She has the sympathy of every one of us, the girl who "means to," for we also intend to do, and fail. Perhaps she learns from our vocabularies the words and phrases which so often appear in her own. "Tomorrow," she says, and "I am going to," "I intend" and "I mean some day to." She enjoys the present but all that she hopes to do she puts into the future. She does not realize at first that the future always has a day of reckoning and that suddenly when one least expects it, the future meets her in the present and says, "How about this and this and this which you were going to do? The time is past. What now?" Sometimes with bitter tears, often with deep regret, always in half guilty fashion the girl answers, "Well, I really meant to do it, only—"

If the drifting girl who "meant to" is to be strengthened in character she must be helped to substitute "I have done it" for "I really meant to do it."

The girl who continually "means to" and seldom "does," is usually emotional, responsive, lovable and irresponsible. I remember a most interesting teacher in the last year of the grammar school who had just such a girl in her room. The girl admired her teacher greatly, and whenever she expressed the desire to read a new book, to have the class see a fine picture, to use certain material for the lesson in drawing or painting, the girl promised that the book should be brought, the picture would gladly be loaned by her father, the poppies or tulips she would get from her garden. Almost never was the promise fulfilled, still she continued to promise. One afternoon her teacher talked with her after school and showed her a list of twenty-one things she had promised to do and had not done. "I know you do not mean to be untruthful, but you are," the teacher told her. "Whenever you promise now to do a thing, the other girls smile. You wanted to be chairman of the luncheon committee the other day and did not receive a single vote, not because the girls dislike you, but because they cannot depend upon you. You always intend to do things but they are not done. You—" The girl interrupted:

"Twenty-one promises to you, broken!" she exclaimed. "Twenty-one! I shall keep every one of them. Let me see them." Then she burst into tears and the old excuse fell almost unconsciously from her lips, "I meant to, I really meant to."

Sympathetically, but without being spared, the girl was shown that the promises could not be kept now; the time had passed and the things had been done by others. The inconvenience and unhappiness caused by many of these unkept promises were explained to her and the teacher asked that for one week she should make her no promises and that she should not volunteer to do anything for her.

"Oh, but I want to do things for you. I must!" she cried with all the passion of her emotional nature.

"What I want most," the teacher responded, "is that you do things, but say nothing."

The girl tried faithfully. Her love and admiration for the teacher furnished a strong motive, and the week showed a real gain. One day her mother called at the school. She said that her daughter had made a strange request of her. "She asked me," said the mother, "to compel her to do everything she promised to do, or said she was going to do and to punish her if she failed. I asked her to explain her strange request and learned of the struggle she has been making. It seems to me she is too young to assume responsibility to the extent of actually doing everything she just casually says she is willing to do or intends to do. We all fail to carry out our intentions."

The teacher helped that mother to see that a girl of fourteen is old enough to begin the struggle to establish the habit of doing what one means to do, and she realized her mistake. Together they decided to encourage the girl to refrain for the time being from making promises. Meanwhile they made requests for such services as seemed perfectly possible for her to render, being careful that but little time need elapse between the request and its required fulfilment, in order that action might follow rapidly the resolution to act. In the months that followed, the girl's effort to do what she said she would do, furnished many a scene of both tragedy and comedy, but slowly she gained and in two years the result was marvelous. A girl who because of her dependableness will be of great value in home, school and community is being made by the sane, wise sympathy of mother and teacher.

The girl who drifts because she "means to" and fails, is easy to love and easy to pardon for things left undone. But those interested in her welfare will spare neither time nor thought in the effort to help her gain the power to make connection between the intention to do and the actual doing.

When one observes carefully any large cosmopolitan group of young women, she sees some with hard faces, some marked by suffering, many marked by selfishness and fretfulness and many more showing dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and her mind goes back involuntarily to the fairy story with the mirror which showed "the girl you meant to be." The contrast between what many a girl meant to be and what she is, reveals a real tragedy.

Many a girl drifts through life always meaning to do—to be, yet missing the joy of accomplishment because she does not summon her will to her aid, and often because friends are too lenient and parents too thoughtless to make her see to what failure and unhappiness, meaning to do and never doing will invariably lead one. If a girl who some day "means to" should read this chapter let her seize at once the only life line which can ever save her. It is made up of three short words which are relentless, but if she obeys they will prove her salvation. Do it now, they read and for the girl who "intends to," there is no other way of escape.

There is another type of girl who drifts. She is explained by the phrase, "aimlessly drifting about." She is the girl who does not know where she is going. She has no objective. Often parents, teachers and friends have neglected to help her centralize her thought upon one thing which she desires to do and she has not seen for herself that while trying to do everything one accomplishes nothing. Many times she is a girl of varied talents and puts all her effort first upon this thing then upon that but never works long enough to complete anything or learn to do it well. In school she changes her courses just as often as it is permitted, in business she changes her position never remaining long enough in any one place to qualify for a better. If at home she drifts from settlement work to domestic science, from domestic science to a dancing club and the golf links. She gives herself to the current and the wind and drifts. She needs an anchor. She needs the strong will of another to steady her while she is developing her own. She needs a great ideal to guide her and hold her with the magnetic power of some North Star. She needs to have her ambition aroused and to be made to believe that she, as truly as any one in the world has a "call to serve." She needs to have great things expected and demanded of her.

The power which rescues the drifting girl is a power outside herself. It may be a call from the bank of the stream which causes her to pick up her oars and leave the current, at the call of danger, in answer to a cry for help; in times of sorrow and illness, many a drifting girl has come ashore and rendered noble service. Those who thought they knew her looked on with unconcealed surprise and said to one another, "I didn't think she had it in her." Yes, it was in her. There, undreamed of by those who saw her drifting. The drifting girl has within her all the possibilities. That is the pity of it. As she drifts she may lose oars, chart and compass and in the stress of the storm that is bound to come be carried out into the sea of darkness, or be wrecked upon the shoals or sandbars that line the stream of life.

A wise teacher, awakened parents, a good friend, a live church, a great book, these have the opportunity of pulling the girl out of the current, and steadying her until she fastens her life to the Ideal which can hold her.

I can see now the plain, dreamy face and great black eyes of the girl of whom parents and relatives said as they looked at her, "What will she ever amount to?" Their faces betrayed their own conviction that she would amount to nothing. She tried piano but concluded that the training necessary to make her a teacher would take too long and took up stenography. After a few weeks she decided that she was unfitted for the work and would rather be a nurse. Some weeks were spent at home just thinking about it, then she began her training. At the end of the period of probation she left—she knew she could never be a nurse. She spent the days reading, sewing a little, taking pictures in the woods and along the shore near her home and tinting them. She drifted through the months, through a year. One day she posed a group of children, watched her chance and caught them all unconscious and natural, interested in their pails and shovels and the tunnel she had helped to dig. The mothers of the children saw the picture. Beautifully tinted it seemed alive and they were enthusiastic. The next week she chanced to see a nine year old fishing with a child's faith. The perfect stillness of the usually active little body, the expectant look on the small face charmed her and in a moment, her camera had them. Every one who saw the picture exclaimed at its naturalness and life and a friend who believed she saw a future for the girl took it to the best photographer in the city. That night the photographer's call anchored the drifting girl. He made her feel that he had discovered an artist for which the city and many outside of it had been waiting. He fired her imagination and awakened her ambition. She felt that she had a real mission in reproducing all the sweet simplicity and naturalness of the child. She worked hard, the artistic temperament became trained and both fame and money came to the girl who would probably still have been drifting had not some one helped her find her work.

To criticize the drifting girl, even though she sorely tempts one to criticism of her, is not enough. To preach to her on the evil of drifting along without aim or purpose, just letting the days slip past, is not enough. The friends of the drifting girl must help her find her work and her mission and inspire her with the belief that she has both.

And there are the girls who drift because strong, capable, efficient mothers cannot conceive of them as anything but "little girls," cannot realize that they have grown up and continue to plan for them, to make all their decisions and choices as they did when their daughters, now twenty, were children of ten. This sort of girl needs sympathy and help, for in the years when her own powers should be developing they sleep. Her mother, though with the best motives and intentions in the world, is compelling her to drift through the years that should be filled with experience and effort and when the time comes that she must be left to herself and depend upon her own resources, her state is pitiful. The girl in the later teens and early twenties needs direction, advice and counsel but if she is to be saved from drifting she must learn to think for herself.

