“The want of beds compelled me at first to send some of the poor children home at night; these children generally came back the next day covered with vermin. Most of them on their arrival were very degenerated specimens of humanity. Many of them had a sort of chronic skin-disease, which almost prevented their walking, or sores on their heads, or rags full of vermin; many were almost skeletons, with haggard, careworn faces, and shrinking looks; some brazen, accustomed to begging, hypocrisy, and all sorts of deceit; others broken by misfortune, patient, suspicious, timid, and entirely devoid of affection. There were also some spoilt children amongst them who had known the sweets of comfort, and were therefore full of pretensions. These kept to themselves, affected to despise the little beggars their comrades, and to suffer from this equality, and seemed to find it impossible to adapt themselves to the ways of the house, which differed too much from their old habits. But what was common to them all was a persistent idleness, resulting from their want of physical and mental activity. Out of every ten children there was hardly one who knew his A B C; as for any other knowledge, it was, of course, out of the question. “The entire absence of school learning was what troubled me least, for I trusted in the natural powers that God bestows on even the poorest and most neglected children. I had observed for a long time that behind their coarseness, shyness, and apparent incapacity, are hidden the finest faculties, the most precious powers; and now, even amongst these poor creatures by whom I was surrounded at Stanz, marked natural abilities soon began to show themselves. I knew how useful the common needs of life are in teaching men the relations of things, in bringing out their natural intelligence, in forming their judgment, and in arousing faculties which, buried, as it were, beneath the coarser elements of their nature, cannot become active and useful till they are set free. It was my object then to set free these faculties, and bring them to bear on the pure and simple circumstances of domestic life, for I was convinced this was all that was wanting, and these natural faculties would shew themselves capable of raising the hearts and minds of my pupils to all that I could desire. “I saw then how my wishes might be carried out; and I was persuaded that my affection would change the state of my children just as quickly as the spring sun would awake to new life the earth that winter had benumbed. I was not deceiving myself: before the spring sun melted the snow of our mountains my children were hardly to be recognised.