Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/292

308 of the mother, or has spoken more beautifully on the subject, than this monk of the Franciscans in Freyburg. It was owing to the fact that his own mother stood forever before the eyes, even of the gray-haired father, as an ideal of all excellence.

“I have seen her,” wrote he, “surrounded by fifteen children, embracing all with the same love, the same care, and even in the midst of her domestic occupations finding time to give them instruction in so lovely a manner, and so productive of results, that the most learned educator might have taken a lesson therefrom. Her instruction became really education.”

This type of the mother was so precious and so exalted in his mind, that he applied it to Providence, who was not spoken of by Père Girard as “the fatherly” but as “the motherly.” “La Providence Maternelle ” is a favorite expression of his.

It is this, his mother's natural method, which he considers himself to have merely developed and systematized in his “Cours de langue Maternelle.” His method of instruction he calls, “The motherly method.” This work, which received the prize of the French Academy, deserves to be studied by all mothers. Girard's motto as educator, was

The most novel and important part of Père Girard's motherly method, seems to me to be the Grammaire d'idées, in which he enables the mother, or the teacher, to introduce the child into the realm of thought and social life, through an organized grouping of ideas, and an explanation of the words which indicate them.