one of whose sisters was married to Nathaniel Hawthorne, while another
was the wife of Horace Mann. Miss Peabody began to teach in 1860, but
eight years later, after a visit to Europe, she gave up teaching for
propaganda work. Owing to her efforts the first Free Kindergarten was
opened in Boston in 1870. Philanthropists soon recognised its importance
as a social agency, and by 1883 one lady alone supported thirty-one such
institutions in Boston and its surroundings. In New York, Dr. Felix
Adler established a Free Kindergarten in 1878, and Teachers' College was
influential in helping to form an association which supports several.
Another name well known in this country is that of Miss Kate Douglas
Wiggin,[12] who was a Kindergarten teacher for many years before she
became known as a novelist. It is Miss Wiggin who tells of a quaint
translation of Kindergarten heard by a San Francisco teacher making
friendly visits to the mothers of her children. While she stood on a
door-step sympathising with one poor woman she heard a "loud, but not
unfriendly" voice from an upper window. "Clear things from under foot!"
it pealed in stentorian accents. "The teacher o' the _Kids' Guards_ is
comin' down the street."

[Footnote 12: Writer of _Penelope in England_, etc., and of a capital
collection of essays entitled _Children's Rights_.]

In England things were very different, because of the Infant Schools
which had already been established, but which had fallen far below the
ideal set up by Robert Owen. As every one knows, the education given in
those days to teachers of Elementary Schools was but meagre, and the
results were often so bad that, to justify the expenditure of public
money, "payment by results" was introduced. In 1870 came the Education
Act, and the year 1874 saw a good deal of movement. Miss Caroline Bishop
was appointed to lecture to the Infants' teachers under the London