Some years ago, a San Francisco kindergartner was threading her way
through a dirty alley, making friendly visits to the children of her
flock. As she lingered on a certain door-step, receiving the last
confidences of some weary woman's heart, she heard a loud but not
unfriendly voice ringing from an upper window of a tenement-house just
round the corner. "Clear things from under foot!" pealed the voice, in
stentorian accents. "The teacher o' the _Kids' Guards_ is comin' down
the street!"
"Eureka!" thought the teacher, with a smile. "There's a bit of
sympathetic translation for you! At last, the German word has been put
into the vernacular. The odd, foreign syllables have been taken to the
ignorant mother by the lisping child, and the _kindergartners_ have
become the _Kids' Guards!_ Heaven bless the rough translation,
colloquial as it is! No royal accolade could be dearer to its
recipients than this quaint, new christening!"
What has the kindergarten to do with social reform? What bearing have
its theory and practice upon the conduct of life?
A brass-buttoned guardian of the peace remarked to a gentleman on a
street-corner, "If we could open more kindergartens, sir, we could
almost shut up the penitentiaries, sir!" We heard the sentiment,
applauded it, and promptly printed it on the cover of three thousand
reports; but on calm reflection it appears like an exaggerated
statement.
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