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Cornell University Library 
 HQ 1229.S6 
 
 The girl in her teens. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013944156 
 
THE GIRL 
 IN HER TEENS 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET SLATTERY 
 
 The Pilgrim Press 
 
 Boston Chicago 
 
Copyright 1920 
 By a. W. fell 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Teen Period i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Physical Side 14 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Mental Side 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Spiritual Side 42 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Social Side 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Her Relation to the Sunday-school ... 71 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Her Relation to the Church 83 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Her Relation to the Bible 94 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Her Relation to the Everyday 105 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Her Teacher 116 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TEEN PERIOD 
 
 She was a beautiful, well-developed girl of 
 thirteen. Her bright, eager face, with its 
 changing expression, was a fascination at all 
 times. It seemed unusually earnest and seri- 
 ous that particular morning as she stood wait- 
 ing the opportunity to speak to me. She had 
 asked to wait until the others had gone, and 
 her manner as she hesitated even then to 
 speak made me ask, "Are you in trouble, 
 Edith?" 
 
 "No, not exactly trouble, — I don't know 
 whether we ought to ask you, but all of us 
 girls think, — well, we wish we could have a 
 mirror in the locker-room. Couldn't we? 
 It's dreadful to go into school without know- 
 ing how your hair looks or anything !" 
 
 I couldn't help laughing. Her manner was 
 so tragic that the mirror seemed the most im- 
 portant thing in the educational system just 
 then. I said I would see what could be done 
 about it, and felt sure that what "all the girls" 
 wanted could be supplied. She thanked me 
 heartily, and when she entered her own room 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 nodded her head in answer to inquiring glances 
 from the other girls. 
 
 As I made a note of the request, I remem- 
 bered the Edith of a year or more ago. Edith, 
 whose mother found her a great trial; she 
 didn't "care how she looked." It was true. 
 She wore her hat hanging down over her 
 black braids, held on by the elastic band 
 around her neck; she lost hair ribbons con- 
 tinually, and never seemed to miss them. She 
 was a good scholar, wide-awake, alert, always 
 ready for the next thing. She loved to recite, 
 and volunteered information generously. In 
 games she was the leader, and on the play- 
 ground always the unanimous choice for the 
 coveted "it" of the game. She was never in 
 the least self-conscious, and, as her mother 
 had said, how she looked never seemed to 
 occur to her. 
 
 And now she came asking for a mirror! 
 Her hair ribbons are always present and her 
 hat securely fastened by hat pins of ham- 
 mered brass. She spends a good deal of 
 time in school "arranging" her hair. Some- 
 times spelling suffers, sometimes algebra. Be- 
 fore standing to recite, she carefully arranges 
 her belt. Contrary to her previous custom, 
 she rarely volunteers, although her scholar- 
 ship is very good. If unable to give the cor- 
 
THE TEEN PERIOD 
 
 rect answer, or when obliged to face the 
 school, she blushes painfully. One day re- 
 cently, when the class were reading "As You 
 Like It," she sat with a dreamy look upon her 
 sweet face, far, far away from the eighth- 
 grade class-room; could not find her place 
 when called upon to read, and, although con- 
 fused and ashamed, lost it again within ten 
 minutes. 
 
 What has happened to Edith, the child of 
 a year ago? She has gone. The door has 
 opened. Edith is thirteen. The door opened 
 slowly, and those who knew her best were 
 perhaps least conscious of the changes, so 
 gradual had they been. But a new Edith is 
 here. One by one the chief characteristics 
 of the childhood of the race have been left 
 behind, and the dawn of the new life has 
 brought to her the dim consciousness of uni- 
 versal womanhood. Womanhood means many 
 things, but always three — dreaming, longing, 
 loving. All three have come to her, and though 
 unconscious of their meaning, she feels their 
 power. Edith has seen herself, is interested 
 in herself, has become self-conscious, and for 
 the next few years self will be the center 
 and every act will be weighed and measured 
 in relation to this new self. Fifty other girls, 
 her friends and companions all just entering 
 3 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 their teens, share the same feelings, and mani- 
 fest development along the same general lines. 
 More than one of those fifty mothers looks 
 at her daughter growing so rapidly and awk- 
 wardly tall, and says, "I don't know what to 
 do with her, she has changed so." And more 
 than one teacher summons all her powers to 
 active service as she realizes that for the 
 next two years she is to instruct one of the 
 most difficult of pupils, the girl who is neither 
 child nor woman. 
 
 But the awkward years of early adolescence, 
 filled with the struggle to get adjusted to the 
 new order of things, with dreams, with ar- 
 dent worship of ideals embodied in teachers, 
 parents, older girls, imaginary characters, 
 quickly pass. 
 
 If they have been years of careful training, 
 if the eager, impetuous day-dreamer and cas- 
 tle-builder has been guarded and shielded, 
 if she has been instructed by mother, teacher, 
 or some wise sympathetic woman in all the 
 knowledge that will help keep her safe and 
 pure and fine, then she is ready for the wealth 
 of emotion, the increase of the intellectual and 
 spiritual power to be developed within her 
 these next few years. 
 
 But if not — if the earliest years have been 
 filled with questions for which no satisfactory 
 4 
 
THE TEEN PERIOD 
 
 answers were given, if great mysteries that 
 puzzle are solved for her only by what school- 
 mates, patent medicine advertisements, and 
 imagination can teach, then she does not have 
 a fair chance. She is not well equipped for 
 life, and if in some moment of trial which 
 we fondly dream will never, never come to 
 her, to others perhaps, but not to her, she is 
 overwhelmed, then we who have left her 
 unguarded are to blame. 
 
 If at thirteen she was awkward and some- 
 times disagreeable, at sixteen we forget all 
 about it, for now she is char-ming. The flood- 
 tide of life is upon her, — it is June, and all 
 the world is her lover. To be alive is glorious ; 
 she shows it in all that she says and does. 
 She laughs at everything and at nothing, and 
 she dearly loves "a good time." She makes 
 use of all the adjectives in her mother tongue, 
 and yet they are not enough to express all that 
 she feels. Superlatives abound, and a simple 
 pronoun, third person, singular number, mas- 
 culine gender, is introduced so often into her 
 conversation with her girl friends that it re- 
 veals at least one prominent "line of interest." 
 
 But she is a dreamer still of new, deeper 
 
 dreams in which self plays a large part, but 
 
 a different and more altruistic one; and the 
 
 longings that dawned on her soul with ado- 
 
 5 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 lescence have grown in power. She not only 
 longs for the concrete hats and gowns and 
 beautiful things, to sing and play, to be 
 admired, to be popular, but she longs to be 
 good and to do good. Now, when all her 
 powers have awakened, obeying instincts of 
 her womanhood, she is ready to give herself 
 in loving service to some great cause, to serve 
 the world. 
 
 All teachers of English composition can 
 testify to the desire to serve which stands out 
 so clearly in the essay work of girls at this 
 period. Hazel is a type of hundreds. She 
 attended a lecture a while ago and saw pictures 
 of the tenements; the crowded conditions, 
 wretched poverty and suffering children 
 stirred her soul. Every composition since has 
 been a record of her dreams and longings. 
 In every written sketch or story a wretched 
 child of the tenements appears. A girl of 
 means, "about sixteen years of age," with 
 plenty of spending money, seeks out the child, 
 often crippled or blind, gives it food, clothing, 
 a wheel chair, or takes it to a great physician 
 who makes it well. Sometimes the heroine 
 finds work for father and mother, and they 
 move to a cottage in the country and are happy. 
 Always in the story misery is relieved and 
 hearts are made glad. Always the heroine is 
 6 
 
THE TEEN PERIOD 
 
 self-sacrificing and those helped are touched 
 with deepest gratitude. In the last story, 
 "Little Elsie sat comfortably back in her 
 wheel chair too happy even to move it 
 about. Her mother tried to find words to ex- 
 press her gratitude, but could only murmur her 
 thanks. The child looked up into the face of 
 her kind friend with a celestial smile that paid 
 for all the sacrifice." 
 
 This desire to give all in altruistic service, 
 this longing to make the whole world happy, 
 this worship of the Good reveals itself too in 
 the girl's effort "to find her Lord and worship 
 Him." The religious sense, so strong in the 
 heart of the race that man must bow down and 
 worship something, some one, be it fire, the 
 moon, the stars, the river, ancestors, idols of 
 wood or stone, is strong in the heart of the girl 
 in her teens. And if rightly taught and pre- 
 sented, the Christ unfailingly becomes her 
 great ideal. All the qualities she most admires 
 she finds in him. Bravery, courage, purity and 
 strength, patience and sympathy, all are there 
 and she worships him. For him she can per- 
 form deeds of quiet heroism of which no one 
 dreams, — struggle desperately to overcome 
 her faults, and sacrifice many a pleasure wil- 
 lingly. Her prayers are ardent and sincere, and 
 must rise to heaven as an acceptable offering. 
 7 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 I saw such a girl bow her head in prayer in 
 the crowded church on Easter morning. Her 
 face was good to see. Death and the grave 
 meant nothing to her, but oh, life — ^it was so 
 good. Sixteen found her hard at work in the 
 cotton factory. But looking at her in her new 
 suit and hat and gloves, and at the one bright 
 yellow jonquil she wore so proudly, you would 
 never have guessed that a week of toil lay be- 
 hind her and another awaited her. That night 
 she sang a brief solo in the chorus choir, and 
 did it well; one of the boys in the church 
 walked home with her, they talked a few mo- 
 ments, and Easter was over. At five-thirty next 
 morning she rose, ate her hasty, meager break- 
 fast, and went to work in the rain. A week 
 later, when we were talking after Sunday- 
 school, she said, "I don't know as I ever had 
 such a happy Easter. It was such a beautiful 
 day." And then hesitatingly, "I made up my 
 mind I ought to be better than I have been, and 
 I'm not going to let my sister go to work in the 
 mill, no matter what it costs me. I'm going to 
 send her to high school next year instead of 
 taking singing lessons. I decided Easter night." 
 
 I could see her sitting in her bare, hopeless 
 
 little room, with the memory of the sunshine, 
 
 the new suit and the jonquil, the solo, and the 
 
 Risen Lord filling her soul as she made her 
 
 8 
 
THE TEEN PERIOD 
 
 sacrifice, letting the cherished plan of singing 
 lessons go. 
 
 "What made you want to do it?" I asked. 
 
 "I don't know," she said, "I felt that I 
 ought to, and Easter makes you think of those 
 things. I think Christians ought to be more 
 like Christ, as Dr. said in his sermon.'' 
 
 That was the explanation. She was follow- 
 ing, the best she knew how, the pathway of the 
 Christ — her ideal. God bless her, — the sacri- 
 fice will pay. 
 
 Failing to find the Christ, the religious sense 
 satisfies itself with lower ideals. Intensified 
 longings, dissatisfaction, and a restlessness 
 not found in the girl who truly gives her 
 allegiance to the Christ and feels his steadying 
 power, are very evident in the girl who has not 
 yet found the one whom she can call Master 
 and Lord. 
 
 Keeping pace with the deepening and broad- 
 ening of the religious sense and the physical 
 growth and development, the intellectual 
 powers have been busy grasping new truths, 
 eagerly seizing new facts that relate to life, 
 comparing, rejecting, reasoning, indeed for the 
 first time independently thinking. 
 
