Our experience with the three
hundred children now placed out and watched over by our co-labourers
in Canada brought us to the latter conclusion, and the testimony of
others in Germany was to the same effect.
"Pastor Zeller, who himself founded an orphan asylum at Beuggen, had
long before strongly advocated the placing of bereaved children in
Christian families as the very best method of training them.
Commenting on this, M. de Liefde observes--'An establishment which
contains from fifty to seventy children (and this surely is only a
small one), however well managed, cannot help being unnatural in many
respects. Nature seldom puts more than twelve children together in
one house; quite enough for a man and his wife to control, if due
attention be given to the formation of the different characters and
the development of the various talents. The training of a band of
children beyond that number cannot help assuming the character of
wholesale education. The larger the number, the greater the
resemblance of the establishment to a barrack; it becomes a depot of
ready-made young citizens, got up for social life at a fixed price,
and within a fixed period of time.
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