There is another girl who drifts, not aimlessly about, but downstream. She has lost her ideals. She has ignored the still small voice that tried to save her, until now it seldom speaks. One and another of her friends have been with her in the current but have left her and made their way to safety. Only those from whom at first she shrank are with her now. She has reached the place where the current is strong and rapid and escape is doubtful. Her mother still believes her good, her father still trusts her, but before long they will have to know. She began by saying not "I meant to," but "I didn't mean to, I didn't think it was wrong," not "I will do it tomorrow," but "I will never do it again." But she did it again and yet again. She let go of the help that the church offered and gave and went to the pleasure parks on Sunday. She let go of a good friend who held her to the truth, and made a companion of the girl who helped her invent the things she told her mother when she came home very late. She let go of the good books little by little and read the foolish stories that were exciting and absolutely impossible. She let go of the little courtesies and one by one of the laws that good society demands that its girls shall obey. She let go of modesty and in dress and speech allowed herself to drift into the current where it is swift and black.

If only parents had watched more closely, if girl friends had been stronger, and older friends wiser, it would have been so easy when the current just touched her and she was still near to all that is pure and good. But she is drifting—drifting more and more rapidly farther and farther downstream. Now and then she looks back, remembers all the ideals she once dreamed to reach and makes a feeble struggle to resist but the current bears her on. Only some mighty Power can save her.

To the girl who "means to," and "intends," to the girl who dreams and waits and dreams again, to the girl who has let go and is in the current this chapter throws out the challenge—Act now. You can! There is help. Take it.



IX

THE GIRL WITH HIGH IDEALS

Ideals make men and women and the process of ideal making begins in childhood. A great deal has been written and said about the value of the early ideals born in the home, but too much cannot be said, and the value of the influence of good homes and parents whose ideals are high cannot be overestimated. The girl whose home life during the first seven years has not brought to her the high ideal must struggle all her later life to build up and intrench in her mind what might have been hers without conscious effort. Very early in her life the little girl reveals in her play, in her conversation, in her countless imitative acts, the ideals which are being formed.

One day a little four year old told a lie in my presence. Her mother looking the child straight in the eyes, said, "Did Esther tell true?" For a moment the child wavered then nodded her head and said, "Yes, Esther tell true." The mother simply said, "Very well" in the coldest of tones. After a moment the little girl turned to her dolls. She took them to a party, brought them safely back and carefully tucked them into bed. Then she sat quietly looking at them. Finally she took one from the group, placed it in the little chair, very straight and said "Look at me! Did 'oo tell true? 'Oo didn't tell true. Naughty girl." A sigh followed. Then slowly Esther came over to her mother, ignoring my presence. Her lips quivered and smoothing her mother's hand she said sadly, "Esther didn't tell true. Naughty, naughty girl." The little girl at four years of age had her ideal of a good girl and she acted according to its dictation. She must "tell true." At fourteen she is a remarkably truthful girl and very accurate in her statements. Through fear, that mother as a child had become untruthful and in later years had a bitter struggle with the temptation to sacrifice the truth to save herself any annoyance. She determined to give to her own little daughter an ideal of the beauty of truth which should save her, and she succeeded.

Many a little ten-year-old girl has fine ideals of truth, unselfishness and honor and they steady her through the teen years when temptations press hard.

The twelve-year-old girl on the edge of the African jungle arranges her hair in "mop" fashion because that headdress represents her ideal of beauty. Rings in the nose, wonderful decorations of ankles and toes, represent ideals of fashion and beauty. The girl in Japan, China or the Philippines thinks she has made herself beautiful when she has arrayed herself in accordance with her ideals. We often term her "awful" and "ridiculous," shrinking even from her picture and she makes sarcastic remarks, laughs heartily and never fails to express her curiosity regarding us and our strange fancies and fashions.

It is our ideals which act as a great commander-in-chief and we follow in obedience to their commands. Our country needs today more than ever before, the girl with high ideals, for it is when ideals are lowered that character is weakened and sin and evil have their opportunity.

There are many things in the life and surroundings of the girls of today that tend to lower and dim their ideals which did not enter at all into the lives of the girls in our grandmother's and great grandmother's time, and the girls of today must be stronger if they are able to resist them. Our great-grandmothers lived in the home and did not enter into business life. It is hard for the wide awake business girl of today to imagine how that girl of long ago managed to enjoy life. But monotonous as her life often was, she was spared many things. She never rode alone in trains and trolleys nor learned to jostle and push through crowds. She was not compelled to return home late at night without proper escort as countless girls are today. She never spent the evening on the streets, nor was she obliged to join the great army of girls who today live alone in boarding houses in great cities, suffering from discomforts and desperate loneliness. Her parents were more careful than the majority of parents today and she knew what protection meant.

It is because these things are so that one feels like giving added praise to the girls who today are girls of high ideals, who refuse to let the carelessness of the times in which they live gain entrance to their hearts to tarnish those ideals.

A short distance up the shore as I write I can hear the roar of the tide as it rushes into the very center of a great rock of granite. The geologist can find in that mass of rock the tiny crevice where the water first gained entrance. It has split it asunder because it was able to gain entrance through a little crack and each day sent in its drops of water where now with that roar rushes the tide. Farther along the shore is a solid block of granite. Its face is polished smooth by the dashing waves. There is not a crack in it, not a tiny crevice. It presents its splendid, shining surface to the great sea but offers it no opportunity for entrance.

One cannot help wishing with all his soul that we may have more and more girls who are like that bit of solid granite, strongly resisting those things that seek a tiny crevice by which to enter. For we have so many who through some weak spot have let the tide of evil in and slowly it has done its work until now the once strong and fine ideals lie broken and beaten by the waves.

The strong girls of high ideals are with us and it is a comfort and a joy to look into their young faces so full of promise and of courage. We find them among the very rich and among the very poor as well as among the girls who live in comfort with neither riches nor poverty to make things exceedingly hard.

Irene is one of the girls who amidst poverty and sin has been able to keep her ideals high. Her home is poor because her father, a mechanic, who can earn good wages is a hard drinker. Her mother, an honest, clean, hard working woman, is nervous and fretful, worn out by the hard things she has had to meet. It is a quarrelsome household and when the father comes home intoxicated the law is obliged often to interfere. One of the boys was expelled from school because his language is so dreadful. Amid this environment the girl lives. She studies her lessons in school and at the library. Her mother constantly urges her to give up school and go to work but an uncle who furnishes her meager supply of dresses, shoes, coats and hats, says it would only make her father feel that he could give still less to the family's support and so she continues to attend. Every evening she helps her mother and on Saturday works hard for a neighbor with only a pittance for pay.

The school and the Sunday-school have furnished all her ideals and she is holding on to them while her father taunts her with being a "saint," and the girls of the neighborhood tempt her to join with them in the things she knows are wrong. The hour on Sunday is a great help and on Monday she loses herself in her lessons and enjoys her school friends. She is only sixteen and she cannot help hoping that things will be better soon. But Wednesday there is another dreadful quarrel, bitter words and her father's drunken threats. When late at night all is quiet and she creeps into bed beside her little sister, her ideals seem far, far away, out of her reach, but she says, "I must reach them, I must, I will." And so day after day she presents to all the waves of discouragement and evil the strong, granite-like determination that will not let the tide come in.

Strong as she is she does not excel another girl surrounded by extravagant wealth, praised, flattered and pampered, trained to think of one thing supremely, and that herself. But she is a girl of high ideals. When a little child her old nurse told her the stories and taught her the prayers that she never forgets and helped her feel a deep sympathy for all who suffer and have need. A fine young uncle who has used his wealth to comfort the old and save the sick, told her many a tale that stirred her soul, and her admiration for the young man of millions who worked as hard every day as any man in his office but never for himself, helped in forming her own ideals. And so she reads and studies, dreams and plans the good she will do some day, meanwhile helping in every way open to her and standing firmly for the things she knows are right, resisting with granite-like determination the onslaught of the waves of self-indulgence and the tides of wild extravagance and display.

The girl of high ideals is everywhere. Every school can claim her. Despite teasing, sneers and laughter, she remains true to her ideals. She is not a book-worm but she studies, she is not prudish but she is high minded and pure, she has fun but it is wholesome and clean and kind.

She is found in every shop, every department store is aware of her presence. Honest, attentive, true, interested in her work, following amidst many insidious temptations her own high ideals.

Every college knows her. She resists the petty sins of college life. She banishes jealousy and self-assertion. Snobbishness she will not tolerate. She seeks no honors save those fairly won. Keen, alert, pure and true, capable of sacrifice and hard tasks, sympathetic with all need, a lover of true sport and real fun she represents the college girl of high ideals.

Every factory has her among its operatives. A good worker doing honest work, refusing to allow the stain of coarse jests to touch her, or the temptations which come with low wages and great fatigue to enter her life. Again and again she has revealed her ideals in moments of disaster and death. It is hard to find words to express one's admiration for the factory girl as she holds to her high ideals.

Many a kitchen knows her. Neat, clean, honest, capable, happy in her work, resisting all the temptations that come through loneliness and deadly routine, she clings to her ideals with courage.