 Before her friends realize it, the years have 
 hurried past and the time has come when only 
 one more "teen" remains. She is eighteen. 
 9 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 Eighteen may find her plunged into life as a 
 wage-earner, one of the procession of thou- 
 sands of girls facing realities that are hard. 
 It may find her already in the whirl of social 
 life, struggling to meet its demands, or in 
 college facing its problems. Wherever it finds 
 her, two things are true of her. She thinks 
 for herself, — and she is critical. 
 
 Many of the theories of life and religion 
 which she accepted unquestioningly she ques- 
 tions now. Doubts assail her, and she is per- 
 plexed by the evidence of wrong and evil re- 
 sulting not only from weakness, but from 
 deliberate planning. If all her ideals fail her, 
 if the men and women she has trusted dis- 
 appoint her, she grows cynical, and tells you 
 that "no one is what he seems." 
 
 Now, more than at any time in her life, 
 she needs to meet fine men and women, that 
 they may overbalance those whom she thinks 
 have failed. She needs to know definitely the 
 good being done everywhere in the world, to 
 study great sociological movements, to see the 
 efforts being made to meet the special needs 
 of the day, the problems of the cities, and the 
 salvation of the individual. Biography is good 
 for her, and sketches of real men and women 
 living and working for and with their fellows 
 strengthen her faith and steady her. 
 
THE TEEN PERIOD 
 
 Now is the time when she so easily develops 
 into a gossip, and she needs anything and 
 everything that will help her despise it, and 
 provide her with something to talk about be- 
 side her neighbors and associates. 
 
 She is keenly critical, because she is com- 
 paring theories and life — because her ideals 
 are high and her requirements match her 
 ideals. She is scornful, because she has not 
 lived long enough to realize how easy it is to 
 fail, and she has not learned to let mercy 
 temper justice. She doubts because she is not 
 able to adjust things which seem to conflict, 
 and experience has not yet helped her find 
 harmony in seeming discord. 
 
 She still loves a good time, and has it. Her 
 ability as leader, manager, or organizer reveals 
 itself quickly if opportunity is given. Her 
 tendency toward introspection and self analy- 
 sis often makes her unhappy, dissatisfied and 
 restless. She longs unspeakably to find her 
 work, to be sure she is in the right place in 
 the great world. She needs patience, real sym- 
 pathy, and understanding from those with 
 whom she lives ; to be led, not driven, by those 
 who control her ; positive teaching on the part 
 of all who instruct her, concrete interests, so- 
 cial opportunities, and some one |o love. 
 
 "What does the girl in her tefens need ?" has 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 been asked these past few years, by fathers, 
 mothers, and teachers of girls, with increasing 
 desire to find a real answer. As yet, not 
 enough thoughtful people have even attempted 
 to meet the question to make us sure that we 
 have a safe and universal answer. Yet we 
 may be reasonably sure of a few things. 
 
 She needs love. But, comes the reply, we 
 do love her. From the time when she 
 "lengthens" her dresses and "does up" her 
 hair, to twenty when we greet her as an equal 
 and consult her about all things, we love her. 
 Who could help it? 
 
 But she needs intelligent love, which is 
 really sympathetic understanding and keen ap- 
 preciation wisely expressed. And she needs, 
 from thirteen to twenty, to be taught two 
 things : to work and to play. The girl in her 
 teens needs to be helped to realize her dreams 
 in action. 
 
 She has the dreams, the hopes, desires and 
 longings. We must furnish the opportunity to 
 work them out into reality. Real, healthful, 
 natural enthusiasms for all phases of life, she 
 can furnish if she be a normally developed girl. 
 The opportunity to express that enthusiastic 
 abundance of life legitimately is ours to 
 supply. 
 
 It sometimes seems as if Shakespeare must 
 
THE TEEN PERIOD 
 
 have been thinking of the adolescent period of 
 life when he said: 
 
 "There is a tide in the affairs of men. 
 Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune,. 
 Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
 Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 
 
 The teen age is the period where the battle 
 for an honest, clean, pure, righteous type of 
 manhood and womanhood must be waged and 
 won. Having realized this, it now remains for 
 us to bend all our energies and summon all our 
 skill to meet the task. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PHYSICAL SIDE 
 
 That mankind has a spiritual, mental and 
 physical side to his nature has been acknowl- 
 edged for many centuries. That they are of 
 equal importance has been accepted but for a 
 comparatively short time. Time was when 
 the spiritual nature was developed, the mental 
 side cultivated, and the physical scorned 
 and abused. The pale face and emaciated 
 form were indications of the pure heart. The 
 starved body meant the well nourished soul. 
 When men were most deeply concerned with 
 the future beyond the grave, and this life was 
 but a penance, a period to be endured, a 
 terrible battle to win, having little joy, and al- 
 most no pleasure not labeled wicked, it was 
 natural that they should treat with a measure 
 of scorn or ignore altogether the physical 
 body in which dwelt so much of evil. But 
 when man realized that eternity begins here 
 and now, he turned his thoughts to the present 
 welfare of his fellows, and the physical side 
 assumed a new importance. 
 
 In some cases the importance attached to 
 14 
 
THE PHYSICAL S I_D_E 
 
 physical welfare is out of proportion. It is 
 always difficult to keep a sense of proportion 
 when new light on any line of truth bursts 
 upon men's minds. But in the main the 
 place of the physical side is not exaggerated. 
 Every teacher in the public school realizes 
 it as she sees what a tremendous difference 
 has been made in the spiritual and intellect- 
 ual development of a child who after years 
 of ineffectual struggle to see has been given 
 glasses that make it possible for him to do 
 the same work as his classmates. She realizes 
 it as with astonishment she sees a boy 
 transformed before her eyes, changed into an 
 entirely different child as the weeks and 
 months pass, because the troublesome and 
 deadening adenoids have been removed. She 
 realizes it as she sees a poor, weak little girl, 
 undersized and underfed, changed into a new 
 being under treatment, with plenty of nourish- 
 ing food and fresh air. The experience of the 
 past ten years alone, in the public schools, 
 will convince one of the value of the physical. 
 Certain it is that the physical side exists, 
 and is to be reckoned with in the develop- 
 ment of human life to the highest possible 
 point. The more we know about the physical 
 side, the more we stand in awe of ourselves, 
 and the more we appreciate the wonderful 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 machine with which we are to do our work in 
 the world. 
 
 I saw recently two locomotives that taught 
 me again what it all means. One had been in 
 a wreck and lay pitched over on its side, its 
 splendid power gone. Its size and its powerful 
 strength made its ruin more pitiful, and its 
 utter helplessness appealed strongly to all 
 who looked at it. Near it on the second track, 
 all hot and panting, ready and waiting to pull 
 its heavy load up the steep grade, was a fellow 
 engine, in full possession of its powers: how 
 strong, how complete, how perfectly able to 
 perform its task it seemed as it stood there on 
 the track beside its helpless brother. For days 
 I could not forget the picture, and when I 
 looked into the faces of my girls in their teens 
 all it suggested impressed me anew. 
 
 How I should like to have them fully 
 equipped physically to meet the demands 
 which life will bring to them! The girl in 
 her teens has a physical side of tremendous 
 significance and importance, for it is during 
 these years that she develops her powers or 
 wrecks them. It is her time of rapid growth, 
 of severe tax upon every part of her physical 
 being. It is during these years she meets 
 her crises. 
 
 We have seen that early in her teens a girl 
 i6 
 
THE PHYSICAL SIDE 
 
 begins to care "how she looks." She should 
 be encouraged to look well. She should dress 
 carefully, which does not mean expenditure 
 of much money, but does mean thought. She 
 should be taught that dress means much, and 
 physical condition even more. 
 
 But all this, some teachers may say, belongs 
 in the home. It is the duty of the home to 
 look after these things. Yes, it is true. And 
 it is a cause for thanksgiving that in so many 
 homes, sweet, patient, wise mothers watch 
 over their girls and give them what they need. 
 But every Sunday-school teacher of girls in 
 their teens has at least one girl whose mother 
 does not or can not help at the time when 
 help is most needed. Some have had no train- 
 ing themselves and do not see the need ; some 
 are crushed by the multitude of burdens, some 
 are careless, and some have no knowledge as 
 to how to cope with the wilfulness of girls 
 which sometimes appears in the years of ado- 
 lescence. "The whole need not a physician, but 
 they that are sick," the great Teacher said 
 once, and it is true to-day. Both the public 
 school and the Sunday-school exist to culti- 
 vate all of good that appears in the girl's 
 life, and develop what she lacks. 
 
 Here is a group of girls in a certain Sunday- 
 school class, most of them well taken care of 
 17 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 physically, but with very little of direct teach- 
 ing and development morally. They are self- 
 ish, self-centered, and vain. The teacher's 
 task is clear. Here is another class in a near- 
 by church, suffering not only from moral and 
 intellectual neglect, but from physical as well. 
 Again the teacher's task is plain. 
 
 We have seen that buried deep in the heart 
 of every adolescent girl is the desire to be at- 
 tractive, to be popular, to have people "like" 
 her. This desire prompts her often to little 
 acts of courtesy and kindness and efforts to 
 be agreeable; more often it prompts her to 
 make herself physically attractive. Take a 
 walk through any park, along the boulevards, 
 up the main street of small manufacturing 
 towns, or watch any high school group at the 
 hour of dismissal: if your eyes are open you 
 will be conscious of the struggle to be attract- 
 ive, — to look well. It is registered in hair and 
 hats, bows and chains and pins. Sometimes 
 it appears in fads in dress, — ^low shoes and silk 
 stockings in winter, or the strange combination 
 of no hat, a very thin coat, and a huge muff. 
 These are the things that make the people of 
 common sense ask the very pertinent question, 
 "What are these girls' mothers thinking of?" 
 It is a hard question to answer satisfactorily. 
 Often the mothers have helplessly yielded 
 i8 
 
THE PHYSICAL SIDE 
 
 under the power of that insistent phrase, "All 
 the girls do." 
 
 If once these girls can be made to see the 
 attractiveness of absolute cleanliness, of the 
 charm of simple but spotless clothing, of teeth, 
 hair, hands and skin that show care, a great 
 deal will have been done toward helping their 
 general physical condition. 
 
 Anything which has to do with personal ap- 
 pearance must be handled with great tact, for 
 the adolescent girl is sensitive and she resents 
 direct criticism. But on the other hand she 
 accepts eagerly anything which promises to 
 help her look well. If a teacher does not feel 
 equal to the task of assisting the girl to make 
 the best of her physical side she can find some 
 one to help her. I know of one class of girls 
 in their teens who will never forget the talk 
 given by a bright, attractive, clever woman at 
 the monthly social, on "Tales Told by Belts," 
 and not a girl in the Girls' Club, I know, ever 
 forgot the talk on "Sometimes the Head Rules 
 and Sometimes the Feet." More girls than 
 usual wore rubbers the next rainy day, and 
 some high heels disappeared. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most helpful of the 
 litttle incidental ways by which the Sunday- 
 school teachers may help is through praise. 
 I have in mind now a girl of sixteen who 
 19 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 usually selected her own clothes, and seemed 
 to have a talent for putting together the wrong 
 colors. One spring, she, in some way, was 
 persuaded by another girl to have her coat, 
 dress and hat all in browns that harmonized. 
 One can hardly imagine the change it made in 
 the girl. She realized it. That Sunday in the 
 hall, I told her very quietly that she looked 
 "dear," that she must never wear anything 
 except soft colors that harmonized; that I 
 loved to look at her. She showed her pleasure. 
 The next January she asked me one night if 
 I thought dark blue would be all right for her 
 new suit if she got "everything to match." 
 No one can associate sympathetically with 
 the girl in her teens week after week and not 
 be concerned about her physical welfare. 
 There are so many pale, anemic, tired girls 
 that move one's heart. Some work too hard. 
 Many live under unhygienic conditions. Many 
 can not stand the pressure and rush of 
 school and social life. Great numbers suffer 
 from improper food, and many more because 
 they do not get enough sleep. Almost every 
 Sunday I hear some girl say she "went some- 
 where every night last week." This mania for 
 "going" seizes so many of our girls just when 
 they need rest and natural pleasures, the great 
 out-of-doors, and early hours of retiring. 
 
