There are many matters to be settled with regard to this brother Abel, and we differ considerably as to the exact degree of our responsibility towards him. Some people believe in giving him the full privileges of brotherhood, in sharing alike with him in every particular, and others insist that he is no brother of theirs at all. Let the nationalists and socialists, and all the other reformers, decide this vexed question as best they can, particularly with regard to the "grown-up" Abels. Meanwhile, there are a few sweet and wholesome services we can render to the brother Abels who are not big enough to be nationalists and socialists, nor strong enough to fight for their own rights. Among these kindly offices to be rendered, these practical agencies for making Abel a happy, self-helpful, and consequently a better little brother, we may surely count the free kindergarten. My mind convinces me that the kindergarten idea is true; not a perfect thing as yet, but something on the road to perfection, something full of vitality and power to grow; and my heart tells me that there is no more beautiful or encouraging work in the universe than this of taking hold of the unclaimed babies and giving them a bit of motherliness to remember. The Free Kindergarten is the mother of the motherless, the father of the fatherless; it is the great clean broom that sweeps the streets of its parentless or worse than parentless children, to the increased comfort of the children, and to the prodigious advantage of the street. We are very much interested in the cleaning of city streets, and well we may be; but up to this day a larger number of men and women have concerned themselves actively about sweeping them of dust and dirt than of sweeping them free of these children. If dirt is misplaced matter, then what do you call a child who sits eternally on the curbstones and in the gutters of our tenement-house districts? I believe that since the great Teacher of humanity spoke those simple words of eternal tenderness that voiced the mother side of the divine nature,--"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,"--I believe that nothing more heartfelt, more effectual, has come ringing down to us through the centuries than Froebel's inspired and inspiring call, "Come! let us live with the children!" This work _pays_, in the best and the highest sense as well as the most practical.