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If you are a distressed gentlewoman starting to make a living, you can still open a little school; and you can easily buy a secondhand brass plate inscribed PESTALOZZIAN INSTITUTE and nail it to your door, though you have no more idea of who Pestalozzi was and what he advocated or how he did it than the manager of a hotel which began as a Hydropathic has of the water cure.
We need not go into the painful story of warring tempers and incompatible interests. The institution declined for some years, and then was broken up the government of the Canton warning the manager of the concern, who acted in Pestalozzi's name, to leave the country. It needs no explanation that Pestalozzi was in some respects weak.
The impressions that I had received in my childhood were little adapted to make a squire of me. In Plamann's educational establishment, conducted on the systems of Pestalozzi and Jahn, the "von" before my name was a disadvantage, so far as my childish comfort was concerned, in my intercourse with my fellow-pupils and my teachers.
I shall be asked with kindly scorn whether I have heard of Froebel and Pestalozzi, whether I know the work that is being done by Miss Mason and the Dottoressa Montessori or, best of all as I think, the Eurythmics School of Jacques Dalcroze at Hellerau near Dresden. Jacques Dalcroze, like Plato, believes in saturating his pupils with music.
Pestalozzi was once sent by his government as a member of a commission to interview Napoleon. On his return from Paris he was asked whether he saw Napoleon. "No," said he, "I did not see Napoleon, and Napoleon did not see me." Recognizing the greatness of a real educator, he took away the breath of his friends by ranking himself alongside Napoleon as a truly great man.
Heaven has no reverence for the principles of Comenius, Pestalozzi, or Herbert Spencer as applied to poultry, and when the ducks and geese came out of the pond badly the other night and went waddling and tumbling and hissing all over creation, did not approve of my sending them back into the pond to start afresh.
But this I keep for Lovell, as I shall tell him all about Pestalozzi, Fellenburg, and Pere Gerard's schools. You shall not even know who Pere Gerard is. So we go on to Berne. The moment we entered this canton we perceived the superior cultivation of the land, the comfort of the cottagers, and their fresh-coloured, honest, jolly, independent, hard-working appearance.
The girl's harp a masterpiece by Pestalozzi of Venice stood at one side; on the other, a five hundred dollar Victrola, with a wonderful repertoire of records. But the grand piano itself dominated all, especially made for Catherine by Durand Frères, in Paris, and imported on the Billionaire's own yacht, the "Bandit."
But this also failed of the purpose for which it was principally intended. Still Pestalozzi was not discouraged in his attempts to make the public acquainted with his new ideas. He now addressed himself to the literary world, as he had before written expressly for the common people.
The biographer, historian, and educator shows himself in places, especially in the sketches of the brothers Grimm, and of Froebel, at whose institute, Keilhau, Ebers received the foundation of his education. His discussion of Froebel's method and of that of his predecessor, Pestalozzi, is full of interest, because written with enthusiasm and understanding.
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