 20 
 
THE PHYSICAL SIDE 
 
 So many of our girls are "nervous." A 
 bright, interesting eighth grade teacher told me 
 recently that she had fifty girls in her class 
 and that according to their mothers forty-one 
 were "very nervous." It seemed to her a 
 large proportion even for girls in their early 
 teens, and she began a quiet study of some of 
 them. One of the "very nervous" girls who, 
 her mother thought, must be taken out of 
 school for a while, takes both piano and violin 
 lessons, attends dancing school, goes to parties 
 now and then, and rarely retires before ten 
 o'clock. Another "very nervous" girl takes 
 piano lessons, goes to the moving picture 
 shows once or twice a week, hates milk, can't 
 eat eggs, doesn't care much for fruit, and is 
 extremely fond of candy. In each case in- 
 vestigated there seemed to be much outside of 
 school work which could explain the "nervous- 
 ness." 
 
 It is most interesting to note the gain, phys- 
 ically, made by almost every girl in her teens 
 who enters a good boarding-school, where 
 plenty of exercise, a cheerful atmosphere, reg- 
 ular hours and wholesome food is the rule. 
 
 Just how much the Sunday-school teacher 
 who is a real friend of the girl in her teens can 
 help is a question, but I know of enough cases 
 where an earnest interview with the father or 
 
 21 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 mother has resulted in better care of the grow- 
 ing girl, with more attention paid to her food 
 and rest, to make me sure that it pays to at- 
 tempt to help. If it only means that the girl in 
 her teens shall not go to school or to work 
 without breakfast, it pays. 
 
 I can almost hear some troubled teacher 
 ask, "Where in the Sunday-school hour is 
 there time for this?" It can not be done in a 
 Sunday-school hour except incidentally. But 
 those who are at work with girls in their 
 teens must teach more than a lesson on Sun- 
 day. They are teaching girls to live, if they 
 have entered whole-heartedly into the work. 
 
 Every girl in her teens is interested in her 
 physical self. The ways in which she strives 
 to satisfy her curiosity and desire for knowl- 
 edge are often pitiful, often to be deplored. 
 
 From my experience I am convinced that 
 anything which tends to center her interest 
 upon the physical is unwise. For this reason 
 I very much doubt the advisability of class 
 instruction, except in general matters of 
 hygiene. What the whole class is inter- 
 ested in they will discuss. It will be the 
 main topic of conversation among "chums" as 
 they separate after class, and the effect I am 
 convinced is bad, simply because it centers 
 thought upon a subject which to the girl in 
 
THE PHYSICAL SIDE 
 
 her teens should not be the chief interest. 
 Then, too, the individuals in a class vary so 
 much that the instruction to be given needs 
 special wisdom, tact and comprehensive knowl- 
 edge of girls which not every teacher possesses. 
 
 That instruction should be given, and that 
 questions must be answered, is true. A girl's 
 mother is the natural and best agency through 
 which knowledge should come to her, and the 
 Sunday-school teacher may very easily enlist 
 the mother's sympathy, urge her to be true to 
 her daughter's need, and show her how nec- 
 essary it is that she faithfully instruct her 
 child in the things she needs to know. If the 
 mother says, as is often the case, that she 
 can't, that she does not know how, etc., then 
 the teacher may offer to help with suggestions, 
 with books, or, if the mother asks her to do so, 
 may talk with^he girl herself. Such a conver- 
 sation on t^ part of the teacher should never 
 be forc^, but introduced naturally and easily 
 in some opportune moment. Sometimes, if 
 there is real confidence and sympathy between 
 pupil and teacher, the girl herself will open the 
 way. 
 
 In a hundred ways, both in teaching and in 
 conversation with the girls, the Sunday-school 
 teacher may show her own respect for the 
 physical side of life, the marvel of it all, and 
 
 23 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 the need on the part of every woman to obey 
 its unchanging laws, from which, if broken, 
 there is no escape. In scores of ways she will 
 frankly and naturally reveal to her girls her 
 sympathy with womanhood everywhere, in 
 every walk of life, and especially her respect 
 for mothers, and her love for helpless child- 
 hood. 
 
 Girls learn so much more, and the impres- 
 sions made are far deeper, through this almost 
 unconscious influence of the teacher than 
 through the "lecture" or "lesson." I shall 
 not soon forget the impression made upon a 
 class of girls of eighteen years of age by the 
 preparation of a complete outfit to be pre- 
 sented to a poor woman whose child was to 
 come into the world in a tiny third-story 
 room amidst deepest poverty. As one of the 
 girls said, "It will be a lucky baby, after all, 
 with eight of us to look after it." Both teacher 
 and girls felt new bonds of sympathy long 
 before the last tiny garments were finished, 
 and the girls had learned much. 
 
 It is not good for girls in their teens, es- 
 pecially in the latter -^part of the period, to be 
 closely associated with women who are cyn- 
 ical, who have forgotten the tenderness of 
 their own girlhood dreams, or who are out of 
 sympathy with the great fundamentals of life. 
 24 
 
THE PHYSICAL SIDE 
 
 The teacher may so easily reveal, too, her 
 respect for the conventionalities of life. In 
 her escape from the narrowing influences of 
 the conventionalities of older countries, the 
 American girl has gone so far into liberty that 
 she does not realize the protection that lies 
 behind simple conventionality. While it is 
 perfectly true that a girl may travel alone 
 from one end of this country to the other 
 with safety, it is not true that it is wise for 
 her to do so. Fathers are beginning to realize 
 it, and daughters though not "in society" are 
 enjoying the assurance that, if obliged for 
 social or business reasons to be out late, their 
 fathers will call for them. It will mean an 
 effort on the part of the father, but it brings 
 a reward, for his daughter, feeling herself 
 guarded and protected, develops into a finer 
 type of woman. 
 
 The girl in her teens is interested always in 
 the influence of the passions and emotions 
 upon the physical nature, and knowledge given 
 in a simple direct way is good for her. 
 
 "Why do some people get very pale and 
 others very red, when they are angry?" asked 
 a fourteen-year-old girl one day. 
 
 "Sometimes you tremble when you are 
 angry," said another; "and you usually talk 
 very fast," added a third. The discussion 
 
 2S 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 which followed was interesting and helpful. 
 They were astonished at the reports made by 
 physicians and students of the effect upon 
 digestion of angry words, or sullen silence, 
 during dinner. They learned in a new way 
 the value of the temper controlled, and of self- 
 mastery in all lines. They were interested 
 enough to bring into class instances of self- 
 control under trying circumstances, and of 
 calamities following complete loss of control 
 for only a few minutes. I think they realized 
 in a new way the majesty of the perfect self- 
 control of Christ in the most trying moments 
 of his life. We talked over with profit 
 the effect upon the physical life, of hurry, of 
 fear, of worry and useless anxiety, and have 
 tried to find why the Christ was free from 
 them all. The conclusions reached by the 
 girls themselves have been helpful in every 
 instance. 
 
 As long as we live, the physical will be with 
 us ; it is not to be despised, but respected ; not 
 to be ignored, but developed ; not to be abused, 
 but used. It demands obedience, and exacts 
 penalty when its laws are broken. It is so 
 complicated that no one can understand it. 
 We may study and analyze, but how much of 
 the physical is mental, and how much of the 
 spiritual is physical, no one to-day is able to 
 26 
 
THE PHYSICAL SIDE 
 
 say. Of this we may be sure, — the physical 
 side of the girl in her teens is a tremendous 
 force that must be reckoned with, and de- 
 mands for its fullest development and her 
 future well being all the sympathy, patience, 
 and wisdom that parents and teachers can 
 supply. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 The girl in her teens does think. She has 
 been called careless, thoughtless, inattentive 
 and a day-dreamer. Though these things are 
 often true of her, she is on the whole a thinker. 
 Her day-dreams are thoughtful. In building 
 her air castles she uses memory and imagina- 
 tion, and sometimes one wonders if these 
 factors to which we owe so much do not get 
 as valuable training from "dreams" as from 
 algebra. Certain it is that many women who 
 have helped make the world a more comfort- 
 able place in which to ive laid plans for their 
 future work on sweet spring days, or long 
 autumn afternoons when Latin grammar faded 
 away in the distance, and things vital, near, 
 and real came to take its place. 
 
 When Lucy Larcom stood by the noisy loom 
 in the rush and whirl of the big factory, day- 
 dreaming while her busy hands fulfilled their 
 task, memory and imagination were being 
 trained, and one morning the world read the 
 day-dream. At first it was a picture of flowers 
 and fields and cloudless skies, then it came 
 28 
 
THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 back to the tenements on the narrow streets 
 and said: 
 
 "If I were a sunbeam, 
 
 I know where I'd go, 
 Into lowliest hovels, 
 
 Dark with want and woe. 
 Till sad hearts looked upward, 
 
 I would shine and shine. 
 Then they'd think of heaven, 
 
 Their sweet home and mine." 
 
 This and many another gem the imagination 
 of the factory girl wrought out beside the 
 loom. 
 
 The day-dreams, the "castles" reared by the 
 imagination of girlhood, must find expression, 
 and they do — in diaries, "literary productions" 
 and poems at which we sometimes smile. 
 
 But who shall say that the mental side of 
 the girl in her teens does not get as much valu- 
 able training through the closely written jour- 
 nal pages, or the carefully wrought poem 
 which perhaps no one may ever see, as through 
 the "daily theme" or the essay written ac- 
 cording to an elaborate outline, carefully criti- 
 cized by the teacher. The ambitions of the 
 adolescent girl along literary lines often re- 
 ceive a rude shock when her essay is returned 
 with red lines drawn through what, to her, 
 are the most effective adjectives and most 
 beautiful descriptions. 
 29 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 Many a literary genius has been destroyed 
 by the red lines of an unimaginative instructor. 
 But there are some wise enough to allow the 
 girl to express herself in true adolescent fash- 
 ion, criticizing only when errors in punctuation, 
 sentence formation or spelling occur, and let- 
 ting her gradually outgrow the glaring wealth 
 of imagery that is the right of every girl in 
 her teens. 
 
 But the adolescent girl does not think in 
 "dreams" alone. She thinks in the hard terms 
 of the practical and the every day. Her men- 
 tal life, expanding and enlarging, is stirred 
 to unusual activity, as is her physical nature, 
 and she makes so many discoveries absolutely 
 new to her that she thinks them new to all. 
 She gives information of all sorts to her 
 family and expects respectful attention. She 
 knows more than her mother, criticizes her 
 father, gives advice to her grandmother, and 
 is willing to decide all questions for the 
 younger members of the family. She has a 
 new idea of her own importance, and sees 
 herself magnified. 
 