Every set in society knows her; turning her back upon temptations to excess, vanity, pride, scorning all forms of gossip, neither listening to, nor repeating the words that "they" say, she keeps her mind and heart fixed upon the undimmed ideals she has set for herself.

Many a schoolroom and office know her, the girl who does her best work though no one sees and none commend, refusing to lower her ideals in obedience to subtile suggestions or definite temptations; a girl who does what is expected of her and more, who puts her heart into her work and glorifies it.

The girl, whatever her station in life, whatever her occupation, who has kept her ideals high has the right to be happy. She can afford to be light-hearted, to enjoy fun and frolic and to get the most out of everything, for she need not spend days in regret, nor wet her pillow with tears of remorse. Nothing in the world can make up for the loss of a pure and high ideal. If girls could see the sad faces and know the suffering hearts of the women who in girlhood forsook their ideals, they would understand.

If a girl of high ideals is thinking about them now and knows that she has of late been tempted to lower them a little, let me ask her to look at them very earnestly before she consents to tarnish them even a little. Perhaps it is only to wear upon the street the sort of dress which attracts attention and causes remarks to fall from the lips of loafers as she passes, perhaps to accept invitations from those who do not measure up to the standard, perhaps to engage in a dance in which the ideal could not join, to repeat gossip which is interesting but may not be true or to be mean and unkind. Let me beg of every girl to cling with all her might to the highest ideal of her mind and heart. Never let it go. Pay the cost of keeping it whatever that cost may be.



X

THE AVERAGE GIRL

The average girl does not want to be average. She wants to stand for something, to excel, to be beautiful, to do great good in the world, to sing, to play, to be a social leader, to dress well, to be very popular, to be something, so that people will single her out and say, "That is Charlotte Gray; she is the prettiest girl in town," or "That is Charlotte Gray; she has a most wonderful voice," or "She is the most popular girl in the office," or "She is the finest girl athlete in the city." In her day dreams she pictures herself the center, but in real life she does not find herself there—she is just plain Charlotte Gray.

The average girl has all the elemental powers of the race; there are always undeveloped resources in her, always the possibility that she may bless the world by new ministries, enrich it by the discovery of the art of living nobly amid the common-place, that she may be the mother of the great.

The average girl has some handicaps and some privileges, in some things she is easily led, she is often misunderstood, she has periods of being indifferent, she spends too much time following the dictates of fashion and too much strength endeavoring to have a good time, she means to do things that never get done, she has times of drifting, she has some high ideals to which she clings with more or less tenacity—she is a combination girl.

The average girl is in many ways the most important member of society, for what the average girl is, that society is. Society cannot be more generous-hearted, pure, altruistic, content and happy than its average girl.

I am thinking of two towns whose inhabitants number between three and four thousand. In one, the girls are careless in dress, vulgar in speech, spend their evenings in the two dance halls and the cheap picture shows. While still young girls they marry men who drink and gamble, start homes with practically no money, are poor cooks and housekeepers and know nothing about the care and training of their children when they come.

There are beautiful homes in that town and sweet, fine girls with the highest ideals. There are wretched hovels in that town with wicked and criminal inmates. But neither the girl with the highest ideals, nor the girl with the lowest, can stamp that town; neither the sweet, refined, cultured girl, nor the immoral and vicious one can stamp that town. The average girl determines the character of it.

In the other town the girls impress every stranger with their cleanliness in dress and in speech; the streets are clean, the homes are simple and neat. The girls spend the evenings in their own homes, in "The Center," a house dedicated by one of the churches to the young people of the town for their enjoyment, in the one excellent moving picture establishment. They have a debating society, a dramatic club, and do fine work in the gymnasium. They marry young men of simple tastes like themselves, start their homes with at least the necessities, they know how to keep house and they make good mothers.

There are some girls of culture, some of wealth and fashion in the town, but they do not stamp it. There are some immoral and degenerate girls in that town but they do not stamp it. It is the average girl who leaves her imprint upon it. Neither of these towns can get away from the impress of the average girl.

The first town has the licensed saloon and the factory owners have not the breadth of mental vision to see what good houses, fair wages and common sense treatment can do to build the character of the average girl. The second town has never had a saloon, the owners of its factories and business houses live in the town and they have the keen vision which sees the value of good houses in which to live, fair pay, and opportunity for real recreation. They have been able to raise the standard of the average girl, therefore the enviable record and character of the town.

It is the average girl in college who determines the character and reputation of that college. It is not the brilliant girl, it is not the girl whose earnest plodding barely carries her through, it is not the failure, it is the average girl. If the average girl should leave her college a good athlete, interested in everything athletic, that fact would determine the general character of the college. If the average girl leaves her college with broadened sympathies, good scholarship, intense interest in the affairs of the day, real joy in living and helping; these things determine the reputation and character of the college. If the average girl leaves her college with social ambitions and plunges into the social whirl, giving her time and strength to the race for social prominence and notoriety, these things determine the character and decide the reputation of that college.

The usefulness and character of every church is determined not by the few people who do all that a church member should do, nor by the few who utterly fail to fulfil the mission of the church, but by the attitude, work and conduct of the average member of it.

The average girl in any occupation determines its standing and character. The average girl in the employ of any concern determines not only its value as a public servant but its success.

The average girl holds the key to all situations touching the life of girls. As the average girl becomes more efficient, finer in character, broader in thought, more sound in body, mind and spirit, she raises society with her; as she loses in efficiency, in power of thought and in character, grows weaker in body, mind and spirit, she drags society down with her.

What should she be like, this all-important average girl? What is she in the ideal? I have asked scores of girls the question and the following paragraph is their answer as well as my own.

The ideal average girl is strong in body, is intelligent, believes in God and strives to obey His laws. She is not afraid to work and she has courage to meet hardships and loneliness if they come. She is interested in pretty clothes, she wants them for herself, she has what she can honestly afford and she spends time and takes pains to get the very best she can for the money she has. She refuses to be extreme in style or to make herself ridiculous or conspicuous. She likes fun, she enjoys amusements and good times. She will not indulge in things of which her parents heartily disapprove or which unfit her for work or study, and which her own conscience tells her are doubtful. She loves friends and companions and has as many as she can. She chooses carefully her friends among the boys and men and lets neither word nor act lower in the least degree their respect for her. She looks forward to the day when she shall have a home of her own and fits herself to care for it with intelligence and skill. She is honest, and faithful to the present tasks. She is kindly, generous, helpful, cheerful, just the sort of girl one would like to live with every day.

It is a high average, yes, it is ideal. But the fact that so many girls are seeking that ideal, that so many against fearful odds are pressing toward it, and that so many little by little are achieving it fills one with hope. The fact that so many men and women who but a few years ago were not concerned with either the needs or rights of a girl are bending every energy to the task of setting her free from the things that burden her, hold her back and make her suffer, fills one with anticipation, for the things which touch the average girl are the things which concern all who have great hopes and dreams for the future of our land.

This chapter and all the chapters preceding are an appeal to the average girl and those who love her to summon all their strength and raise the standard of the average.

Let the average girl be the highest possible average, realizing the important place she holds in the working out of all problems of right, justice and public welfare and knowing that God must have had great faith in the power and possibility of the average girl else He would not have trusted so much to her keeping.

The world is grateful for the brilliant girl, for the gifted, the talented, the beautiful; but without the average girl it could not live. God bless her and give us more and better.



PART II

Her Religion



XI

THE GIRL AND THE UNIVERSE

When Wonder suggests its first questions to her they are large questions. They have to do with the Universe. They are eternal and unanswerable questions. They fall from baby lips but they baffle sages. It may be on some bright summer morning that she stands amidst the daisies scarcely taller than they, listening intently to the words of wisdom which tell her that God made the daisies every one, and all the flowers and the butterflies and the cows in the meadows. After a time of silence she puts her question, her clear eyes searching the face of her would-be teacher. "Who made God?" she asks, and while the teacher wavers she repeats her question until some sort of answer comes. That night when she is tucked into bed her mind returns by way of her evening prayer, to the subject of the morning. She hurls another question, "Where is God?" Since she cannot be evaded she is so often told that God is everywhere and accepting it with all the faith of the literalist she begins her search for Him. She strives to solve the mysterious fact that He can be everywhere and yet in all the places where one searches He is not to be found.

Then her grandmother who sat in the sunny room upstairs as long as the little girl can remember is taken sick. Some days pass and her mother with tears streaming down her face tells her little daughter that grandmother has gone to heaven. The mystery bearing down upon the little soul deepens. "What is Heaven?" and "where is Heaven?" she asks. They tell her of its beauties, its peace, happiness and joy. They say that grandmother wanted to go and then they cry again. The little girl cannot understand it all, but she tries. If grandmother is happy and really wanted to go, why does mother look so sad, why the closed blinds, why is everything so quiet? She asks the question in the presence of her practical unimaginative aunt, who bids her be quiet and adds in her even, impressive voice, "Your grandmother is dead." The word has an awful sound and she raises her eyes to the severe face above her and asks, "What is dead?" But the aunt does not answer, and the little girl goes to the window to think it all over. She knows that dead is dreadful—grandmother has gone, the house is quiet, father will not play with her and mother cries. She is only a very little girl but she has met the unanswerable questions, "Who made God? Where did I come from? Where is Heaven? What is it like? What is Death?"

