Francisco Ferrer; his life, work and martyrdom, with message written ...

!
I;
His Life and Work. 7
The good man who politely begged for my opinion and
my help, was helping me by giving me that work of
translation
The "dangerous" book, which I had no time to finish
before I left Barcelona, was "The Children's Book of
Moral Lessons," by Gould ;
printed by a publishing firm
in Fleet Street, London, English people should know
the book so that they may be able to judge the "terrible
evil" the educationist Ferrer was doing in the land of
Maria Santisima.
On arriving at the farm "Mas Germinal," I met Soledad
Villafranca, also wearing the plain country dress,
and managing the house; in the garden I encountered
Ferrer's brother bending over his beloved soil, gathering
his strawberries to carry to Barcelona market early next
morning; his wife was also busily employed. Everybody
producing something, and I wondered if the martyr was
really rich.
The house was a modest one, built in the old-fashioned
Spanish style; and the furniture was certainly neither
choice nor expensive.
The happiness of those people, who, instead of living
in the stupid manner of the riches cochotis, preferred to
be useful to their fellows by enlightening their minds—
marvel now that it could be destroyed, and in the name
of justice!
Before dinner we chatted incessantly about "our"
schools—as he called them—encouraging me to take
charge of a small one, to make my initiation or debut, because
I had never made special pedagogic studies.
"Don't worry about those trifles," he said to me kindly
"the aims of the modern teacher ought to be to teach the
child how to use his brains ; to form from every child a
being with his own will, able to know by his own conscience
what is wrong and what is right. We do not
intend to make lawyers or physicians ; we desire only to
give the first instructions, free, absolutely free, of religious
and some social prejudices. It is a fact," he continued,
"a thousand times proved, that the greatest educationists
were not professional teachers. You are still
young, and maybe some day you will become one of my
best collaborators," he finished, smilingly, putting his
hand affectionately on my shoulder.