 It seems but yesterday since she was just 
 a little girl, willing to be guided, directed, ruled 
 by her elders. Now she resents the direct 
 command, persists in asking "why," and is 
 not satisfied with "because I think best." She 
 .30 
 
THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 chafes under strict discipline, rebels openly, 
 sulks, or yields with an air of desperate resig- 
 nation when her dearest desires are denied. 
 She thinks she knows best. That is her chief 
 trouble. The things she wants to do seem 
 best to her, — she thinks they will mean her 
 real happiness, therefore she chooses them. 
 That were she allowed to follow her own 
 choice ten years from now she would sadly 
 regret it does not influence her much, for the 
 now is so near and so desirable. 
 
 I was calling one evening in the home of a 
 friend who has a sixteen-year-old daughter. 
 A few moments after I was seated she came 
 into the room wearing a simple evening gown 
 of pale blue silk, her hair arranged in the 
 latest fashion, and her eyes dancing with 
 excitement and anticipation. I could easily 
 pardon the look of satisfied pride upon the 
 faces of both her father and mother. After 
 greeting me cordially she said, "Mother, I may 
 do it just this time, mayn't I ? Please, mother !" 
 "Do what?" said the mother. "You know, the 
 carriage. Harry's father gave him the money, 
 and it's so much nicer than the crowded car." 
 
 "I told you this afternoon what I thought 
 about it," said the mother, "but you may ask 
 your father." 
 
 She referred the matter to him. "Harry" 
 31 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 wanted to have a carriage and drive home 
 after the party, his father was willing and 
 had given him the money. And now mother 
 objected! All the nicest girls were going 
 to do it, but mother preferred a crowded 
 street-car! Supreme disgust and a sense of 
 injustice showed in voice and manner. Her 
 father smiled, as he said, "Well, I think 
 your, mother is about right." Still the girl 
 persisted until her father said sternly, "Mil- 
 dred, you may do as we wish or remain at 
 home." Sullen silence followed, while she 
 made preparations to go. As her mother 
 helped her on with her wrap, she said kindly, 
 "I'm so sorry, Mildred. It is hard for us to 
 deny you, but a few years from now you will 
 understand and be grateful." 
 
 The daughter's answer came quickly: 
 "That is what you always say, but I know I'm 
 missing all the pleasures the other girls have." 
 
 The mother was discouraged. "I don't 
 know what to do with Mildred," she said, 
 after her daughter had gone, "she seems to 
 have lost all confidence in us." 
 
 "No," I said, "she hasn't. She has supreme 
 confidence in herself. If you had frankly 
 told her your reason for refusing her request, 
 or simply said that it was not the proper thing, 
 since you could not furnish her with a chap- 
 32 
 
THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 eron, it might have helped. But if you treat 
 her as patiently for the next few years as you 
 have done to-night, she will come out all 
 right." 
 
 I am sure she will. The rapid development 
 of her mental life is showing through her will. 
 The years are coming when she will need to 
 choose for herself. The power to choose is 
 being developed now. Inexperience leads her 
 to make unwise choices, and so the experience 
 of older and wiser people must guide her, and 
 if necessary decide for her. But wherever it 
 is possible for her to choose for herself, when- 
 ever the issue at stake is not too great, the 
 wise parent and teacher will allow her to 
 choose, yes, even require her to do so, that the 
 power of choice may be developed and the 
 mental forces strengthened. And when she 
 has chosen they will help her carry out her 
 choice, that she may see the result and judge of 
 its wisdom, thus helping her in the struggle 
 to develop both will and judgment. 
 
 The time when parents attempted to break 
 the will is passing. The wise parent and 
 teacher of the girl in her teens knows that she 
 needs, if her future is to be useful and happy, 
 not a broken will but a trained will. Training 
 is a slow and steady process and requires un- 
 limited patience. 
 
 33 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 The aim of every one in any way respon- 
 sible for the education of the girl in her teens 
 is to help her to see the right and desire it. 
 If that can be done for her, she has at least 
 been started on the road that leads to safety. 
 This is the time when those who teach her 
 may help her to see the value of promptness, 
 absolute accuracy, and dependableness. When 
 she promises to do a thing it is the duty of all 
 who teach her to help her keep that promise. 
 But she must always see the value of the thing 
 taught. The mind must be satisfied ; she must 
 know why. The girl in her teens is develop- 
 ing the individual moral sense, and if the years 
 are to bring strength of character every open 
 avenue to the mind must be used to help in 
 constantly raising standards and impressing 
 truth. 
 
 The awakening of the girl in her teens to 
 new phases of mental activity reveals itself 
 in her passion for reading. It is true that 
 some girls before twelve read eagerly all 
 sorts of books, but most girls develop a 
 genuiue love for reading with adolescence. 
 They then become omnivorous readers. When 
 one looks over lists of "Books I Have Read" 
 prepared by high-school girls he is astonished 
 by the number and variety. 
 
 It is most interesting to note the books des- 
 34 
 
THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 ignated in personal conversation as "the dear- 
 est story," "just great," "dandy," "perfectly 
 fine," "elegant," "beautiful," and "the best 
 book I have ever read." That these books 
 have a tremendous infliuence on the mental life 
 in forming a "taste" for literature, and fur- 
 nishing motives for action, ideals, and infor- 
 mation, no one can doubt. 
 
 Who helps these girls to satisfy their hunger 
 for a "good book to read?" Many have no 
 help, — they read what they will. Sometimes 
 the parent acts as guide, often the book lists 
 gotten out by the city librarian, or graded lists 
 of books prepared by teachers in the public 
 school, although many times at just the period 
 when most reading is being done the "hsts" 
 disappear from the schoolroom. Seldom does 
 the Sunday-school teacher guide her girls in 
 their choice of books, yet this is one of the 
 most valuable and helpful things a woman can 
 do for a girl. 
 
 One often wishes there were more books of 
 the right sort for the girl in her teens. With 
 the exception of the old standards that remain 
 helpful to succeeding generations there are 
 comparatively few books for girls that are in- 
 teresting, fascinating, wholesome, and free 
 from those "problems" on which few women 
 and no girls can dwell with profit. Modern 
 35 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 writers have given us a few fine, inspiring 
 stories for girls, and the teacher who seeks 
 them out, reads them, and then passes them on 
 to her girls is helping in a real and definite 
 way to deepen and broaden character. All 
 teachers of girls are hoping that, now so many 
 good books for boys have been written, our 
 writers will turn their attention to girls and 
 their needs. 
 
 Girls in their teens need biography and en- 
 joy it. They need to know fine women who 
 have actually lived. If the lives of such 
 women could be written for girls they would 
 find eager readers. The author of the life of 
 Alice Freeman Palmer has presented an in- 
 spiring and helpful gift to the girls of all 
 time, and its influence can never be estimated. 
 We need more such books. 
 
 No one of us would return for a moment 
 to the stories of heroines so good that in the 
 last chapter they died and went to heaven, but 
 we do need books in which girls and women 
 are sane, reasonable, and good, yet live, and 
 enjoy living to the full. The world is full of 
 wholesome, true, womanly women, and our 
 girls need to know about them in fact and fic- 
 tion. 
 
 The mental activity of the girl in her teens 
 reveals itself also in her great desire to know. 
 36 
 
THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 During the period of her teens the girl so often 
 appears superior to the boy mentally. Some- 
 times she is, but more often the seeming su- 
 periority can be explained in two ways: the 
 hunger for knowledge and longing to under- 
 stand life come to her earlier than to the boy ; 
 she desires to excel, and feels more keenly the 
 disgrace of low rank and unsatisfactory prog- 
 ress in her studies, which leads her to de- 
 vote more time and conscientious effort to 
 master them. While her brother is buried 
 deep in athletics, she is buried in dreams, ro- 
 mances and facts. She wants things ex- 
 plained. After sixteen, there dawns the period 
 when she demands that her teacher shall know. 
 She must have knowledge. Some teachers of 
 girls in the later teens hold their interest 
 through a charming personality, a knowledge 
 of the heart of a girl, and a clever presenta- 
 tion of lessons. Still, such teachers are unable 
 oftentimes to help the girl in her struggle to 
 straighten out tangles of what she calls "faith" 
 and "knowledge." 
 
 She asks with a new earnestness, "Are the 
 miracles true?" "Is the Bible different from 
 other books?" Only last week a girl of eight- 
 een, suffering with her dearest friend, whose 
 brother had been sentenced to a term in prison 
 for gross intoxication, said to me : "That man 
 37 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 prays often when he is sober to be kept from 
 drinking, how can God let him do it when it 
 is just killing his mother and all the family? 
 I don't see how it can be true that God loves 
 men when he lets them be so wicked, and when 
 people suffer so, and starve and die in wrecks 
 and fires and — it's terrible. I know you will 
 think I'm awful, but sometimes I don't believe 
 in God at all." Her voice trembled, and I 
 knew the hurried sentences represented 
 months of thinking. I did not consider her 
 "awful." God help her — she has looked the 
 old, old problem of evil squarely in the face 
 for the first time, and is staggered by it. 
 How to help her in this crisis we shall con- 
 sider in our discussion of the "Spiritual Side." 
 She needs now more than ever a teacher 
 who can understand her, who has thought 
 things out for herself, who can teach posi- 
 tively, who is too near life to worship creed, 
 and too large to be dogmatic. One so often 
 wishes, when looking into the face of some 
 thoughtful girl, with mind keen, alert, active, 
 but perplexed and confused by knowledge that 
 seems to contradict itself, for some miracle 
 by which for a moment the Great Teacher 
 might come and speak to her the words that 
 made his doubting pupil say, "My Lord and 
 my God." 
 
 38 
 
THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 The mental activity of the girl of to-day 
 reveals itself in the later teens by a keen and 
 deep interest in social questions, in the great 
 problems that concern women. But a few 
 weeks since I looked into the faces of scores 
 of earnest college girls, many in their later 
 teens, who were discussing at a week-end con- 
 ference, "The Individual and the Social Cri- 
 sis." It was not a mere discussion. These 
 girls had plans, they had facts, they were look- 
 ing at the question on all sides. Within the 
 month I met another group in conference. 
 They were a "Welfare Committee" for an or- 
 ganization of working girls. They knew what 
 they were talking about, they had plans, and 
 were seeking solutions for problems that 
 needed to be solved. 
 
 The girl in her teens is a dreamer at thir- 
 teen, seeking to realize her dreams in real life 
 at nineteen. 
 
 During those six wonderful years of re- 
 peated crises, the mental life of the girl is 
 being shaped and determined by environment. 
 To some extent the teacher may influence that 
 environment, and become a real part of it. 
 It is her privilege to furnish the imagination, 
 through prose and poetry, with fields in which 
 to wander afar, broaden the vision through 
 books of travel and information which she 
 39 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 may put in the girl's way, increase her love of 
 music and pictures through occasional concerts 
 and visits to the art galleries, and in scores of 
 little ways open new doors to the greater 
 realms of knowledge which, if unaided, she 
 would have passed by. 
 