As the years pass her instructors in religion attempt to teach her. In varied words, according to varied creeds they answer or postpone the answer to her questions. She learns that God is good and God is great; that He takes care of people, at night especially; that one may ask Him for whatever she wants and if it is best she will get it; that if one would please God she must be very good and there are many things she must not do; that those who please Him shall be rewarded and those who fail shall be punished.

Her instructors do not mean always that this shall be the sum total of their teachings but stripped of all the songs, the pictures and cards, the birthday greetings, the flowers and stories, these things in the majority of cases sum up the little girl's conclusions. There enters into her religion in many cases that name which seems so often to sound sweeter when murmured by baby lips than at any other time. The little girl has learned to love the Baby asleep in the hay, the Child before whom the Magi knelt, the obedient and lovable boy who played in Nazareth. Then the new outlook comes and the little girl sees Jesus the Redeemer and God the Father. She listens with eager fascinated interest to the stories of what He did and said, tries to obey the commands He gave, suffers for her sins of commission, prays and hopes to be forgiven. The One who searches the hearts of men must find as honest, devoted faith among these little girls as anywhere in His army of believing followers.

Then the spirit of altruism begins to awaken. She is no longer a little girl. She begins to understand the meaning of sacrifice, she is stirred with the desire to serve. Christ the Messiah, the Savior and Master, claims her interest and her heart is filled with desire to serve and to prove her love to Him. She pledges herself to His service, strives to be faithful, suffers agonies of remorse over her failures. Among all the hosts who follow Him there are none more loyal and loving than this girl in her teens.

The years pass and in the later teens and early twenties another world forces itself upon the girl. It is the world of sin and evil, of selfishness, greed and hypocrisy. She shrinks from it but it is bound to be revealed. She catches a glimpse of a world of suffering and pain that makes her heart ache. And while these worlds are pressing hard she is plunging into the secrets of things. The revelation of biology, astronomy, chemistry, the history of peoples, languages and books, the science of economics, and the mysteries of psychology are demanding consideration. Something happens to the bright, sweet unquestioned faith. Questions persist, doubts suggest themselves and demand answer. Nature asks "What do you think about me?" The problems of sin and sickness, accident and injustice ask "How do you explain us?" and darkness settles over the girl's spirit. Sometimes she refuses to think things out and accepts the new explanations of things whatever they happen to be, turning in cynicism from the old. But more often she does think—asking the old questions she faced as a little girl all over again out of a larger world and a trained mind. "Who made God?—what was the very beginning of beginnings?" she asks. "Is it some one or some thing?" "What is Death and what is after that? How am I to know?" Soul, mind and spirit cry out for concrete proof of that which can never be concretely proven.

The thing she needs just here, is the very thing she is most often denied. She needs some one who can show to her the larger God and the greater Christ for her larger world and greater thought. She is losing or has lost her smaller conceptions in the maze of wonders which have been revealed to mind and heart. She needs to know that she has not lost her God, rather is she just beginning to discover Him; that she has not lost her Christ, instead the Christ is just beginning to be revealed to her in all His greatness. She needs some one to make clear to her the meaning of the promise, "Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you." From a new view-point with a larger horizon she may be helped to begin her trustful search for God knowing that truth can never lead away from God. She is just a girl but the Universe is hers in which to seek Him. Its laws, as fast as she can discover them, are her servants to lead her to Him and its broadening horizons but bring her nearer.

When she can face all the new knowledge, feel the shaking of the old foundations, in this spirit of trustful discovery, her doubts will pass away. The world is saved through Christ, not through dogma and if she can have the wise instructor or friend who can show her these things she is safe.

Whenever one thinks of the little girl among the daisies there comes to him in woful contrast the little girl in the crowded cities' wretched streets. She is denied the daisy field. Stars do not tempt her to wonder. The narrow streets filled with material things, pressing close, crowd out sun and moon. The name of God is familiar to her ears but she does not ask questions about Him. She associates the name with loud voices, angry faces and often with blows. Death awakens wonder but there is little time for answers to puzzled questionings. The few days of relief from noise, the expressions of sympathy and friendship, the unusual words of tenderness all make a deep impression—then life goes on as before only harder because of the added expense. As the years pass she accepts the teachings of her church, she can recite them more or less glibly but they have nothing special to do with her life. Philosophy and science do not trouble her. She says her prayers thinking about other things and when she grows older stops saying them, save at church.

Oftentimes as a little girl she receives no religious instruction, never enters a church and the name of God drops in curses from her own lips. Only now and then fear of the future takes possession of her for a moment. Only in great stress of unusual suffering or pain, or in the presence of awful sorrow is her soul stirred to ask the little girl's question, "What is Heaven like?"

Sometimes the bitterness of her lot causes her to treat the idea of God with scorn. "Look at me," she said one day in my presence. "What have I done that God should punish me with the troubles I've got. There ain't no God, that's what I say, anyways."

Poor girl! The church must give to her the God whom she can trust and love, but it will have to give Him in widespread, simple justice. First she must see Him in deeds and then in words.

The girl amidst the squalor of wretched conditions in heartless cities, needs a God who is her defender and champion as well as her Savior. When some wise instructor or inspired friend can give to her this view of the Lord God of Hosts, the Father of all, who seeks through His children to save His children her salvation has begun.

Oftentimes one meets the gentle, trustful, lovable little girl who asks her question and receiving the answer accepts it, never to doubt it through all the years, never to ask the great universal questions again. Sometimes it is because the answers were so wisely given, sometimes because the depths of the girl's mental and spiritual life are never touched. She has a comfortable faith, earnest, true, honest and sincere. It does not embrace the world, nor is it deeply concerned with the great problems with which the world wrestles. It is not necessary perhaps that it should be. The girl is naturally religious, trustful and believing. Her sweet, untroubled faith blesses the life of every day.

Those who are interested in the religion of girlhood and young womanhood are filled with hope today as they listen to the answers which are being given by wise mothers and teachers, to the great questions of the universe. The answers leave room for a growing religion which grows as the girl grows.

A while ago my friend walked through the country fields with a little six year old. My friend says she has left behind an "outgrown religion." Her complacence and cynicism received a shock that afternoon. A lamb which was the baby of the flock had been made a special pet by the children and came immediately when the six year old called. The days were getting cold and the lamb's woolly coat was thick. My friend, intending to instruct the child said, "Put your hand on the lambie's thick wool. Cold days are coming and Nature makes the lamb's wool nice and warm."

"Yes," answered the child, her eyes shining, "the Heavenly Father makes its coat warm. He didn't give them a papa like mine to get their clothes. He gives them to them himself."

My friend was surprised by the words and before she could think of a suitable reply, the child continued—

"He tells the birdies to go down where it's warm and there are flowers all the time. Just a few stay here when it's cold and they have warm feathers. The bear and the foxes and the horsie and kitty,—the Heavenly Father makes all their coats warm. He is very, very busy," she added impressively.

For weeks during the preparations which nature makes for the coming winter, my friend, hitherto satisfied with abstract law found her mind going back to the Heavenly Father "very, very busy" in the great world He had made. She was so impressed that she went with the child to her kindergarten class in school and in Sunday-school and in both she heard of the love and care of the Heavenly Father.

As she listened to the simple teachings, the children's answers and comments, she realized that in the circle there was a very real personality called the Heavenly Father whom these children knew and loved. "I wish such had been my training," she said regretfully. "Perhaps I should have been saved the darkness and perplexity in which I have lived for years."

Months after in a large class of earnest, eager and attentive girls I listened to a wonderful teacher. I loved with a deeper love, after that lesson, the Christ whose presence seemed to fill that room as the teacher showed her girls the Master at His task of saving the world by showing it God, the Father.

One day I stood in a silent home with a brilliant, cultured girl, who had traveled much and enjoyed every privilege. She had that afternoon left her mother beside her father out on the sloping hillside in the great silent city. We raised the curtains the maid had drawn, the girl laid aside her coat and hat and said sadly, "Now life must begin again, without all that is dearest to me." I tried to find words to strengthen her but she turned her calm face toward me and said, "How do people live through it and go on, who haven't God? The Father of the World has them both in His keeping. I can wait till I find them again."

This girl had never doubted. She had wondered and thought, questioned and believed. Wise parents had given to her the God of the Universe—the Father, and His Son the revelation of Himself to men that it might be saved, in such simple terms, so free from petty dogma that as she had grown in mind and spirit He grew in wonder and majesty and power, commanding her love and worship.

