prussian Government immortalized itself by passing a decree forbidding the establishment of any kindergartens within the Prussian dominions. In unguarded moments, Froebel had used the expression "education for freedom," in referring to his beloved plans, and that was enough for Prussia, in the ferment of fear in which she has been ever since 1848. Kindergartens in Germany have not yet recovered from this blow, and Froebel himself sunk under it and died. But a little time before he died, he said: "If 300 years after my death, my method of education shall be completely established according to its idea, I shall rejoice in heaven." "Froebel's life was full of strange vicissitudes and disappointments. The few friends who understood him, and the children whom he taught, and who, perhaps, understood him better than anybody else, reverenced him, and loved him as father, prophet, and teacher.