 It is a great thing to be able to help an- 
 other mind to think for itself. That, the 
 wise teacher is always striving to do. She 
 challenges her girls to think. This is the 
 reason why she wants the girl in her teens 
 to know something of the history of the 
 church; to be acquainted with the young men 
 and women on the mission field, and know 
 what they are doing; to know what the cities 
 are trying or refusing to do for the housing of 
 the poor, and for the protection of women and 
 girls ; to know the laws of home hygiene, and 
 to use her mental faculties to help answer the 
 question of the relation of the church and 
 the individual under existing conditions in her 
 own community and in the world. The girl in 
 her teens is interested most in the very thing 
 in which the Great Teacher was himself in- 
 terested — life, .the life of his own day, and 
 he so instructed his disciples that the eyes of 
 their understanding were opened and they be- 
 gan to think for themselves and of their fellow- 
 men. 
 
 40 
 
THE MENTAL SIDE 
 
 We have to-day, in the girl in her teens, who 
 in large numbers is still in our Sunday-schools, 
 a tremendous mental force. Were it 
 awakened and developed, helped to see and 
 interpret life according to the principles of 
 Jesus, in fifty years the church would find 
 most of its present problems solved. For hard 
 to realize as it is when looking into the faces 
 and training the minds of the girls in their 
 teens of to-day, still it is true that we are look- 
 ing at and training the women of to-morrow, 
 yes, those who a few years hence holding their 
 children in their arms, shall decide all unknow- 
 ing what the next generation of men and 
 women shall be and do. 
 
 To encourage the girl in her teens to use her 
 mental powers to the utmost, to help her gain 
 knowledge and self-control, to guide her in 
 her thinking, is the task of every parent and 
 teacher, and it is a task tremendously worth 
 while. 
 
CHAPTER IV- 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 All civilization begins in sensation and feel- 
 ing. The most abstruse and abstract thought 
 of to-day is possible because ages and ages 
 ago men living in caves were hungry and 
 sought food, were cold and sought warmth, 
 felt fear and sought protection. They con- 
 quered in battle with fierce animals and neigh- 
 boring tribes, and felt the joy of victory and 
 the satisfaction of possession. The "self" 
 sensations and feelings are at the foot of the 
 ladder of civilization by which man, with 
 almost infinite patience has climbed thus far. 
 But self is not all. As the ages passed, man's 
 pleasure of protection included his neighbor 
 in his feeling and thought. Misfortune evoked 
 pity, and suffering called forth sympathy, the 
 desire for fair play for self grew until it be- 
 came a sense of justice which included the 
 other man, and the moral sense developed 
 and was strengthened by experience through 
 the succeeding ages. 
 
 From the beginning "the spirit of man 
 sought ever to speak." At first he would pro- 
 
 42 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 pitiate the spirits of air and fire, the rulers of 
 earth and sea, the harvest and the battle, — 
 please them and buy their favor that he might 
 be happy. In weird chants and dances, in feast 
 days and fast days, by sacrifice and penance, 
 he endeavored to appease the spirits of his 
 gods and insure happiness for himself. Great 
 multitudes of the human race have gone no 
 farther. After all the progress of thought 
 their prayers are still intense appeals for 
 blessing upon self and self-interests, and they 
 still keep the feasts and fasts, and bring of- 
 ferings with hope of personal reward. But 
 every century brings an increasing number so 
 filled with the sense of another's need that in 
 some measure at least they forget self. Their 
 prayers are petitions for others, — their gifts 
 are poured out without thought of recompense ; 
 the spiritual nature within them, awakened and 
 developed, triumphs and manifests itself in a 
 thousand varying deeds that bless mankind. 
 
 This spiritual nature, which from the be- 
 ginning has sought after its Creator that it 
 might worship him, is not a thing apart, living 
 in a separate "house," but rather a phase 
 of man's complexity. It depends for its 
 growth upon both the physical and mental 
 sides of man's nature, and cannot be divorced 
 from them. 
 
 43 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 At the foot of the path that reaches to the 
 very height of spiritual life, we find feeling 
 as sensation and emotion. The myriad sensa- 
 tions which express themselves in bodily con- 
 sciousness through the physical, and the emo- 
 tions which find expression through mental 
 consciousness, can not escape their share of 
 responsibility for the development of the 
 spiritual side. As year after year he sees suc- 
 cessive classes of children repeat the develop- 
 ment of their predecessors, one stands in awe 
 and reverence before the presence of laws 
 which seem universal in the development of 
 child life. He notes the days when life means 
 food and clothing furnished by another. He 
 notes the strong development of the self in- 
 terests to the exclusion of others. He sees 
 the gradual development of the sense of jus- 
 tice, of pity, of sympathy. He watches the 
 development of altruism in adolescence. He 
 sees the rapid change of body, mind, and spirit, 
 and witnesses the struggle for control, some- 
 times on the part of one, sometimes the 
 other, until at last physical, mental or spirit- 
 ual emerges in control of a life. Or in the 
 rarer cases, where a more perfect development 
 has come, all three work together in the effort 
 to make a perfectly balanced man. 
 
 We saw in our brief study of the physical 
 44 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 side that a girl in her teens can fed. Her 
 whole being is sensitized, ready at a moment's 
 notice to respond. In our study of the mental 
 side we saw that she can and does think, is 
 capable of the heights and depths of emotion, 
 and is able in a limited way to make com- 
 parisons and reach sane conclusions. 
 
 As the physical side of her nature is awake 
 and the mental side keen, curious and eager, 
 so the spiritual side feels the thrill of new 
 life and opens to all the wealth of impression. 
 She is close to the great mysteries of life, and 
 "whence came I, what am I here for, where 
 am I going," press her for answer. In her 
 early teens she accepts gladly the theories and 
 creeds of those who teach her. There are 
 comparatively few "unbelievers" from thir- 
 teen to sixteen. The average girl at this 
 period is religious in the truest sense of the 
 word. Her moral sense is keen, her con- 
 science is alive, — she longs unspeakably to 
 be good; to overcome jealousy and envy; to 
 be truthful, thoughtful of others ; and a score 
 of minor virtues she longs to possess. Yet 
 in strange perversity she is often none of 
 these things. She finds it easy to pray, and a 
 song, a picture, a story filled with deeds of 
 deepest self-sacrifice, awakens immediate re- 
 sponse. She can be appealed to through her 
 45 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 emotions, and her deepest religious sense 
 touched and developed. The awakening of 
 her spiritual nature thus through the emotions 
 is perfectly legitimate. The appeal should 
 never be sensational, and never under any 
 circumstances awaken an hysterical response. 
 Not tears but unbounded joy should be the 
 result of her response to an appeal to all that 
 is best in her. 
 
 If the Sunday-school were equipped with 
 just the right teachers, and able to so influence 
 parents and home conditions that the girl in 
 her early teens were regular in attendance, 
 very few would reach the age of sixteen with- 
 out having determined to love and obey God 
 and to live in the world as Christ lived. Al- 
 most all would unite with the church, which 
 is the visible expression of the religious life, 
 — and be ready to throw themselves into its 
 work. 
 
 In all my experience with Sunday-school 
 girls of this period regular in attendance and 
 interested in the work I have found when talk- 
 ing with them that they invariably say, "I think 
 I am a Christian," "I am trying hard to be 
 good and to be a Christian," "I am willing 
 to sign the card, I have been trying to be a 
 Christian for a long time," etc., etc. Then, 
 having so expressed themselves, if later I 
 46 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 talk over with them the matter of uniting 
 with the church, I find only a few objections 
 repeated year after year by successive classes. 
 "My father and mother think I am too young," 
 "My father says I would better wait until 
 I know what I am doing," "I am afraid I am 
 not good enough," and the one most reluctantly 
 expressed, "If I join the church I am afraid 
 
 I'll have to ," then follow the things which 
 
 perhaps must be given up. I have yet to find 
 the girl from thirteen to sixteen who has been 
 a regular attendant at Sunday-school since pri- 
 mary age who has no desire to call herself a 
 Christian. The splendid devotion to duty, the 
 sympathy, the service to the world, the mar- 
 velous love and compassion, the supreme sac- 
 rifice of our Lord, makes the strongest pos- 
 sible appeal to the spiritual nature of the girl. 
 We may confidently expect her to respond, and 
 she does. 
 
 But if the girl has been irregular in at- 
 tendance, has lost interest in class or teacher, 
 is permitted to enjoy the stimulus of social life 
 while too young, comes to church only on spe- 
 cial occasions, has little or no definite moral 
 instruction at home, and does not come into 
 close touch with rich spiritual life, she will 
 drift through the years of adolescence with 
 her spiritual nature undeveloped and express- 
 47 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 ing itself only in vague longings unsatisfied. 
 The chances are that such a girl will never 
 have anything but a superficial interest either 
 in her own development or the vital life of the 
 church expressed in its various agencies. 
 
 Two years ago, at a conference, a girl of 
 sixteen from a fashionable boarding-school, 
 coming from a home where fads and fashions 
 rule, said to me, "I never knew Christ was so 
 wonderful, but then I have never thought 
 much about it, though I go to morning seirvice 
 in the winter. I have never met women and 
 girls like those I have seen this week; they 
 are so interesting, — they are doing so many 
 things to help people, — they seem to love to 
 live. I don't want to live a mean, selfish kind 
 of life. I am going back to school for my 
 last year. What can I do ? How can I help ?" 
 I have met many girls of whom she is the 
 type. Little is being done for the spiritual 
 side of their natures. The Sunday-school at 
 present does not reach them to any great ex- 
 tent. One of the greatest problems facing the 
 fashionable church is how to reach in any 
 way girls in their teens who are members of its 
 congregation. Such girls with their abundance 
 of life have at least a right to those things 
 offered in the Sunday-school which will mean 
 the awakenine; and developing of the spirit. 
 48 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 They need teachers especially equipped in 
 every way to meet them and help them. To 
 find such teachers is one of the problems 
 that must be met within the next few years. 
 Perhaps we may look confidently for help be- 
 fore long to the girls of culture and refinement 
 now in our colleges hard at work upon every 
 kind of problem dealing with the development 
 of a better life for girls and women. For 
 these girls are beginning to look at the Sun- 
 day-school seriously as the means of bring- 
 ing moral and religious education to girls of 
 all classes, and are asking how they may best 
 equip themselves for service in its various de- 
 partments. 
 
 The problem of the other girl is just as 
 great. She works all the week, and when on 
 Sunday morning she is tired, the family sym- 
 pathize. She gradually drops out of Sunday- 
 school, is not able because of her long hours 
 to enter into the work of the church, does 
 not come into contact with any vitalizing spir- 
 itual force, and slowly this part of her nature, 
 lacking food and stimulus, begins to die. She 
 spends Sunday afternoon and evening socially, 
 and enters upon the new week's work with no 
 uplift of soul and spirit to help her when 
 temptations come. 
 
 She needs a real teacher, sympathetic and 
 49 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 appreciative, to hold her during the first years 
 of her working Hfe. One who can make the 
 class a social factor, and by her effort and 
 personality make the Sunday-school hour in- 
 teresting enough to insure attendance. Then 
 the teacher has an opportunity at least to bring 
 the girl into contact with Christ, and through 
 instruction to feed and develop her spiritual 
 nature until it is ready through exercise to 
 develop itself. 
 