If a girl, troubled and perplexed by the things the mind cannot grasp or heart understand, chances to read this chapter let her know that the trouble lies not with the God of whom she has been taught but with those who, trying to do their best, have been weak in their teaching.

If we can banish from our faith all its man made littleness, all its chaos of bickerings, all the fret of the conflicting opinions of those who, after all, are themselves but children searching after truth, and give to the growing girl, a growing religion, the God of the Universe will become her God and she will worship him in sincerity and truth all the days of her life.

"Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our feverish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise."



XII

IN THE HANDS OF A TRIAD

Despite all the words that have been written and spoken in the past it is still true that many of those engaged in the religious training of a girl, or responsible for the form of religion which is presented to her, do not realize, or else they ignore the fact that she is in the hands of a triad—body, mind and spirit. As a triad she develops if she be a normal girl, as a triad she acts. Her character is made by these three agencies working together. It is a fact, the significance of which none of us fully realize, as yet, that a clean mind and a clean heart in an unclean body is very rare. A quick, alert balanced mind and a pure, heroic spirit in a starved and diseased body is also rare. A well-nourished, well-cared-for body with all its functions doing their work and a mental weakling is a rare combination.

Once we did not know that adenoids made children mentally deficient, nor did we dream that teeth properly attended to, and a pair of glasses could transform a girl from a sullen, morose disobedient child into an interesting, happy and obedient one; but some of us have seen that transformation and marveled at it. Once we believed that inherent moral degeneracy sent a twelve-year-old girl to the courts. Now we are beginning to see the relationship between a room with no windows and no running water, a dirty alley or a wretched street and the moral degeneracy. Once we shook our heads and said, "Well, they say there's one black sheep in every family." Now we are beginning to see that the black sheep may be made by the gratification of every physical desire and every mental whim and the neglect of the spirit.

Churches, schools and individuals are beginning at last to seriously consider the teaching of morals and religion and as they give themselves to the task of laying down practical workable plans, suddenly as if it were a new revelation comes the fact that the individual is a triad and she must be taught as such.

If homes were ideal it would be an easy task. If it were possible for the majority of homes to approach the ideal it would seem an easier task. But with poverty, ignorance, inefficiency and indifference clutching at the very center of dynamic power, the task is one of the greatest which men have as yet been asked to meet. If homes were ideal, from the moment the little girl comes into the world, and even before her coming, sensible, rational care would be taken of her body, not only to make it beautiful but that it might do its work for her in healthful, normal fashion and be a good servant throughout her life. Her mind would be awakened and trained to think, her will to act and to control and all her sense of reverence, wonder and worship developed while her love for the good and the beautiful, the heroic and self-sacrificing was stimulated.

But homes are not ideal and the majority have neither accepted nor considered deeply the task of preparing the whole girl for life. Some prepare her physically and let the rest of the triad develop as it will. Some prepare her mentally and morally while both body and spirit suffer. Some seek to prepare her spiritually by fitting on as a sort of garment what they believe to be religion while body and mind receive little attention and some let all three develop as convenience and chance may dictate.

When men's consciences have been awakened and they find the home incapable or inert, they have turned the responsibility over to the public school and the church. Of late civic forces have given their aid. Those directly interested in the religious training of the girl are coming to agree that these three agencies are needed and that they must work together if the whole girl is to be helped.

Some one must teach a girl the things about herself that she ought to know. That some one is her mother. No one else can do it with the same power. Neither church nor school can perform well the delicate task of revealing life's secrets, and blundering is deadly. But church and school and civic forces together can help the mother, can give her a proper conception of her duty, give her the words to say, perhaps. The school can teach morals and keep its own moral standards high; the church can awaken the spiritual life of a girl and nurture it, that knowledge and high ideals may work together to fortify and strengthen her. The civic forces can see to it that the girl has the opportunity for pure physical enjoyment, for mental stimulation and moral uplift.

What civic forces have been able to do through tuberculosis exhibitions and child welfare exhibits, by showing parents the truth regarding the importance of the physical care of their girls, furnishes encouragement to go further. Good newspapers may speak to parents untouched by the school and out of touch with the church and have done so. The majority of parents when they see and believe will act.

There was a time, and not long since, when those engaged in teaching religion were not concerned with the number of hours the girl worked, the age at which she began, the sort of room in which she slept, the amount of real food she had. And because they were not concerned they lost her. Today a teacher cannot teach religion if she does not care about life. She attempts it but she fails. Jesus astonished the Scribes, Pharisees, Doctors of the Law and Priests of the Temple by His intense interest in the physical needs of men. He took into account the whole man and set body, mind and spirit free.

When one considers how little mental stimulus and training comes to the average girl after leaving school and is aware of the vast majority who leave school at any early age, she is not surprised at the lack of power to think on the part of so many, and at the very limited knowledge she finds when attempting to teach. The girls of today need to be informed on matters of public welfare and political and economic affairs as never before. Where shall they go for that information and how shall they be led to desire it? Girls need to know the meaning of religion and in simple fashion the history of creeds and denominations. They need instruction from the Bible which cannot be given in a half hour a week of more or less regular study.

Once those who were teachers of religion were not deeply concerned with what the girl read and the things about which she thought. Now one cannot teach religion truly unless she knows what a girl reads, about what she talks and thinks, whether she is in touch in any way with that which can broaden her mind and give her food for thought.

No girl is safe, no girl can be her best or get the most out of life who is weak on the third side of the triad. Unless she has the help of a well developed spiritual nature how the littlenesses, the routine, the difficulties, the jealousies and envyings, the gossiping and petty dishonesties of life dwarf her.

Long ago, when I first began to print pictures, I tried to print a picture of a beautiful rail-boat against long lines of sand dunes, on a postal card. I couldn't. They explained to me that I must have sensitized cards, then the imprint could be made. The girls of today need to be developed and sensitized spiritually that the imprint of purity and righteousness may be made upon the whole life. The spiritual life, as well as the mental and physical, is as we shall see in a later chapter, a matter of cultivation.

If the girl herself reads this chapter she will stop a moment to examine the triad which makes up her own life. Perhaps the physical side is weak. She may strengthen it if she will. Now is the time, while she is young and it will obey her. When habit has written its words in iron on muscle, heart and nerves it will be harder for her to control it. Perhaps she has been careless about fresh air, perhaps has been tempted to let pie and cake and coffee make a lunch, perhaps to neglect rubbers, to get only half the sleep she needs or to dress foolishly on cold winter days. If the physical side of the triad is weak a girl must suffer. The body is a despotic master and it is a splendid servant. Even if others have failed to help her and circumstances have been against her, a girl can if she will, improve her physical condition and every little improvement is worth the cost. It may not seem to her at first a part of her religion to keep her body well and to strengthen it by every means in her power, but it is.

It may be that the mental side is weak; that it is lazy and does not want to think; that the only food it craves is the sensational, and light, very light reading and not much of that. But the girl who is in earnest can refuse to gossip and learn to talk and think about the great needs and problems of our day. She can turn quickly the pages where crime and accidents are recorded and read carefully those that tell of the progress in science and the happenings among the nations of the world. She can read a great book once a month or once in three months according to the time she has and she can think and talk about what she reads. She can find some hobby in which to be interested. The effort she makes to compel her mind to work will bring a very real reward.

It is a pitiful thing to see a woman at thirty or forty who has nothing to think about but herself and the affairs of her neighbors, and who never reads. If the mental side of the triad has grown weak through laziness and neglect, the girl may strengthen it. The effort to make it strong may not seem a part of religion but it is.

And if she knows now as she thinks honestly about it, that the spiritual side of the triad that governs her life is weak, she may strengthen it. She can read the Book that through all the ages has strengthened men's spirits and made them conquerors over temptation and sin. She can think about the words that have helped women to keep sweet and strong amidst trial, and danger, sorrow and disappointment. And she can pray. She does not need long prayers. She needs just a word with God, her Father and her Helper every day to keep her strong, and another at night to give her courage to go on trying when she has weakly yielded to temptation and failed. If she has neglected it she may begin now to strengthen the weak place that she may be saved from spiritual sickness which is the worst of all.

One covets for every girl the opportunity to live in the hands of the healthful, trained, awakened triad. Life is a blessed experience to the girl who is well physically, alert mentally and strong spiritually. If that experience is to come to the majority of girls, then those interested in her religion must more and more understand that true religion touches all of life—the triad—body, mind and spirit.

