and writing, what is it, after all, but the signs for things and
thoughts? Logically we must first know things, then thoughts, then
their records. The law of human progress is from physical activity to
mental power, from a Hercules to a Shakespeare, and it is as true for
each unit of humanity as it is for the race.

Everything in Froebel's playthings trains the child to quick, accurate
observation. They help children to a fuller vision, they lead them to
see. Did you ever think how many people there are who "having eyes,
see not"?

Ruskin says, "Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but
thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry,
prophecy, religion, all in one."

A gentleman who is trying to write the biography of a great
man complained to me lately, that in consulting a dozen of his
friends--men and women who had known him as preacher, orator,
reformer, and poet--so few of them had anything characteristic and
fine to relate. "What," he said "is the use of trying to write
biography with such mummies for witnesses! They would have seen just
as much if they had had nothing but glass eyes in their heads."

What is education good for that does not teach the mind to observe
accurately and define picturesquely? To get at the essence of an
object and clear away the accompanying rubbish, this is the only
training that fits men and women to live with any profit to themselves
or pleasure to others. What a biographer, for example, or at least
what a witness for some other biographer, was latent in the little boy
who, when told by his teacher to define a bat, said: "He's a nasty