PREFACE ON my return recently from a somewhat prolonged stay in Rome, I observed that my family and circle of friends were in a very different state of mind from that usually found by the home-coming traveler. I was not depressed by the usual conscientious effort to appear interested in what I had seen; not once did I encounter the wavering eye and flagging attention which are such invariable accompaniments to anecdotes of European travel, nor the usual elated rebound into topics of local interest after a tribute to the miles I had traveled, in some such generalizing phrase of finality as, "Well, I suppose you enjoyed Europe as much as ever." If I had ever suffered from the enforced repression within my own soul of my various European experiences I was more than indemnified by the reception which awaited this last return to my native land. For I found myself set upon and required to give an account of what I had seen, not only by my family and friends, but by callers, by acquaintances in the streets, by friends of acquaintances, by letters from people I knew, and many from those whose names were unfamiliar. The questions they all asked were of a striking similarity, and I grew weary in repeating the same answers, answers which, from the nature of the subject, could be neither categorical nor brief. How many evenings have I talked from the appearance of the coffee-cups till a very late bedtime, in answer to the demand, " Now, you've been to Rome; you've seen the Montessori schools. You saw a great deal of Dr. Montessori herself and were in close personal relations with her. Tell us all about it. Is it really so wonderful? Or is it just a fad? Is it true that the children are allowed to do exactly as they please? I should think it would spoil them beyond endurance. Do they really learn to read and write so young? And isn't it very bad for them to stimulate them so unnaturally? And ..." this was a never-failing cry, " what is there in it for our children, situated as we are? " Staggered by the amount of explanation necessary to give the shortest answers that would be intelligible to these searching, but, on the whole, quite misdirected questions, I tried to put off my interrogators with the excellent magazine articles which have appeared on the subject, and with the translation of Dr. Montessori's book. There were various objections to being relegated to these sources of information. Some of my inquisitors had been too doubtful of the value of the perhaps over-heralded new ideas to take the trouble to read the book with the close and serious attention necessary to make anything out of its careful and scientific presentation of its theories. Others, quite honestly, in the breathless whirl of American business, professional and social life, were too busy to read such a long work. Some had read it and emerged from it rather dazed by the technical terms employed, with the dim idea that something remarkable was going on in Italy of which our public education ought to take advantage, but without the smallest definite idea of a possible change in their treatment of their own youngsters. All had many practical questions to put, based on the difference between American and Italian life, questions which, by chance, had not been answered in the magazine articles. I heard, moreover, in varying degree, from all the different temperaments, the common note of skepticism about the results obtained. Everyone hung on my first-hand testimony as an impartial eye-witness. " You are a parent like us. Will it really work? " they inquired with such persistent unanimity that the existence of a still unsatisfied craving for information seemed unquestionable.