One summer night when the thunder was roaring over the sea and vivid flashes of lightning blinded for the moment one daring enough to face the storm, the little village church bell rang the dread alarm of fire. The apparatus for firefighting was of the type most city people have forgotten. Men rushed to the fire company's quarters and dragged the engine forth. From one of the highest hilltops flames lighted the sky. The men seizing the rope dragged the apparatus up the steep slope. Just before reaching the top it stuck. Suddenly a sharp appealing voice rang out into the darkness. It did more than request, it commanded and demanded. "Everybody take hold" it shouted, and under the power of it people sprang to obey and the engine reached the hilltop.

Those who look with sympathy and love at girlhood today, cannot help wishing that some Voice of power would ring out through every place where girls are found saying—"Everybody take hold!" If everybody would respond to the task as that night in the fire and the storm, the girl, in body, mind and spirit might easily be saved. Everybody may not respond now—but how about you, the girl herself?



XIII

THOU SHALT NOT

In our effort to get away from the harsh negative teaching of the past which made young people feel that life meant "don't," we have made the mistake of failing to teach with power the fact that there are things to which God's law and man's law say thou shall not. "I did not know it would do any harm," is oftentimes a truthful statement and the girl has the right to be carefully, wisely and sanely taught the things to which she must say no. A girl's religion must have not only the constraining power which sends her out to do the kindly deed, say the word of comfort and cheer, give of her time and her talent to help make life easier for those who find it hard, but it must have the restraining power which shall keep her from self-indulgence and sin.

Whenever the thou shalt not side of religion is mentioned the girls themselves and those responsible for their training immediately think of the question of amusements, which is after all only a part of the greater question of how much leisure a girl should have and what she should do with it. Preachers, teachers and Christians generally, differ so widely on the matter of disputed amusement questions that thou shalt not loses its force. It is the parents' right to decide the girl's amusements and determine her social life and when one sees the length to which parents permit and even encourage their daughters to go, he knows that the thou shalt not might well be said to them. When parents do not care what their girls do, or are too careless and ignorant to realize danger, when the girls are without friends and unprotected, then the teacher of religion must without hesitation, forcefully and with the arguments of fact, teach them to say "no" to the things which she believes can bring only harm, which weaken the power to resist other evils and which are unhealthy for the growing girl. One may teach with feeling and power the "thou shalt not" in which she believes without uttering bitter words of condemnation of those who differ with her.

Religion and the law together have the right to say to the unprotected girl, lacking wisdom, without discretion, eager for fun and adventure, ignorant of danger, thou shall not. The words should be written over every unchaperoned or inadequately chaperoned high school dance, over the public dance hall, over the cabaret, over the vaudeville where the vulgar hides behind a mask, over every place which by its very nature opens doors of temptation and lowers powers of resistance. The teachers of religion, and all agencies for moral training and uplift, because of the comparative helplessness of girlhood, have the right to teach by every means at their command thou shalt not.

Some one must teach the growing girl that extravagance is sin; some one must say thou shalt not to her common faults of promising without thought of the cost of keeping the promise, of exaggeration and untruthfulness. Some one must help her see the utter folly of snobbishness and false pride. In some way she must be taught the cruelty and meanness of gossip, the results of a sharp tongue and a critical spirit. She must be shown the sin of ingratitude and the curse of jealousy and envy. In fact the old ten commandments are needed by the girlhood of today as truly as they were needed by that great army of people in the days of the youth of a race, when their great law giver and leader strove to save them from the results of their own ignorance and newly acquired liberty.

Who teaches thou shalt not to the girl of today? Indirectly, a great many people. Directly, clearly, definitely so that she understands and is impressed, very few. The Sunday-school in a half-hour a week attempts to do it, but the Sunday-school reaches a very small part of the girlhood of our land, and its work with those whom it has reached is often ineffective. It is at present engaged in a serious effort to make its teachings more effective and far reaching. The public school is not directly teaching the thou shalt not, for teaching it does not mean saying it, in the form of a command. It does much indirect moral teaching, which is invaluable. It is experimenting with direct moral teaching and many of the experiments have shown highly gratifying results, which lead us to hope that the day is not far distant when direct teaching of the common laws of moral living shall find a place in every school. We shall have to find some new definition first, for such words as success, wealth, honesty, courage, honor and the long list in the vocabularies which the pupils in every school make for themselves.

In reacting against the thundering negatives of the past, the church has, in the decade or more that lies behind us, been teaching an unbalanced religion. "Thou shalt," and "thou shalt not" must be taught together if the best results are to be reached. In individual instances so great success has been won by the teacher of religion that his method is worth one's earnest study.

One morning there came into Sunday-school class a very ordinary looking little girl of ten years. Her father was a truck driver, her mother had been a domestic. There were four children in the home, the little girl being next to the youngest. The parents had no relation to any church. The two older children had turned out great disappointments to them and when a neighbor invited the ten-year-old to go to Sunday-school the mother gave her consent, saying that perhaps the church could keep her from following her brother and sister. It did.

In that home there was no moral instruction, no moral suasion. When the children had told a lie directly to the mother they were punished severely. When they told a lie to a teacher or neighbor the mother was their defender and they escaped punishment. They heard their mother lie to her husband, to her neighbors, to the rent collector and the grocer. They learned not to fear a lie but to fear being discovered in it. They became clever liars and the little girl at ten was an adept. For disobedience, cheating, taking food and pennies they were alternately turned over to their father for punishment or shielded from his wrath according to the mother's temper at the time of the offense. They were not taught or helped to hate sin or to see it in its hideous aspect. Thou shalt not was a matter of convenience, not of principle.

The teacher into whose class the little girl came was a woman of experience who before her marriage had been a teacher in the public school. She called in the home, she learned the standing of the girl in the day school, in less than a month she knew her. What she found out made her determine to help the child hate falsehood and cheating in every form. By story and incidents she showed Sunday after Sunday, side by side, the cowardice and unhappiness of the liar, the distrust of his fellowmen, the misery which he must suffer and the courage, happiness and freedom of the truth-loving and truth-telling child. Every lesson said "don't lie" and "speak and act the truth." One day the little girl was invited to her teacher's home to look at pictures and choose some books to read, for the teacher had discovered her love for pictures and books. After a very happy hour, while saying good-by in the hall, the child suddenly seized her teacher's hand and stammered, "How can you help telling lies?" The teacher says, "As I looked into her plain little face with its quivering lips, I loved her. I determined to fight for her and with her." It was a fight, for habit was strong and environment did not change. For over five years that teacher faithfully presented the "thou shall not" and "thou shall" which shaped the girl's ideals and helped her reach them. She taught her to pray; she inspired her with a genuine love for God the Helper, who would "see her through," she opened doors of service for her. At twenty she is a truthful and truth-loving girl, she has been able to say "no" to the things which proved the downfall of brother and sister; she is a useful, self-supporting, thoroughly respectable member of society and an earnest Christian. She has been able to lead her younger brother safely past the dangerous places and is helping him through school. What the church, through its religious instruction, has been able to do for this girl and many others it might do in far larger measure were it equipped with a regular teaching force adequate to its need, if its preachers could come into real contact with the children and youth of the community and present to them with power the thou shalt not which shall give them at least an opportunity to strive to obey.

If the girl herself is reading this chapter I know she will agree with me when I say that a girl respects and honors in her heart the teacher who presents to her, fearlessly and honestly, the things which she believes a girl cannot do with safety, which lead into dangerous places and which make it hard for her to keep pure, true, unselfish in thought and deed; and she respects even more highly the teacher who can give her broad sane reasons for finding substitutes for these things. She may, as she grows older, come to the conclusion that her teacher was mistaken but she respects her for her honest effort to help.

In every girl's creed there must be some negative. The law says you must and you must not. As she reads this page perhaps some girl will stop for a moment and write out the things to which she believes a girl should say "no." Here is such a list, written in the form of a creed by a girl when a sophomore at college.

"I believe that a girl should not indulge in amusements which make her nervous and excited, give her a headache, make it hard for her to study, cost her a good deal of money and crowd out all thoughts of duty and which make her feel envious and jealous of those who are more popular or fortunate than she, and sometimes make her think things she hates to remember.

I believe that a girl should never repeat what she has heard about another person if it could in any way injure that person's character.

I believe that she should not lie even by looks or by silence. I believe that she should never deceive another, never make fun of the weaknesses or misfortunes of other people and never treat another girl as she would not herself want to be treated."

This is a negative creed. It does not say do, it says don't, but there are times when every girl needs Don't. Put don't into your own creed, you girls who are thinking over these things.

When you are tempted to lose your head and plunge into things you have been taught are wrong, just because "everybody" that mysterious mischief maker, is doing these things, keep steady and Don't.

When you are tempted to make things more comfortable, more interesting, more exciting by exaggeration—Don't.

When you are tempted to escape by a lie the consequences of what you have said or done—Don't.

When you are tempted to let envy or jealousy find expression in words or acts of meanness and unkindness—Don't.

