But there is one word which must be stricken from the vocabulary of parents, teachers and friends, who hope to awaken the indifferent girl. It is the wordhopelessly. Hopelesslydull,hopelesslybad,hopelessly indifferent! Experience teaches that these must go. No teacher has a hopeless pupil, no mother has a hopeless daughter. One may regard the indifferent girl as a difficult problem but never a hopeless one. Behind the indifference and the don't-care is thereal girland one must with patience and sympathy findher.
The twin idols that accept with all the complacency of an ancient Buddha the devotion of more worshipers than any church or creed can claim are Fashion and Pleasure. Not sane fashion which helps make men and women attractive and clothes them with neatness and care, protects them by courtesies, and shields them by conventionalities, butmadfashion. Not real pleasure that fills eye with delight and days with happiness that will be remembered even when one is old and days are dark and hard butmadpleasure, the thief and robber.
What costly sacrifices are offered every hour of the day and night to the twin idols. When men and women away back in the dim past laid their children in the hands of Baal they made their weird music, sang their wild songs and shouted aloud that they might drown the appeal of the sacrifice. The dark ages have passed. It is the enlightened age—and yet with music and shoutings, weird dancings and songs men and women today drown the appeal of the costly sacrifice laid on the altar before Fashion and Pleasure.
SHE WORSHIPS PLEASURE AND FASHIONSHE WORSHIPS PLEASURE AND FASHION
There in her room sits Ellen Gregg, that is she used to be Ellen, she is now deeply offended if friends forget to call her Eleanor. She is an ardent worshiper of the Idols. When she was twelve and fourteen she was a frank, contented, happy girl, simple in her tastes and able to have a good time in most inexpensive ways. A trolley ride to a park and supper under the trees she looked forward to for days and enjoyed in retrospect, until a trip to the lake, a concert, a visit to the picture galleries, or a shopping tour down town where she spent the twenty-five cents she had earned and saved, gave her another happy day to remember. Eleanor is now eighteen and she has been at work for two years. She needs plain becoming dresses, plenty of shirt waists, sensible, pretty shoes, rubbers, a rain-coat, a suit, two becoming hats, for it is the beginning of winter. But she has none of these things. She has just been kneeling before the altar and has laid her costly sacrifice of common sense and comfort, perhaps of health, there in the presence of Fashion and Pleasure. Her face is troubled as she sits there in her room for the memory of her mother's reproof and her brother's disapproval stings a little. But in a moment she looks toward the bed. Lying upon it, smoothed out carefully, is the result of the sacrifice—a thin silk gown of palest blue draped with a fragile chiffon, trimmed and caught up with crystal drops and tiny rosebuds. It is a pretty thing. Besides it is a spotless white outing coat, rough, and to quote the words of the clerk who helped her select it, "exceedingly modish." There are pale blue stockings and pumps. She did hesitate about the pumps but they were there. The hat was there too. She hoped to go perhaps to two dances, she knew she should go to the theater, for she already had an invitation and there might be another. Besides that she intended to go herself and invite one of the girls if she were able to get all the things paid for before the theater season was over. Last year everything got shabby so quickly and "looked like a rag," before the season was over but she hoped for better luck this time. She rose and put her new possessions away very carefully in the little closet and boxes and turned to the mirror. The hair dresser had shown her a new way to dress her hair and she tried it now herself. After a long time she met with fair success. She did not call the family to see the result, for there might be more words of disapproval and though they would not influence her in the least still it was a bore to listen to them. The new arrangement was very uncomfortable and it did seem strange to be apparently without ears but she was an earnest devotee and what it pleased the idol to dictate, that she did. Next she tried the new concoctions for cheeks and eyebrows. The result pleased her. She called to her mother to ask the time and exclaiming at the lateness of the hour called back that she was dead tired and would go to bed. When she hung up her skirt she was dismayed to see how worn it was. She had paid for the style in it, not for the material. She did not go to sleep directly though she had a right to be tired, for she had to get up very early each morning and she was obliged to stand all day at her work. But she was troubled. Even the pleasure of possessing the clothes so carefully protected in the closet could not take away the anxiety produced by the conscious need of rubbers and a winter suit. But at last the poor little devotee, the ardent worshiper of the twin idols, worn out by thinking of it all fell asleep.