 The spiritual nature needs food as does the 
 physical. If the physical life is poorly nour- 
 ished in this time of the most rapid develop- 
 ment, a loss of vitality and power is the in- 
 evitable result. The same is true of the men- 
 tal life. There must be healthful, attractive, 
 abundant food for interesting, enjoyable 
 thought. And just as surely the spiritual life, 
 unless the emotions and moral sense are nour- 
 ished, will yield to slow paralysis or run into 
 wrong and wasteful channels. 
 
 But there comes a time in the spiritual ex- 
 perience of the girl, usually about sixteen, 
 when she wants to do something to express 
 the longing to give herself which is growing 
 more intense each year. If the Sunday-school 
 and church are together able to provide her 
 with work she is fairly safe for the next few 
 years. The work will mean definite interest. 
 5° 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 will call for some sacrifice, and will bring 
 the satisfaction of accomplishment. The spir- 
 itual side of her nature will find in this way- 
 opportunity for immediate expression, and we 
 must never let the fact escape us that without 
 opportunity for expression abundant life is 
 impossible. 
 
 Sooner or later there is bound to come to 
 the average girl in her teens a period of 
 doubting, anxious questioning. Most often 
 it appears at the very end of the period. The 
 outcome of this longer or shorter period of 
 turmoil in thought may be a much broader, 
 deeper faith in the Christian ideals and the 
 realities of life, or it may be a drifting away 
 from the church and the loss of definite faith 
 in anything. 
 
 There are in the world many more people 
 who will not do than who will not believe, but 
 a large and growing number of young women 
 are questioning, doubting, and finally deciding 
 that we can not know, and that the faith of 
 our childhood is without reasonable founda- 
 tion. Some of these will seek satisfaction for 
 the spiritual nature in later years in all sorts 
 of "isms," "ists," and cults; some will drop 
 all definite terms of faith and find a measure 
 of satisfaction in educational work among the 
 poor. Some will grow hard and cynical, lose 
 51 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 all interest in any visible form of religion, 
 and give themselves over to a good time. The 
 doubters and questioners are often thoughtful, 
 sincere young people, with mental ability 
 of the best sort and high moral sense, and 
 every Sunday-school teacher who has any in- 
 fluence with them must put forth every pos- 
 sible effort to save them, for their own sake 
 and that of the world. For the world can ill 
 afford to lose its women of faith. 
 
 Occasionally, the girl who asks questions 
 is not sincere in her desire to find answers; 
 she just wants to argue. Argument with such 
 a girl is not helpful. As a rule, doubts ex- 
 pressed grow stronger. In talking with a 
 girl who wants to tell all that she doubts, I 
 have found it helpful to lead her to make 
 positive statements as to what she believes, 
 and urge her if she feels that she must part 
 with her old faith to start a new one with 
 what she does believe. To treat her as 
 "wicked," or to be "shocked" by her expres- 
 sion of unbelief is exceedingly unwise. Pos- 
 itive teaching, free from dogmatism, along the 
 line where her doubts seem to lead will help 
 to strengthen her, and work with actual prob- 
 lems of a social and altruistic nature will act 
 as a good balance. Those who are at work 
 with actual life problems have invariably the 
 52 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 strongest and broadest faith because they come 
 close to humanity and see its worth as well as 
 its weakness, and in the long run can not ex- 
 plain what they see without the presence of 
 God in the world, nor help the deep needs 
 they realize without the aid of Christ. 
 
 If the girl who questions is sincere, and is 
 troubled and unhappy because she can not 
 believe, she deserves and should have the deep- 
 est sympathy. The teacher to whom she comes 
 for help is to be envied, for she has the great 
 privilege of an opportunity to help her see. 
 
 Oftentimes it is such a little thing that 
 hides from her the whole great range of 
 Christian thought. I shall remember always 
 the little hill that hid my view of the White 
 Mountains I had made such a sacrifice to see. 
 I had reached my stopping-place late at night, 
 in the rain, and when morning came with a 
 flood of sunshine I went eagerly forth to catch 
 a first glimpse of the mountains. They were 
 nowhere in sight. A quiet country road, 
 shaded by tall trees, and a long, low range 
 of hills was all I saw. Deep disappointment 
 filled my soul. I determined to go back. Be- 
 fore noon my companion climbed the hill op- 
 posite the house and beckoned eagerly for me 
 to follow. I shall never forget what I saw! 
 There they were, clear, blue, reaching up to 
 53 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 the bluer sky. How I loved them that sum- 
 mer, — touched with fire at sunset, purple and 
 gold in the deepening twilight, soft and far 
 away in the early morning mist; and when 
 clouds shut them in, hid them from sight, I 
 knew they were there, calm, still, immovable! 
 I had seen them. Yet for a whole morning 
 a little hill shut them from my vision, and I 
 had concluded that some one had deceived 
 me, that from the little town they could not be 
 seen. 
 
 The greatest power of the teacher is that of 
 beckoning to the pupil that he may follow, 
 helping him to climb the Httle hills, that he 
 may open his eyes and see. The mental ques- 
 tions must be answered as far as possible. 
 The difficulty in the way must be surmounted. 
 The hill must be climbed. If the teacher feels 
 that she can not meet the task herself, friends 
 and books may help. The girl usually doubts 
 the miracles ; doubts the deity of Christ, thinks 
 the Bible is not different from other books, 
 ask the old, old question, "If a man die, 
 how can he live again?" She questions the 
 existence of a God of power in a world where 
 so much evil and misery abound; says the 
 foundation of everything is gone, and that 
 she is wretched and unhappy. 
 
 It seems to me a most helpful thing to make 
 S4 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 her feel that all thoughtful men and women 
 have at some time in their experience asked 
 these questions. Both the teacher and the girl 
 must accept the fact of mystery, — that there 
 is much that we cannot hope to know, many 
 laws of mind and matter of which we know 
 just a little, and many more of which we know 
 nothing. VMystery is a fact. That the spirit- 
 ual sense can reach into a realm where the 
 mental faculties cannot follow, and that the 
 spirit of man can perceive what the mind alone 
 cannot comprehend, we have a right to believe.^ 
 
 When so much has been acknowledged the 
 teacher may tell her pupil what she personally 
 believes about the disputed questions, and what 
 the scholars of the world believe on both 
 sides of the question. The teacher's belief is 
 often the strongest argument, especially if 
 she has met the questions, found an answer, 
 and her own faith is positive, sane and strong. 
 But if the teacher meets the troubled, anxious 
 mental state of the girl with dogmatic argu- 
 ment, insisting upon the definite phraseology 
 of some creed, she will most certainly fail 
 to help. What we want to do is not to in- 
 culcate a creed, but to help a girl to come into . 
 living, vital touch with her Maker, that she \ 
 may live with confidence and be a help in the 
 world. 
 
 55 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 In time she will find the creed that expresses 
 for her in the most satisfactory way what she 
 has come to believe. 
 
 One of the most keen and interesting girls 
 I have ever met, a junior in college at nineteen, 
 said to me after stating all that she could not 
 believe and why, — "Can't I believe that Christ 
 was the finest man that ever lived, and try 
 to live and work in the world as he did? I 
 can't believe anything else." "Yes," I said, 
 "that is true, believe that. I think he was 
 more, but start there. Do all you have planned 
 to help the needy, but don't forget to read 
 again and again what he said about himself 
 and what those who have served the world 
 most fearlessly and faithfully say of him." 
 
 Two years later at the conference she told me 
 she had come to the conclusion that "what he 
 did and said and his present influence in the 
 world can't be explained unless he was in a 
 sense different from ourselves, divine." This 
 was her conclusion, reached by thought and 
 study. It was worth much more than any 
 insistence two years before that she believe as 
 I did. 
 
 The way to help most effectually the girl 
 who doubts, so far as my experience has gone, 
 is to help her to see that she can start, stand- 
 ing firmly on what she believes, and then to 
 S6 
 
THE SPIRITUAL SIDE 
 
 help her faith grow by giving her work to 
 do and by putting in her way books that give 
 constructive teachings. Then one may supply 
 her with stories of those who have lived what 
 they believe, and if possible bring her into con- 
 tact with fine, sane men and women of strong 
 faith who love and enjoy life. 
 
 Sometimes all the doubts and questionings 
 come because life is so hard and seems so 
 unfair and unjust. Then the troubled girl 
 needs to know just one thing — "God is love" ; 
 and only the teacher who loves can help her, 
 — she will know how. 
 
 Nothing can so stimulate the teacher's own 
 faith as to be brought, year after year, face 
 to face with world-wide questions hurled at 
 her from the lips of girls in their later teens. 
 She learns at last to anticipate the time when 
 doubts will trouble by giving during the early 
 teens definite constructive teaching that will 
 strengthen faith and deepen the spiritual sense. 
 
 The girl in her teens is a worshiper of the 
 ideal, and the teacher's business is to furnish 
 her with ideals so beautiful, so strong and so 
 desirable that with irresistible power they woo 
 her until she is ready to leave all and follow. 
 If she is possessed by a great ideal nothing 
 is too difficult for her to do, no price is too high 
 to pay in the effort to realize it. Ideals are 
 57 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 the things in life most real, for they determine 
 action. 
 
 In impressing high ideals upon mind and 
 spirit the teacher of girls in their teens has 
 advantages over those of any other period. 
 All nature is ready to help, the wealth of 
 emotion waits to be stirred to action, the spirit 
 waits to be led. 
 "^ If the spirit of the teacher is to lead, it 
 must itself be led. It must be dominated by 
 great ideals. 
 
 The girl in her teens needs a teacher whose 
 deepest longings are not all satisfied — then 
 she understands. She needs a teacher who 
 is not afraid to let her emotions speak — who 
 knows that the greatest deeds possible to man 
 have their birth in the emotions. She needs a 
 teacher who sees amid all the joys and real 
 pleasures of the world, as well as amid the 
 petty cares and dark and puzzling problems 
 which are our common lot, the Spirit of her 
 Creator working out in man for ultimate good 
 the great plan of which she is a part. 
 
 Such a teacher can open the eyes of her 
 girls and help them to see the Father for whom 
 the human spirit is ever seeking — ^and will not 
 be satisfied until it finds. 
 
 S8 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 I have been spending the day with adoles- 
 cence, surrounded by boys and girls in their 
 teens and young men and women just outside. 
 It is now the evening of Memorial Day, and 
 I have spent most of the day at the popular 
 pleasure resort just outside the city. My com- 
 panion, a young woman just out of her teens, 
 had taken her holiday to come to the normal 
 school to arrange for entrance in the fall. She 
 has worked hard for two years, saved her 
 money, and now plans to take a full course at 
 the school to fit herself to become an expert 
 teacher in China. She wanted to spend the 
 rest of the day with me and talk about it, and I 
 
 took her to W. , that we might enjoy the 
 
 out-of-doors. We sat in a secluded corner of 
 the big open dining-room, and during dinner 
 she talked of China's need, of the great oppor- 
 tunity, — hurled facts about the darkness of 
 China at me until I gazed at the animated 
 encyclopaedia in astonishment. Her face 
 glowed with enthusiasm; it is a sweet face, 
 girlish and eager, and I could but wonder as I 
 59 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 looked at her how China's need had gotten 
 such a hold upon her. 
 