When you are tempted to repeat a story or say a daring thing you would not say in the presence of the one whose respect you desire—Don't.

When you are tired of the struggle to be true and do right, tired of the effort to seek always the best things and are tempted to give up—Don't.

When you are tempted to repay injustice with revenge, unkindness with cruelty, jealousy with malice, to do to others as they do to you—Don't.

Learn the power of control, of restraint and though it be only the negative side of religion, it will help to make you strong.

When the instructor in religion opens his eyes and sees the peril which lies in wait for the girl wage earner, the society girl and even the schoolgirl, what he is forced to see makes him say with a passionate cry from his soul, as he thinks of the individual girls whom he knows and loves, "Thou shall not."



XIV

THOU SHALT

A thought which slumbers in the mind has within it the germ of life. At any moment when the right stimuli have been given, it may spring into conscious being and find expression in action that will color the entire life. While it slumbers today, tomorrow may bring the waking moment and so it must be reckoned with in the formation of character. Still it lacks the positive element. It is limited.

It becomes the work of those interested in the welfare of the girl to cause the awakening and constant stimulation of those thoughts which shall lead to action along right lines. The repeated impression upon the mind of deeds of heroism, of unselfish daily living, of great action on the part of ordinary people in a common-place environment has an unmistakable effect upon the forming character.

But if the thoughts engendered by the deeds of heroism and achievement be called into action by the opportunity in the girl's life to reproduce them, then the effect upon the character is made definite and intense. It is not until the girl has done a kindred thing, until the impression has found its way out in action, that the full result upon the forming character is seen. All the complex life about her is busy through the eye and ear, through numberless sensations and instinctive reactions leaving impressions. Their imprint upon her life may be seen by any close observer when the girl herself is unconscious of it. But it is the special set of impressions which habitually find expression that determine character.

This is most encouraging, for it means that if the girl can be lead to express the right impression and leave the others to fade away into the recesses of consciousness where it will be hard to awaken them, the determination of her character will be a possible task. It means that in the years of habit formation and character making those who share the task of the girl's training have the opportunity to lead her to repeatedly express in positive action the high ideal, the noble self-sacrifice, the great deed or ambition, the generous impulse slumbering in her thoughts and appearing in her day dreams. The material which is furnished her for thought creates her day dreams, what she sees in her day dream effects character, what she does makes it.

It is for this reason that parents and teachers who are seriously concerned with the problem of making a girl's religion a real and vital thing seek ways and means by which she may be led to express both in words and actions the thoughts and desires which their teaching has awakened.

A successful teacher had been studying with her class for some weeks the lessons founded upon "Unto the least of these, my brethren"—"A cup of cold water even," "Ye have done it unto me," and kindred texts. She taught well and the girls were thinking. Some attempted as individuals to express what they thought. In the minds of most, the stories, illustrations and facts slumbered. One Saturday three of the more thoughtless girls were asked to accompany the teacher on a visit to a children's hospital. They were much impressed by what they saw. The convalescent ward proved of great interest and the babies fighting for their lives against pneumonia brought tears to their eyes. On their way home they expressed the wish that the class might make some of the bonnets and gowns which the sweet-faced young nurse had said the hospital needed so much for its baby patients. "Perhaps the other girls will not be interested," said the teacher. Immediately the most thoughtless girl in the class replied, "Oh, Miss D——, they cannot help it. We will tell them what we saw! We have been studying long enough about what we ought to do. We haven't done a thing! At least—I haven't—" she added.



Two dozen bonnets and gowns, well made after the pattern furnished by the hospital, were the result of the interest of that class. While the girls sewed they talked. They discussed in simple girlish fashion the problems of poverty and illness and the duty of one part of society to the other. In this sort of informal discussion they expressed themselves far more freely than in their Sunday-school class or their classroom at school. By the expression of high and generous thoughts they strengthened their own ideals and placed themselves in the presence of their friends and companions on the side of Christ-like living.

About a week after the last bonnet and gown made by the class had been sent to the hospital the teacher was surprised by a visit from Arline, a heedless and hitherto disinterested member of the class. It was a bitter cold day, the sunless air penetrating even the warmest garments.

"I brought you this box of things to give away," the girl said as the teacher tried to conceal her surprise. "There must be a good many babies in the river district who need warmer clothing these cold days. I had some time for sewing and my aunts helped."

The teacher found three bonnets and gowns carefully made, three tiny flannel petticoats, six pairs of warm stockings and three small hot water bottles.

"I bought the things with my own money," said the girl. "It is the first time I ever did anything like this. I enjoyed it."

The church visitor found a needy place for each thing and told Arline most heartily how grateful she was for the help she had been able to pass on. The simple deed by which Arline expressed in the positive terms of action what she had been thinking seemed to make a definite change in her character and about three months from the time she had made her gift, in a simple and natural way she came into the church. As the girls were given more and more definite opportunity to express themselves in thoughtful acts and kindly words, the teacher found sympathetic, interested listeners to the lessons she tried to make inspiring and practical in their appeal, and one by one the girls decided for themselves to come into the church and help it do its work in the world. The definite stand of such a group of interesting girls, easily leaders in school and the social life, made a decided difference in the standards of the young people of that community. The community as a whole, and the parents of the girls especially, owe to that teacher a very real debt for her part in the character building of those girls, who before they came in contact with her had had only vague and hazy ideas of a girl's duties and privileges. She furnished them with material for thought and with opportunity for translating that thought into action which is rapidly determining their characters.

A class of girls in another community made up of "freshmen" and "sophomores" in the high school who were accused by other girls, and with reason, of being "snobbish," "proud," and of forming "cliques," had been studying with a most interesting teacher a course on Christian life and conduct. They had been urged to show in their own lives, in school, in their social relations, the characteristics they learned each Sunday should belong, not only to every Christian but to every girl. Then their teacher began to make the suggestions definite, getting as many as she could from the girls themselves. They were asked to increase the membership of their club, attend and take part in young peoples' socials from which their "set" had held aloof, join in the work of the Girls' Guild, to which they had given a little money but nothing else. These things were hard for some of them. At first they were not able to do them naturally and easily and they found the friendship and confidence of the other girls hard to gain. But they had come to the conclusion in class that these things were right and the enthusiasm and approval of their teacher over the attempts they were making spurred them on. Then they began to make discoveries. They found out what interesting girls there were outside their "set." They found they had exaggerated their own importance. They began to enjoy the good times of the young people in the church societies and to want a real part in them. The change in the spirit and life of that class, even in a year, was wonderful. At the end of the second year with that teacher the spirit of the young people in that cosmopolitan church had entirely changed. Those girls had wrought the change because they had themselves been transformed. They had been expressing, day after day, in positive action the things they learned, and the impressions which before had slumbered in the mind burst into life through the daily deed. They studied Christ's rules for living, they traced the results of obedience to those rules in the lives of those who truly followed Him and they tried to do in their own every day lives, until doing brought power to do and character was being made.

In the religion of every girl there must be the positive side; whether she works in a factory or attends a fashionable boarding school her character will be made and her religious life formed through the impressions which constantly find expression in words and actions.

A girl's religion, especially in the early teens, must be active not passive. She must be made to feel—and be given the right outlet for the feelings aroused within her, to dream—and be helped to find a way to work out her dreams. She must be given knowledge and be shown the way in which to use it.

It is in this way that the girl, every girl, may hope to find a sane and natural religion which shall be a real help in the real world where she must live. Christ was a doer of deeds. The gospel record of His life has somewhat to say of the things He did not do but its pages are filled with the things that He did. Lame, blind, lepers, insane, poor, lonely and sorrowful as well as "sinners," His friends and His disciples bear witness to the things that He did. Christianity is a religion of deeds and whether it be through a factory-club, a neighborhood house, Camp Fire Girls, Christian Associations, the summer camp, girls' conferences, the Sunday-school or the home, the girl must be impressed with the fact that religion and life go hand in hand and must be shown the way to give that impression opportunity to express itself, until repeated expression shall have marked out the trend of character.

If the girl herself is reading this chapter she will realize that while in a girl's religion there must of necessity be the simple definite "thou shalt not," the most important part of that religion is Thou Shalt. The girl herself should be so busy doing the things that ought to be done that there is no time for the undesirable and forbidden things. It is much to the girl's credit that she loves a religion that does things. The world needs, every church, every community, every school and every home needs, girls who have found their religion and put it into practise. Find yours, then put it to work, helping, helping everywhere.



XV

A MATTER OF CULTIVATION

A great many people are willing to sow seed. There is an inspiration in the picture which the word "Sower" brings to the mind. I can never forget those days when the boys and girls just entering their teens took their spades and hoes, left the schoolroom with its algebra and technical grammar behind and went out into the glorious spring sunshine to plant their school gardens. On the various packages of seed were pictured the promised flowers or vegetables and with joy they looked forward to the day when they should be able to proudly exhibit the results of their planting.

