The Evening critic., 1883-05-15

The Bethany Free Kindergarten of the
Froebel Society closed its years labors on
Saturday last by a union of the children
and their friends at the Friends Meeting
House, on l street, between Eighteenth and
Nineteenth northwest Mrs. Anna B. Og-
den and Miss Frank j. Lake, the teachers,
assisted by Miss Hunt, daughter of Professor
Hunt, and another lady graduate Of the
Garfield training class, provided delightful
amusements and exercises, as well as served
ice cream and cake in abundance
for the children and their friends.
Those who witnessed the beautiful
picture presented by these children
felt how great and beneficial had been
the change wrought upon the little neg
lected ones by the kindergarten system
during the year.
this work next fall, with Mrs. Ogden in
charge and Miss Lake as teacher, Mrs.
Ogden having trained her especially for the
work. The children, each, carried to their
homes in the locality of Ohio avenue and
Thirteenth street living pot-plant, in
bloom, gifts from the members and friends
Of the Frebel Society. During the past
three months Herdics have been chartered
at SIS week to carry the children from
their homes to this delightful school-room,
and thus great comfort and joy afforded
Herdics to carry them home, formed a
ring on the green grass and sweetly sang
"Good-by" to friends, and their song, with
memory of their lot SO truly told in the
ANNALS Of the Poor" moved the hearts of
the listeners.
Chief Justice Coleridge ON Persecu-
ffOn.
Chief Justice Coleridge whom we quoted
yesterday as denying that Christianity is
longer a part of the law of England, re-
ferring to the persecution of Foote, editor
of the London Freethinker, says that
persecution, unless it was very thorough
going, was apt in the nineteenth century
to be in vain," and adds:
SIT is also true that persecution is q very
form OF virtue quietly and unostentatiously to
obey what we believe to be Gods will in our
own lives. It is not very easy to do 1t; and It
makes much less noise In the world. 1t is very
easy to turn upon somebody else who differs
from US, and In the guise OF zeal for Ged's
honor to attack somebody for a difference of
opinion, whose life may be more pleasing to
God and more conductive to his honor than
our own. And when 1t is done by persons
whose own lives are not free from reproach
for God which consists In putting the
criminal law in force against others,
that, no doubt, does more to create sympathy
And II 1t should be done by those who enjoy
the wit OF Voltaire and who do not turn away
from the sneers OF Gibbon, and rather relish
with the prosecutors and we are rather dis
posed TO sympathize with the defendant. 1t
is still worse II the person who takes such q
course takes It, not from kind OF notion that
God wants his assistance and that he can give
it-less on his own account than by prQscecut-
Ing others-but II 1t Is mixed up with anything
Of partisan or political feeling, then nothing can
be more foreign TO what is high-minded, or re.
ligious, or noble in mons conduct; and, In
deed, 1t seems to me that any one who Will do
that, not for the honor of God, but for the pur.
poses Of the ban, deserves the most disdainful
disapprobatiOn."