 While she seemed for a few moments lost 
 in thought, my eyes wandered over the room 
 crowded with youth. All sorts and conditions 
 were there, but all young. It was Memorial 
 Day, but they had not waited to see the short 
 procession of those who still remain to us of 
 the hundreds who went out with their lives 
 in their hands at the country's bidding. The 
 procession and all it signifies meant little to 
 them. They were jolly, happy, light-hearted, 
 rough and very crude, and yet — they were 
 just the ones who, if the country should call 
 again, would answer ; the boys promptly, will- 
 ingly, offering their lives, the girls laying their 
 hearts on the altar of their country's need- 
 But to-day was just a holiday. At the table 
 near us was a group of four, none over 
 seventeen. The discussion and final ordering 
 of the dinner was most interesting. They 
 talked over prices, too, with great frankness, 
 "That's too much," and "we don't need cof- 
 fee, that will take ten cents off for each of us." 
 I have seldom seen four people enjoy a dinner 
 as they did. The girls' dresses manifested the 
 effort to attain "the latest thing," and the 
 boys were not behind. When they left the 
 dining-room and walked down toward the 
 60 
 
THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 boat-house they tried to look so unconcerned! 
 How they had saved for this day! This one 
 little day! At every table were groups just 
 as interesting. The grounds were crowded 
 with other groups, laughing and shouting and 
 joking. The jokes no one save themselves 
 could appreciate. The skating rink was 
 crowded — the dancing pavilion — the open air 
 theater — every incoming trolley brought more 
 intent upon having "a good time." I forgot 
 China until a direct question brought me back. 
 Here she was, — my eager, intense, enthusiastic 
 girl, — looking forward with joy to China with 
 its crushing weight of ignorance, its impos- 
 sible language and its almond-eyed people 
 neither asking nor desiring to be helped! 
 What has made the difference between her and 
 those all about me? Before I could answer 
 her question or my own, three automobiles 
 passed, filled with laughing girls and boys, 
 all in their teens. Their faces were different 
 from those in the grove, — their laughter more 
 musical, — the automobiles bore their coun- 
 try's flag, the girls wore flowers. I knew 
 some of the faces — it was a "house party," 
 and they were off for a "good time." 
 
 Suddenly it surged over me that this was but 
 one little spot in the great country — and the 
 rush of the other thousands, the shop girls, 
 6i 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 clerks, the office girls, the students, all in search 
 of a good time oppressed me, and before my 
 mind hurried back to a Chinese kindergarten, 
 my heart cried, "Oh, Lord, how shall the 
 world play with real pleasure and profit?" Is 
 this the way? I heard no answer. The prob- 
 lem is too big for me, yet I cannot let it alone, 
 for the world must play, and always the most 
 eager players are young, — and always the girl 
 in her teens is the center of the game. 
 
 Man is social. He must have companion- 
 ships and pleasures in common with his kind. 
 Only when physically deficient, mentally de- 
 formed, abnormal, does he become anti-social. 
 This is true all through life and especially true 
 in adolescence when nature is most keenly 
 conscious of elemental powers and passions. 
 
 It is true that the girl in her teens is often 
 alone. Alone she dreams her day-dreams, 
 writes her poems, floods her imagination with 
 all the things that are to be. In common with 
 all humanity she meets her deepest experiences 
 alone. Yesterday a girl of nineteen tried 
 to tell me of the happiness her engagement to 
 a fine, strong man had brought to her. She 
 said, "all that it means can't be said." Last 
 week a girl of eighteen tried to tell out all the 
 loneliness and crushing disappointment her 
 mother's death had brought, but she ended her 
 62 
 
THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 appeal for help with the old cry, "no one can 
 really help, I've just got to bear it." Before 
 the teens have passed so many girls learn that 
 great joy and great sorrow must be met alone. 
 
 But for the common life of the every day, 
 man lives with others. He can neither work 
 alone nor play alone, and with adolescence 
 comes the realization of it sweeping into the 
 life. "The gang," "our crowd," "our set," 
 work and play together. 
 
 The girl who loves and seeks solitude con- 
 tinually is ill mentally, physically, or spirit- 
 ually, and needs watchful, sympathetic care, 
 which shall discover the cause of her morbid- 
 ness and help her to escape from it. 
 
 Environment fixes largely the companions 
 of the girl, and her place in the social scale 
 predetermines to some extent how she shall 
 play. If she is in a home where the family is 
 closely related to the church in all departments 
 of its active work and life the church becomes 
 her natural social center. Its entertainments, 
 suppers, young people's socials, etc., furnish the 
 means for her amusement and the place where 
 she may form friendships. If she is a working 
 girl boarding in a strange city or living in a 
 home in no way connected with the church, 
 unless the Y. W. C. A. through the gymnasium 
 or other classes reaches her, where shall she 
 63 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 find her social center where she may enjoy the 
 society of other young people, form friend- 
 ships and have a good time? In summer the 
 public parks answer that question. In winter, 
 the skating rink, "the dancing party," the mov- 
 ing picture show. 
 
 If the girl lives in a happy home surrounded 
 by wealth, together with culture and refine- 
 ment, her social life will be guided and guarded 
 during her teens and she will be helped to have 
 a good time. If she be that happiest of all girls, 
 the one whose own home is the social center, 
 where music, games and fun abound, and 
 where friends are always welcome, she is safe. 
 Such homes might solve the whole problem, 
 but there are not enough. 
 
 When the teacher looks seriously at the 
 social side of her girls in their teens and 
 realizes the craving of the whole nature for 
 companionship, laughter and fun, she finds it 
 hard to say "Don't" even to the things of which 
 she does not personally approve, because she 
 must meet the question clear and frank, "What 
 can I do then?" That question has been 
 answered, so far as the church is concerned, 
 only here and there. Some splendid and suc- 
 cessful attempts have been made that give us 
 hope for the future. 
 
 Most Sunday-school teachers of girls in their 
 64 
 
THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 teens have awakened recently to the fact that 
 unless the demands of the social side be sat- 
 isfied in a sane, healthful way, the girl's spirit- 
 ual nature suffers and the mental and physical 
 as well. 
 
 When once the teacher really sees it she can 
 no longer be content to meet the interested 
 members of her class just an hour on Sunday, 
 to discuss the lesson of the day. The crowded 
 parks, the trolleys, the "parties," the call of the 
 great demanding whirl of amusements from 
 Sunday to Sunday, presses upon her soul. She 
 learns how her girls spend the week end and 
 the evenings and then she throws herself, her 
 knowledge, her skill, her time, into the scales, 
 hoping where she finds girls in the danger 
 zone to turn the balance in favor of clean, 
 safe, sane pleasure. 
 
 Any teacher willing to make a little in- 
 vestigation will be surprised to learn how many 
 of the girls enjoying the kind of amusements 
 which do not make for sound moral health, 
 were at ten or twelve regular members of the 
 Sunday-school, and how many still come oc- 
 casionally. 
 
 My observation the past few years of the 
 social side of the girl in her teens, and espe- 
 cially the girl who has left school, has made me 
 feel that if the opportunity to choose came to 
 65 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 me as to Solomon, I would rather have the 
 knowledge and power to give the young people 
 of to-day sane, safe amusement than anything 
 else I know. 
 
 The social side of the girl reveals itself not 
 only in the desire to have a good time, but in 
 the deep and ardent friendships formed during 
 the teen period. 
 
 While she enjoys to the full the society 
 of the group, the girl in her teens invariably 
 has a "dearest friend," who shares her joys, 
 sorrows and confidences. This tendency be- 
 comes especially evident at sixteen and be- 
 comes more marked at the latter part of the 
 period. 
 
 These friendships may be the source of 
 greatest blessings or may mean the lowering 
 of the whole tone of moral life. Both mother 
 and teacher need to observe carefully the 
 formation of friendships and be sure to en- 
 courage only the helpful ones. Public school 
 teachers of experience can all testify to the 
 rapid changes in girls which so often follow 
 the development of a deep friendship. 
 
 I remember a girl of sixteen, dreamy, 
 imaginative, and so much interested in her 
 boy companions that lessons, home interests, 
 and everything else were sacrificed. What to 
 do with her, and what interests to substitute, 
 66 
 
THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 were questions that both mother and teacher 
 failed to solve. At a most opportune time a 
 "new girl" moved into the neighborhood and 
 entered school. She was practical, attractive, 
 a good scholar, greatly interested in outdoor 
 athletics. Because they were neighbors, the 
 two girls were thrown much together. The 
 companionship deepened into friendship. 
 Soon the dreamy sixteen-year-old was playing 
 tennis on summer afternoons, and reading 
 aloud in the hammock afterwa:rd to rest. 
 When winter came she suddenly decided that 
 school and study were worth while, brought 
 up all her averages, and made up her mind to 
 try for college. Skating and the gymnasium 
 made her a new girl. And all this transfor- 
 mation, fortunately for her good, came natu- 
 rally and very rapidly through the influence of 
 her companion. It comes almost as quickly in 
 the other direction. Nothing can be more 
 helpful to the shy, timid, self-conscious girl 
 than the companionship of one who will en- 
 courage her and help her take her place with 
 others in the social life of which she is a part. 
 Some of the bitterest suffering known to 
 girls in their teens comes because they are 
 "left out" and must go "alone." The misery 
 of being left to oneself is registered in that 
 familiar sentence, "Oh, I don't want to go 
 67 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 alone !" The girl in her teens needs a "chum," 
 a "best friend," a companion, and anything 
 that the teacher can do to aid in the formation 
 of helpful friendships is worth while, for the 
 friends loyal and true through the teen age 
 are the ones who in later years, when the need 
 is deeper and friendships are tested, stand by. 
 That there should be some way and place in 
 which, surrounded by a Christian environment 
 that makes for righteousness, girls in their 
 late teens and just outside, who have no 
 homes, or homes only in name, can meet and 
 learn to know young men of the right sort is 
 evident to all who have even considered the 
 matter. 
 
 When the Great Teacher was here no need 
 escaped his notice. All that he taught and did 
 was in response to need. Many of the teachers 
 of to-day are earnestly asking how far they 
 can follow him in this great principle of his 
 life. 
 
 When as teachers, interested in what we call 
 the deepest things in the girl's life, we are 
 sometimes impatient with her light-hearted- 
 ness, with the giggles and boisterous fun and 
 "silliness" of the early teens, and the social 
 tactics and sophistries of the later period, let 
 us remember that the natural, healthy girl is 
 "whole." She is body, mind and spirit, and all 
 68 
 
THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 three together make her a social being. All 
 three speak in the passion to enjoy, — to seek 
 pleasure. And the teacher of girls in their 
 teens is as truly in the service of the living 
 God when she boards the trolley car and ac- 
 companies her girls to the lake for a picnic 
 supper after a day of hard work or study as 
 when teaching them on Sunday the splendid 
 principles that governed Paul's life. She just 
 as truly serves, some cold, rainy, February 
 afternoon as, with two of the girls she wants 
 to know better, she cuts out red hearts to 
 decorate the room for the valentine social to 
 which the members of her class have each in- 
 vited a girl not specially interested in the 
 Sunday-school as when she talks over on 
 Sunday, "Serve the Lord with gladness," for 
 on Sunday she is telling them how to serve 
 and on Tuesday she is showing them how 
 through her own action. And they understand 
 and are more willing to listen as she strives to 
 impress upon mind and heart the facts and 
 ideals that shall keep them steady, pure and 
 true amidst all the distractions and temptations 
 of the world's good time. 
 