When the planting was done most of the children believed that the hardest part of the task was over. Year after year successive classes failed to realize the fact of Time. As the weeks passed and the slow development that is nature's way to perfection went on, one would hear a boy say, "Next year I'm going to plant radishes; they grow faster," and another, "You will never get me to plant squashes again; they're too slow."

These young gardeners found very difficult, and some found quite impossible, the task of waiting, meanwhile working with the soil and protecting the growing plants, that the flower and fruit might be as fine as possible. Despite encouragement from other children and from instructors, some of the boys and girls lost their enthusiasm entirely and seldom looked at their gardens.

Those boys and girls, planting their seeds of flower and fruit on the sunny hillside and in the shaded nooks where the school gardens lay, were not at all unlike the men and women who today plant the good seed in the gardens of hearts that come to them in the glorious springtime of life ready for the sowing. Like the boys and girls these older gardeners are pleased with the picture of the result of their seed sowing. With enthusiasm they enter upon the task of planting, with eagerness they watch for the first appearance of results. And then Time enters in. There is evidence of weeds; slugs and worms appear. Then comes the clear call for the two great virtues of the sower who will win a harvest—Labor and Patience. He must cultivate the soil, else only the meager harvest can be his. The art of cultivation is the one so many would-be harvesters fail to learn.

To realize what the art of cultivation can accomplish one needs to read carefully the increase in the record of the producing power of certain wheat fields in our country during the past four years. Courage comes with the study of the reports of modern miracles accomplished through the advice and instruction of the agricultural schools and colleges which have escaped from the thraldom of the abstract. Every one should look once into the faces of boys and girls of the rural schools who having been instructed in the art of cultivation have practised it and increased the value and quantity of the output on their fathers' farms, ten-fold. It fills one with hope to look into the bright eager face of a fourteen-year-old prize winner, holding side by side in his hand the stalks of corn, one small and meager, the other rich and full, made so by the art of cultivation which he has so patiently practised.

What the cultivation of the soil has accomplished in the agricultural world it can accomplish in the teaching of religion. If young America is irreligious today it is because we have sown the seed and left it to itself. In the soil of young hearts are the elements which make a sane, full output of religious life possible—but cultivation is necessary and, if we are to raise the type of our girlhood, imperative. We shall be compelled to resist the temptation to give up because the seed does not grow faster.

Those entrusted with the cultivation of this human soil into which the seed has been dropped must know what that seed needs as it develops—urging forward here, that through self-expression it may grow strong, restraining there, that it may not spread itself out and through over-expression become weak. Only loving personal knowledge of each individual life will make possible this guidance and restraint. They must know the environment in the midst of which the good seed is striving to climb to fruition, else they cannot know just what to drop into the soil to stimulate the seed in its fight for strength, nor how to protect it from growths that threaten to choke it.

Those entrusted with the cultivation of this soil, if they are to be successful, must learn to use the mighty stimulus to growth that comes from simple friendship. Seed which can come to fruition under no other conditions springs into vigorous life under the power of warm friendship. Many a seed which might have developed and borne rich fruit has shriveled and dried in the chill of unfriendliness and misunderstanding. These cultivators of the heart soil must learn very quickly the value of sunshine. Young life needs the rain and has it, but young life loves the sunshine, it blossoms in the presence of hope and expectation, it droops in the atmosphere of distrust.

If one obeys the law in the sowing of the seed and follows the direction in its nurturing, the Lord of all harvests will himself give the increase.

"God's Word should be sown in the heart like seed; Then men's hands must tend it, their lives defend it, Till it bursts into flower as a deathless deed."

Somewhere in the religious training of a girl there must be a large place for the feeding of the soul; for unless food which is able to sustain life and expand it is supplied the girl can never become a power in herself. Hers will not be an invigorating religion; there will not be in her that vitality which will make it possible for her to banish fear and fret, to rise above discouragement, to endure suffering, to triumph over sorrow, to forget self. But if she can gain this energizing power she will not join, in womanhood, the ranks of those spending their days in search of inspiration; she will have it in her own soul. If she lacks this vital power she will become one of the multitude of Christians who are dependent upon circumstances for their happiness, upon the words of others for their encouragement, upon the pleas and persuasion of others to move them to service. From this sort of woman, who is kindly and pleasant when things go smoothly, who courageously attacks a problem as long as another stands by to brace up and urge on, who gives time, thought or money when some strong appeal is made and then loses interest and forgets, until another "prod" is given, from this sort of expression of religious life all who are interested in girls would save them and so are seeking the means of nourishing their souls that power may be generated from within.

It is not possible to get inspiration from a source with which one has no connection and the whole task of those attempting to give to the girl a workable religion, is the task of making connections with the Source of power.

Some weeks ago I observed the work of an instructor attempting to make the connection through the study of the Bible. She knew that telling a girl to read her Bible is not helping or training her to do it. These girls had purchased ten and twenty cent Testaments which could be cut, and small loose-leaf note books, on the covers of which were pasted one of the pictures of Christ. The girls had spent two weeks clipping from the Testaments and pasting in their note books "the things Jesus said about himself and the words God spoke concerning Him." Two weeks more were spent clipping the "things others said about Him"—Peter, Paul, John, the Pharisees. The next work was to clip what Jesus said about forgiveness, about one's duty to neighbors, treatment of one's enemies, the way to be happy. Later they were to use both Old and New Testaments, cutting out the verses which they thought would be of comfort to any one in sorrow, to one who had greatly sinned, and verses which they considered good advice to young people. That instructor was making a sane, practical attempt to feed the souls of those girls by helping them search out for themselves what the Bible has to say on topics of real interest.

I saw a note book recently prepared by a fifteen-year-old girl which I believe most valuable because of the things about which it has lead her to think. She had taken as the subject of her book, "The Good Shepherd." On the cover was a picture with that title; in the inside a fine collection of pictures representing Jesus as the Good Shepherd, clippings regarding oriental shepherd life, "The Shepherd Psalm," the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the words of hymns like "The Ninety and Nine" and poems like "That Li'l Black Sheep."

One cannot soon forget that book with its decorated margins, its neat mounting of cards and clippings and its beautiful pictures. The effect of the book upon the girl who made it, the teachers said was very apparent. Another book was entitled "Come Unto Me," and the pictures, verses and hymns were most impressive. When each girl has exchanged books with each member of the class, they are to be sent to a rescue home for girls.

The Bible messages to mankind brought by such simple methods into direct contact with a girl in her early teens is one means of nourishing her soul. If it is true that the best in poetry, art, literature and oratory, as well as the greatest uplift to character, finds its source in that Book the girl should come into real touch with it that it may feed her expanding soul. It is this sort of first-hand, individual study while she is still a girl which will help her later to turn to the Book for encouragement, comfort and strength, and lead her to great thoughts and the attempting of great things because her own soul is inspired.

The majority of teachers, superintendents and leaders interested in religious instruction today were trained in Christian homes and taught as little children to pray. Attendance at church services of various kinds gave to them almost unconsciously a phraseology of prayer and impressed upon them the place of prayer in the Christian life. So familiar is the fact of prayer that they forget that the majority of pupils in the average Sunday-school of today are not familiar with the words of prayer at family worship, are at best irregular in church attendance and that many are associated with no society in the church where there is any training in prayer.

To such young people prayer has nothing to do with life. They say the Lord's Prayer at school perhaps, formally and hurriedly in the morning, they hear the prayer from the superintendent's desk on Sunday, or perchance remember the evening, "Now I lay me down to sleep," which is said in many homes not Christian, by the little child. But the prayer; which though only an echo of adult prayers, and only half understood, calms many a fear in a childish heart, helps to victory over sin many a struggling ten-year-old reared in a Christian home, is utterly foreign to the child who has none of these influences and who meets in the average Sunday-school not cultivation, but the abstract taken for granted type of instruction.

I have in my possession a most interesting set of papers written by girls in their early twenties regarding their memories of their own training in prayer and the result of it in their lives. I quote first from the papers of girls brought up in Christian homes.

"I can remember now the very wording of some of my father's prayers and those words found their way into my own—some of them are still there. Often when a child, I prayed impulsively, using unconventional terms and saying 'you' instead of 'thou.' Before I was twelve mother often reminded me of my prayers when she said good night. As I grew older nothing was said to me about it. I was hot-tempered and continually 'getting mad' at other girls and teachers and almost every one. No one will ever know the remorse I suffered after one of those outbursts. At night I would pour out my soul in a plea for forgiveness. I was sure God forgave me and started next day with determination to conquer. I often prayed about examinations which were very hard for me. Once or twice I prayed that mother would see that I needed a different kind of dress from the one she planned. I am sure that I felt God was a sympathetic friend and prayer to me was natural."