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"It was my intention to try to find near Zurich or in Aargau a place where I should be able to join industry and agriculture to the other means of instruction, and so give my establishment all the development necessary to its complete success. But the Unterwalden disaster (September, 1798) left me no further choice in the matter. The Government felt the urgent need of sending help to this unfortunate district, and begged me for this once to make an attempt to put my plans into execution in a place where almost everything that could have made it a success was wanting.

"I went there gladly. I felt that the innocence of the people would make up for what was wanting, and that their distress would, at any rate, make them grateful.

"My eagerness to realize at last the great dream of my life would have led me to work on the very highest peaks of the Alps, and, so to speak, without fire or water.

"For a house, the Government made over to me the new part of the Ursuline convent at Stanz, but when I arrived it was still uncompleted, and not in any way fitted to receive a large number of children. Before anything else could be done, then, the house itself had to be got ready. The Government gave the necessary orders, and Rengger pushed on the work with much zeal and useful activity. I was never indeed allowed to want for money.

"In spite, however, of the admirable support I received, all this preparation took time, and time was precisely what we could least afford, since it was of the highest importance that a number of children, whom the war had left homeless and destitute, should be received at once.

"I was still without everything but money when the children arrived; neither kitchen, rooms, nor beds were ready to receive them. At first this was a source of inconceivable confusion. For the first few weeks I was shut up in a very small room; the weather was bad, and the alterations, which made a great dust and filled the corridors with rubbish, rendered the air very unhealthy.

"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.

"This complete ignorance 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 judg ment, 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 arouse these faculties, and bring them to bear on the pure and simple circumstances of domestic life, for I was convinced that in this way I should be able to form the hearts and minds of children almost as I wished.

"Now that I had an opportunity of carrying out this object, I felt sure that my affection would change the nature of my children as quickly as the sun changes the frozen earth in spring; nor was I wrong, for before the snow of our mountains had melted the children were no longer the same.

"But I must not anticipate. Just as in the evening I often mark the quick growth of the gourd by the side of the house, so I want you to mark the growth of my plant; and, my friend, I will not hide from you the worm which sometimes eats into its leaves, sometimes even into its heart.

"I opened the establishment with no other helper but a woman-servant. I had not only to teach the children, but to look after their physical needs. I preferred being alone, and, indeed, it was the only way to reach my end. No one in the world would have cared to fall in with my views for the education of children, and at that time I knew scarcely any one capable even of understanding them. The better the education of the men who might have helped me, the less their power of understanding me and of confining themselves, even in theory, to the simple beginnings to which I sought to return. All their views as to the organization and needs of the enterprise were entirely different from mine. What they especially disagreed with was the idea that such an undertaking could be carried out without the help of any artificial means, but simply by the influence exercised on the children by Nature, and by the activity to which they were aroused by the needs of their daily life.

"And yet it was precisely upon this idea that I based my chief hope of success; it was, as it were, a basis for innumerable other points of view.

"Experienced teachers, then, could not help me; still less boorish, ignorant men. I had nothing to put into the hands of assistants to guide them, nor any results or apparatus by which I could make my ideas clearer to them.

"Thus, whether I would or no, I had first to make my experiment alone, and collect facts to illustrate the essential features of my system before I could venture to look for outside help. Indeed, in my then position, nobody could help me. I knew that I must help myself and shaped my plans accordingly.

"I wanted to prove by my experiment that if public education is to have any real value, it must imitate the methods which make the merit of domestic education; for it is my opinion that if public education does not take into consideration the circumstances of family life, and everything else that bears on a man's general education, it can only lead to an artificial and methodical dwarfing of humanity.

"In any good education, the mother must be able to judge daily, nay hourly, from the child's eyes, lips, and face, of the slightest change in his soul. The power of the educator, too, must be that of a father, quickened by the general circumstances of domestic life.

"Such was the foundation upon which I built. I determined that there should not be a minute in the day when my children should not be aware from my face and my lips that my heart was theirs, that their happiness was my happiness, and their pleasures my pleasures.

"Man readily accepts what is good, and the child readily listens to it; but it is not for you that he wants it, master and educator, but for himself. The good to which you would lead him must not depend on your capricious humour or passion; it must be a good which is good in itself and by the nature of things, and which the child can recognize as good. He must feel the necessity of your will in things which concern his comfort before he can be expected to obey it.

"Whenever he does anything gladly, anything that brings him honour, anything that helps to realize any of his great hopes, or stimulates his powers, and enables him to say with truth, I can, then he is exercising his will.

"The will, however, cannot be stimulated by mere words; its action must depend upon those feelings and powers which are the result of general culture. Words alone cannot give us a knowledge of things; they are only useful for giving expression to what we have in our mind.

"The first thing to be done was to win the confidence and affection of the children. I was sure that if I succeeded in doing that, all the rest would follow of itself. Think for a moment of the prejudices of the people, and even of the children, and you will understand the difficulties with which I had to contend.

"The unfortunate country had suffered all the horrors of war. Most of the inhabitants detested the new constitution, and were not only exasperated with the Government, but suspicious of its offered help. Opposed by the natural melancholy of their character to anything new coming from outside, they held fast, with bitter and defiant obstinacy, to everything connected with their former condition, wretched as it was in many respects. To these people I was simply an agent of the new order of things. They looked on me as a mere instrument, working not for them, but for the men who were the cause of their misfortunes, and whose opinions, views, and plans were entirely opposed to their own. This political distrust was strengthened by a no less deep religious distrust. I was a heretic, and so all my efforts to do good could only

imperil their children's souls. Amongst them no Protestant had ever held the smallest public office; what must they have felt, then, on seeing one made a teacher of children? To make matters worse, religious and political passion in Stanz was just then excited to an unusually high degree.

"Think, my friend, of this temper of the people, of my weakness, of my poor appearance, of the ill-will to which I was almost publicly exposed, and then judge how much I had to endure for the sake of carrying on my work.

"And yet, however painful this want of help and support was to me, it was favourable to the success of my undertaking, for it compelled me to be always everything for my children. I was alone with them from morning till night. It was my hand that supplied all their wants, both of body and soul. All needful help, consolation, and instruction they received direct from me. Their hands were in mine, my eyes were fixed on theirs.

"We wept and smiled together. They forgot the world and Stanz; they only knew that they were with me and I with them. We shared our food and drink. I had neither family, friends, nor servants; nothing but them. I was with them in sickness, and in health, and when they slept. I was the last to go to bed, and the first to get up. In the bedroom I prayed with them, and, at their own request, taught them till they fell asleep. Their clothes and bodies were intolerably filthy, but I looked after both myself, and was thus constantly exposed to the risk of contagion.

"This is how it was that these children gradually became so attached to me, some indeed so deeply that they contradicted their parents and friends when they heard evil things said about me. They felt that I was being treated unfairly, and loved me, I think, the more for it. But of what avail is it for the young nestlings to love their mother when the bird of prey that is bent on destroying them is constantly hovering near?

"However, the first results of these principles and of this line of action were not always satisfactory, nor, indeed, could they be so. The children did not always understand my love. Accustomed to idleness, unbounded liberty, and the fortuitous and lawless pleasures of an almost wild life, they had come to the convent in the expectation of being well fed, and of having nothing to do. Some of them soon discovered that they had been there long enough, and wanted to go away

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