Over on Blank Street, in another part of town that day, another worshiper and her devoted mother had been talking over plans for the future. Both were "climbers," at least they thought it was climbing. They had social ambitions and it was whispered by their enemies that they intended, at whatever cost to enter the inner circle of those who worshiped the idols. Last year the young girl who wanted to go to college had "come out." It had been a wonderful season but it had left her with a pale face and dark circles under her lovely eyes. The rest cure had done much for her but her physician had said another season in town would undo all that had been done. Her mother was loath to believe it. She had always been able to dismiss her husband's arguments and had done so successfully the night before when he plead for a year of roughing it in the west, society forgotten and the things of nature for amusement and fun. "If we drop out now," she told her daughter, "all is lost." And so they made their plans. The daughter was not an adept in learning the rapid succession of combination dances wherein orientalism, the harem, the submerged tenth, and the various beasts of the field and fowls of the barnyard figured, so the first step was to secure a teacher who would correct her errors and give her skill in the performances which had robbed so many of her friends of all reserve and had taught them the abandonment of motion.
She had tried to take a nap that afternoon but sleep would not come though she obeyed all the rules for capturing it. Her father's blood was in her veins and even her training had failed to obliterate all of the hard sense which had helped him pass his neighbors in the race for money which should win the coveted title "A Success."
She did not like the dances, she knew she was not equal to the round of varied functions that lay before her. But she was a worshiper—she blindly followed Fashion—she bowed in the presence of Pleasure—and at last sighing wearily, murmured softly, "Well, there is no way out. Mother has set her heart on it and one might as well die as to be out of everything"—she laid her sacrifice upon the altar, took up a book and stopped thinking.
It is easy to think that she is but one, and perhaps the great exception, that because she is not physically strong she shrinks from the long gay season. But she is only one of many, some very young and strong, and some in the twenties who have hearts and find them unsatisfied, who long to be free but held in the grip of the twin idols at last bow down and worship.
In the home of a shoemaker where food was coarse but plentiful and where the loose casements and cracks in walls and doors defied all efforts to keep out the air, grew up a little rosy-cheeked, black-haired girl. When she was fourteen she was tall for her age, her black hair was abundant and beautiful, her large, dark eyes snapped and sparkled in laughter or in anger. She went to work. As yet she had thought little about the twin idols. Before the year had passed, she knelt before them. At the end of the second year she had offered in their name, truth and honesty in exchange for furs, a silver purse and a beautiful necklace. Her parents unable to speak English, ready to believe that anything was possible in the new land suspected nothing. Before the close of the third year, when she was but seventeen, in mad devotion to Fashion and Pleasure, she had laid herself, a living sacrifice upon the altar.
In the same city where she had followed so madly in pursuit of pleasure and dress, in a comfortable home upon one of the new avenues where young shade trees, modern houses, neatly trimmed lawns, all spoke of the young people just starting out for themselves, there lived a family trying in vain to find happiness. Both were young, she only twenty, he twenty-two. She worshiped the idols. He worshiped her. She had social ambitions. She needed money to carry them out. He got it as fast as he could and he was doing pretty well. But it was not enough. That night they had said bitter words to each other, then had repented and he had begged her to be careful, to try for a while to do without unnecessary things for his sake and said that she was more beautiful than any of the more richly dressed women he knew and that she ought to be content. She promised to try. But it was of no use. She heard the call of the idols. She could not resist and bowed down and worshiped them. Before the year had passed she had plunged into hopeless debt and in her mad devotion sacrificed her husband with all his hopes and honest ambitions upon the altar. The music, the lights, the dresses, the compliments, the promise of opening doors into the society in which she wanted to shine, for a time drowned the sight of his suffering and pain. Then suddenly he yielded to temptation, was discovered taking money that was not his and the gods of fashion and pleasure forgot them both; the doors of society closed and she was left with nothing but her bitter thoughts. It was a costly sacrifice but a common one which the Idols accept again and again.
Hardly two blocks below was another home with its lawn, its flowers, its neat window boxes and its young trees. There in his nursery was a little two-year-old. He stretched out his hand to his mother and cried when she passed through the hall and down stairs. He had not been well for some days and missed his old nurse who had been dismissed for a slight offense the week before. He did not like the new nurse. His mother did not know much about her. She seemed kind and she was very courteous in her manner. The mother was going in her friend's machine, out to the club-house for bridge. She was a little late and could not stop though the child had looked very pitiful and rather pale. He still cried despite the nurse's warnings, coaxings and threats. At last she grew impatient, seized him and shook him until there was no breath left to scream, laid him on his little bed and left the room. After a while soft, heart-broken baby sobs came from the tired child and he lay still as she had bidden him.
At the club women dressed in all the extremes of fashion, laughed and chatted or grew tense and strained as they exchanged their cards. Over in one corner some of the younger women blew curls of smoke into the air. The baby's mother sat there.
It seemed very lonely to the little boy lying in his nursery. The sobs ceased, the baby grew interested in life once more, climbed over the side of the bed, slipped to the floor, softly opened the door into the hall. His eyes were swollen and he was weak from the shaking and the strain of the day and when he reached the shining staircase, his foot slipped.
The nurse's face grew pale when she picked up the unconscious child. The doctor said he would live but the spine seemed to be injured and the full result of the fall he could not predict.
