Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/459

Rh of a form bounded by unequal faces, etc. The various modes of using the gifts, which are depicted in illustrations, suggest many movement plays, and these Froebel describes, giving also the words of songs to accompany them. He also describes a pleasant way of learning to write and read. Froebel was a pioneer in child study, and in his description of kindergarten plays he is constantly calling attention to the development of the child's faculties which the attentive kindergartner may observe.

In the other two volumes we have Froebel's Mutterspiel and Koselieder reproduced in English. Froebel indicated how each of the mother-plays should be played by means of a group of pictures surmounted by a "motto" consisting of eight or ten lines of verse. These quaint pictures and the mottoes in the original language are reproduced in each volume. The first, which may be called the mother's volume, contains also free renderings of the mottoes in English verse, by Mrs. H. R. Eliot, together with prose translations, by Miss Blow, of the commentaries that accompanied the plays. Miss Blow has also furnished an introductory essay on the philosophy of Froebel, and, that nothing of the master's thought may be lost through rendering his homely lines into English verse, she has given prose translations of the mottoes in an appendix. The companion or children's book contains the same pictures with short pieces of verse on their subjects by Emily H. Miller, Emilie Poulsson, Laura E. Richards, and other writers. Following these is music for them and for some others to the number of eighty-three in all. In this volume many of the pictures in the groups are repeated on a larger scale, so as to bring out their details more clearly. Many of the melodies originally used in the mother-play having been pronounced unsuitable by competent judges, other music is here supplied from sources of recognized merit. In every part of these two volumes the directing hand of that able kindergartner. Miss Susan E. Blow, is apparent. Kindergarten teaching can be conducted by those who have a genius for it without such helps as these books afford, but it is hard to imagine that a teacher who had once used them would be willing to give them up.

In his work on Money and Banking the editor of the New York Evening Post gives connected form to the principles of finance which he has studied and discussed for many years past. His method is that of the historian who accounts for an event by circumstance, pressure, ignorance—occasionally by knowledge fortunately joined to courage. His book is a mine of sifted fact, with clear and convincing deductions wherever these are warranted, with a judicial presentation of both sides of a case where a decision is as yet to be found.

Stripped of its entanglements the money question is simple enough. Mankind has chosen precious metals among commodities as means of exchanging all the rest and as standards of value. Real money, then, is metallic coin, authenticated by the stamp of a mint as to quantity and fineness. For generations down to 1873, both gold and silver circulated together in civilized countries at a ratio of about one to fifteen, the fluctuations from that ratio being too inconsiderable to cause serious difficulty. With the discovery in 1873, and since, of new and rich deposits of silver,