The change was not welcome to all teachers. As late as 1907 a headmistress who was a product of the training of that time remarked: "We have Kindergarten on Wednesday afternoons and then it is over for the week." But there were teachers who saw beneath the bricks and sticks and pretty movements, who felt the spiritual side and kept themselves alive till greater opportunities came. What was imperishable has remained; the system of prescribed activities is nearly dead, but the spirit of the true Kindergarten is more alive than ever. The change from the early 'eighties till now is difficult to describe, because it is a growth of spirit, a gradual change of values, rather than a change in outward form; there has been no definite throwing off, and no definite adoption, of any one system or theory; but the difference between the best Infant Schools of 1880 and the best Infant Schools of to-day is chiefly a difference in outlook. The older schools aimed at copying a method, while the schools of to-day are more concerned with realising the spirit. At present we are trying to reconstruct education for the new world after the war, and so it is convenient to regard the intervening period of nearly half a century as a transition period: during that time the education of the child under eight has changed much more than the education of older children, at least in the elementary school; and there have been certain marked phases that, though apparently insignificant in themselves, have marked stages of progress in thought.