While they were bending anxiously over him, he opened his eyes and said "Muvver." Just then she entered the hall and they could hear the congratulatory words of her friend. She had won. Then she started up the stairs. Let us draw the curtain, for on the altar of Fashion and Pleasurea motherhas offered as a sacrifice,her child.
You who have read this chapter have been looking with me upon a series of rapidly moving pictures. Perhaps they have seemed too dramatic as they have passed. But they are not fiction—they picture facts. They are not in the past. The same scenes are being repeated now all over our country and across the sea. No one can number the worshipers of the Twin Idols and no one can estimate the awful cost of the devotion of their followers.
It is right that a girl should enjoy pretty clothes and desire them. It is right that she should spend a fair part of her income on the necessary gowns for parties and pleasures. It is right that girls should seek pleasure and enjoy life to the full. It is right that young mothers keep their youth and enjoy the society of their friends. But when girlhood erects an altar and in the presence of Fashion and Pleasure sacrifices time and strength, money, honesty, thrift and virtue, then it issinand the individual and society must suffer. At this present moment in our country, as in the ages past in nations and with peoples that are now being forgotten, girlhood is worshiping the Twin Idols and one is compelled to ask himself if the final result will be the same.
It is not alone the rich girl who bows the knee in the presence of Fashion and offers her best to Pleasure, the poor girl also worships. In the multitude that bow are all sorts and conditions of girls.
We wait for a prophet. A prophet that shall awaken womanhood and girlhood and show them that to be well dressed means to be appropriately dressed, that extravagant overdressing is clear evidence of the lack of good breeding and good taste; that those who indulge in clothes which they cannot afford and those who make of themselves living models for the exhibition of the latest extravagances, both proclaim the unworthy station in life where theytrulybelong.
We need a prophet who shall awaken womanhood and girlhood to see that the wild rush for sensational and unhealthful pleasures has always meant one thing—final inability to enjoy, the day when all pleasures pall.
Would that the prophet might come, and speedily, that our girls might stand up on their feet free, no more slaves to Fashion or servants of Pleasure. Free—their faces clear, tinted and rosy with the keen joy of living. Free—their eyes bright with health and energy. Free from the lines of worry that stamp the faces of all those who yield to the demands of the Twin Idols.
It will be a great day when the leaders and worshipers of Fashion and the devotees of Pleasure blow the trumpets and cry aloud, "Bow down," and the mass of girlhood and womanhood, beautiful, strong, healthful, loving life, answer and say, "We will not bow down, nor worship." When that day comes—and it will come—the reign of the Twin Idols shall cease.
More than two years have passed since I met one of the girls returning from a girls' conference where the depths of her nature, unstirred before had been touched and quickened into life. A passion to serve had been awakened in her and as she told me of her new visions and desires I confess that I feared for her. Here she was, the embodiment of all the charm and power of youth with a soul on fire to accomplish great things, and the temperament which doesnotaccomplish great things. When the train stopped she was met by her father, a keen, common sense, average business man who often expressed the wish that his daughter would "get busy and do something." She went home to a mother large hearted and self-sacrificing, proud of her attractive daughter and doing so much for her that little remained for her to do for herself. On Sunday she went to a formal, dignified, self-satisfied church; she attended a Sunday-school where the teacher made the lesson interesting without requiring much from the girls; she spent the afternoon with a book, the piano, and the relatives and friends who came to call. Church, home, friends, seemed content with her just as she was. She meant to do so much and to some of her friends she told with great enthusiasm her plans for future work. But the days passed as other days had passed. What became of her passion to serve, to share in the work of making life easier and happier? What became of the cry in her heart for something to do to express the new life which had fired her soul? They died. Slowly the fire was quenched by inaction, the embers grew cold, the longings were quieted, life went on as before—so easy it is todrift.
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 todoshe 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 youdothings, 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 ofdoingwhat onemeansto 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 anddrifts. 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.
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? 'Oodidn'ttell 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 ouridealswhich 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 whatprotectionmeant.
It is because these things are so that one feels like giving added praise to the girls who todayaregirls 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, whocanearn 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, "Imustreach them, Imust, Iwill." 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 thatherself. 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 themeven 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.
The average girl does not want to be average. She wants to stand for something, toexcel, 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 besomething, 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. Theaveragegirl 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 theaverage 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.
Theideal averagegirl 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 isideal. 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.
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, "Whatisdead?" But the aunt does not answer, and the little girl goes to the window to think it all over. She knows thatdeadis 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 alittlegirl. She begins to understand the meaning ofsacrifice, 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 someoneor something?" "What is Death and what is after that? How am I toknow?" 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, "Seekand 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 trustfuldiscovery, 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 indeedsand 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 agrowingreligion 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 andbelieved. 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.