Here in this earliest of Free Kindergartens are certain essentials. Washing and mending, the alternation of constructive play with active exercise, rhythmic game and song, and last but not least human kindliness and courtesy. The shelter was but a barn, but there are things more important than premises. Froebel died too soon to see his ideals realised, but he had sown the seed in the heart of at least one woman with brain to grasp and will to execute. As early as 1873 the Froebelians had established something more than the equivalent of the Montessori Children's Houses under the name of Free Kindergartens or People's Kindergartens. It will bring this out more clearly if, without referring here to any modern experiments in America, in England and Scotland, or in the Dominions, we quote the description of an actual People's Kindergarten or Nursery School as it was established nearly fifty years ago. The moving spirit of this institution was Henrietta Schroder, Froebel's own grand-niece, trained by him, and of whom he said that she, more than any other, had most truly understood his views. The whole institution was called the Pestalozzi-Froebel House. The Prussian edict, which abolished the Kindergarten almost before it had started, was now rescinded, and our own Princess Royal[4] gave warm support to this new institution. The description here quoted was actually written in 1887, when the institution had been in existence for fourteen years: [Footnote 4: The Crown Princess of Prussia, afterwards the Empress Frederick.] "The purpose of the National Kindergarten is to provide the necessary and natural help which poor mothers require, who have to leave their children to themselves. "The establishment contains:-- "(1) The Kindergarten proper, a National Kindergarten with four classes for children from 2-1/2 to 6 years old. "(2) The Transition Class, only held in the morning for children about 6 or 6-1/2 years old. "(3) The Preparatory School, for children from 6 to 7 or 7-1/2 years old. "(4) The School of Handwork, for children from 6 to 10 or older. "Dinners are provided for those children whose parents work all day away from home at a trifling charge of a halfpenny and a penny. Also, for a trifle, poor children may receive assistance of various kinds in illness, or may have milk or baths through the kindness of the kindred 'Association for the Promotion of Health in the Household.' "In the institution we are describing there is a complete and well-furnished kitchen, a bathroom, a courtyard with sand for digging, with pebbles and pine-cones, moss, shells and straw, etc., a garden, and a series of rooms and halls suitably furnished and arranged for games, occupations, handwork and instruction.