 If the teacher once catches a glimpse of 
 
 the significant fact that a girl can not play 
 
 wrong and pray right, a new realization of the 
 
 importance of the social side will stir her to 
 
 69 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 action and send her out to seek help from all 
 who are willing to aid in the solution of the 
 world problem, of how to satisfy the social 
 nature in ways that make for character. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 HER RELATION TO THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 That the Sunday-school has no relation 
 whatever to vast numbers of girls in their 
 teens is a fact apparent to any one interested 
 in the girlhood of that period. And it is a 
 fact of tremendous significance. It means 
 that at the time when the religious sense is 
 keenly responsive, when the mental faculties 
 are alert, when the physical is asserting itself 
 with all its power for good or evil, the girl in 
 large numbers is not getting definite, system- 
 atic instruction from the best book of ethics, 
 morals and religion that the world has known. 
 She is not being brought face to face each 
 week with questions that have to do with her 
 own welfare, and that of the world, nor is she 
 being led to think definitely of her personal 
 relation to the church and its work for man- 
 kind. Unless she is in some way led to think 
 along these lines all the myriad little interests 
 that call to her from the outside world slowly 
 crowd out the more real and uplifting thoughts 
 and influences. 
 
 Every one, even in mature life, needs to 
 71 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 come regularly into contact with influences 
 that tend to lift him up and woo him away 
 from the domination of the petty and ma- 
 terial, and even more is it needed during the 
 years when character is taking definite form. 
 
 No girl can afford to lower her ideals or 
 even to allow them to become tarnished. Life 
 apart from contact with religion in some form 
 seems to do that. Men in later years seem 
 often to recover the ideals lost during their 
 teens ; women seldom do. 
 
 So even a glance at the problem shows one 
 that the first thing for the Sunday-school to do 
 is to establish a relationship between itself and 
 the multitudes of girls in their teens. 
 
 The best way to do this, as any teacher 
 knows, is to keep a strong hold on the girls 
 who have been regular in attendance up to 
 twelve years of age. With these girls as a 
 nucleus, it is easier to make definite effort to 
 gain new members and to make the class so 
 attractive that they will stay. 
 
 When the teacher has resolved to make the 
 efifort to reach out for the girl who is leaving 
 the Sunday-school in large numbers, the clear 
 and challenging question, "What makes a class 
 attractive to the girl in her teens?" immedi- 
 ately presents itself. 
 
 In the first place, the Sunday-school as a 
 72 
 
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 whole makes a great difference to the girl in 
 her teens. She likes enthusiasm, the im- 
 pression that the school is popular with its 
 students, that indefinite atmosphere which 
 makes her know that pupils and teachers alike 
 enjoy the hour and come because they want to. 
 A superintendent who is popular with young 
 people, who is thoroughly likable, is almost 
 indispensable in the teen age. The Sunday- 
 school choir with fortnightly rehearsals, if im- 
 possible to meet oftener, is a great help, and 
 after a year or two of training will do splendid 
 work. I have in mind a school where the 
 organized choir meets only once a month. The 
 music for the next few Sundays is practised; 
 those who are to be soloists or those to sing 
 the duets are chosen; light refreshments are 
 served by the committee from the choir, and 
 a most enjoyable evening spent. The reg- 
 ular attendance of the choir at Sunday-school 
 has been remarkable, and a number of new 
 members gained. The same methods can be 
 used with a Sunday-school orchestra when 
 there are enough members who play the vari- 
 ous instruments. 
 
 The girl in her teens enjoys and responds to 
 
 the well-arranged program when the prayers, 
 
 the responses and the whole order of service 
 
 are dignified and impressive. Just watch the 
 
 73 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 college girl and her younger sister in the pre- 
 paratory school at chapel and you can read 
 her response in her face. She enjoys variety, 
 too, and the program which remains in use so 
 long that after three years' absence she can 
 come back and go through it exactly as it was 
 when she left, is not the kind likely to appeal 
 to her. 
 
 We have seen in our previous studies that 
 the girl in her teens is in love with real life. 
 She likes people, and the Sunday-school lesson 
 must discuss real people and present problems 
 if it is to deeply interest her. 
 
 I was present recently in a class of twelve 
 girls about sixteen years old. Nine members 
 of the class were supposed to be "heathen" and 
 three girls were to tell any one of the parables 
 as if for the first time to these people, anxious 
 and curious to learn of the Christian faith. 
 The' interest was very real. After the telling 
 of each parable the class discussed it and what 
 it would mean to a people hearing it for the 
 first time. "The Sowing of the Seed," "The 
 Good Samaritan," and "The Ten Talents" 
 were told. At the close the teacher told very 
 vividly of an experience of a dear friend of 
 hers who sat one day in the great plaza of a 
 Mexican city, and told the story of the lost 
 coin to a Mexican woman who wore a bracelet 
 74 
 
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 of old and curious coins. The account of the 
 response of this Mexican who heard the story 
 for the first time made a great impression 
 upon me, as upon every member of the class. 
 The teacher then appointed three girls for the 
 next week to tell any one of the experiences 
 of Jesus on his preaching tours as they would 
 tell it to a group of factory girls who had 
 neglected church for years and almost for- 
 gotten how to pray. Several protested that 
 such girls would not listen, and the discussion 
 as to their needs, what they had to help them 
 live pure, true lives, what had made them care- 
 less and indifferent, was brought to a close 
 by the quiet question of the teacher, "Do 
 these girls need Christ or his teaching?" 
 They said, "yes," with conviction, and in an- 
 swer she said, "Then there must be a way to 
 tell what he said and thought so that they 
 will listen; perhaps next Sunday one of our 
 girls will find the way, and I have a most in- 
 teresting story to tell of a splendid factory 
 girl who herself found a way." 
 
 That lesson did so many things for that 
 class of girls. It made them think. First they 
 had to be able to tell the stories Christ told. 
 The class in discussion had to think of the 
 adaptability of the story to the people who 
 needed to hear it, and of all it could mean to 
 75 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 them. They felt the joy of the one who had 
 the privilege of telling it to the Mexican for 
 the first time. They said themselves that the 
 great army of girls in our factories need Christ. 
 They were to think for a week on how his 
 words might be brought to them. The lesson 
 was left with anticipation for next week's 
 story. It was a type of what every lesson 
 should be. It connected the past and 
 present; it touched life in their immediate 
 surroundings and in the uttermost parts of 
 the world ; it gave opportunity for original ex- 
 pression and it led to discussion. It reached 
 some conclusions. It appealed to the imagina- 
 tion arid emotions and closed with a desire on 
 the part of the pupils to talk more, and know 
 more, and think more. 
 
 Perhaps in years to come we shall have good 
 courses of lessons, six or eight weeks in 
 length, which will help the teacher to do just 
 these things. Courses which shall deal with 
 church history for six or eight weeks, then 
 with missions, with charities, with the history 
 of the Bible, with the definite teachings of the 
 New Testament and their relation to society 
 to-day, dealing always with life and always 
 with Christ as the great helper and redeemer 
 of man in his struggles to live aright. While 
 we wait for such courses the individual teacher 
 76 
 
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 must attempt, with the material she has, to 
 make real and vital connections with life, 
 broaden the pupil's horizon and increase her 
 desire for knowledge. New courses and better 
 lesson material, either in public school or Sun- 
 day-school, never come through folding one's 
 arms and spending one's time criticizing the 
 material at hand, but by using it, changing it, 
 adapting and experimenting with it until some- 
 thing is found which more nearly meets the 
 need. Any teacher now reading this chapter 
 may be the one to discover through her own 
 experience just the material for which teachers 
 of the girl in her teens are waiting. That is 
 the reason every one may teach with courage 
 and joy. 
 
 It makes little difference where one starts in 
 the discussion of public-school or Sunday- 
 school problems, he always comes back to the 
 teacher. After all has been said, the teacher 
 is the greatest force in establishing and main- 
 taining a close relationship between the girl 
 in her teens and the Sunday-school. "Ways 
 and means" are necessary and to critics of the 
 so-called "machinery" of the Sunday-school, 
 I have only one answer — unless I can get a 
 pupil to come, I can't teach him. Absent and 
 irregular pupils receive no benefit even from 
 the finest of teachers, and any legitimate 
 77 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 "means" by which a pupil may be induced to 
 come, and a regularity of attendance be es- 
 tablished, we have a right to welcome and use. 
 But after the pupil has entered and become 
 regularly enrolled it is the teacher who is the 
 stimulating, guiding and holding power. To 
 analyze the charm of personality which at- 
 tracts and holds the girl in her teens is im- 
 possible, but there are certain things which 
 the teacher must do that we may discuss. 
 
 She must remember that the girl in her teens 
 has "grown up," and that she is very conscious 
 of it. One must be more her friend than 
 teacher. In the earlier years every Sunday- 
 school teacher really interested in her pupils 
 calls freely in the home. When the girl 
 reaches the teen age, the teacher must ask per- 
 mission to call. "May I call on your mother ?" 
 often opens the way for a special invitation, or 
 at least gives the girl an opportunity to 
 make the invitation cordial or to let it be 
 known that for some reason she prefers not 
 to have her teacher call. I remember one girl 
 of seventeen who never gave me any encour- 
 agement when I suggested calling, and I re- 
 spected her wishes. One day when she was 
 very ill, the mother asked me to come. The 
 girl had always dressed well, was intelligent 
 and refined, and would have been supposed to 
 78 
 
THE SUNDAY- SCHOOL 
 
 come from a family of comfortable means. I 
 found it to be a home of real poverty, where 
 the father, a nervous wreck struggling with 
 diabetes, was unable to work regularly, and 
 the mother was obliged to assist. Even with 
 the seventeen-year-old girl giving every cent 
 she could spare, it was a hard struggle. The 
 girl was proud and reticent; she had not 
 wanted me to know, and I was glad I had not 
 come until she was willing. That day when 
 she was ill and discouraged she was willing — ■ 
 she really needed me. 
 
 There are many times when for reasons akin 
 to this or others entirely different but equally 
 good, a girl prefers to have her teacher see 
 and know her apart from her home. Every 
 woman who understands girlhood in the later 
 teens respects such a wish. 
 
 The teacher's home should, if possible, be 
 always open to the girls and they should feel 
 free to come. Sometimes it is not possible 
 and then the cosiest corner in the smallest 
 church parlor should be available. 
 
 As the girl approaches the later teens the 
 Sunday-school class should become more and 
 more a place of training for service. It has 
 been my experience that after seventeen many 
 girls prefer to work in Sunday-school rather 
 than to remain as pupils. If the girls express 
 79 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 such a desire, or show particular willingness 
 to act as substitutes, to help in the music of 
 the elementary departments, or to tell stories 
 to the beginners, such a desire should be rec- 
 ognized and an opportunity given a girl to 
 test herself under supervision. The Sunday- 
 school should be constantly preparing assis- 
 tant superintendents, directors of music, sec- 
 retaries and teachers. Material for the 
 teachers' training-class is found in classes in 
 the later teens. 
 
 Some of the most loyal, responsive and suc- 
 cessful teachers of pupils from nine to twelve, 
 I have found in the boys and girls of the later 
 teens. While they lack mature judgment and 
 discretion, they have enthusiasm and desire 
 to succeed in any undertaking. If the Sunday- 
 school is constantly training such helpers as 
 assistants, and testing them as substitutes, then 
 the changes that are bound to come in the 
 teaching force of any Sunday-school are not 
 so disastrous, for some one will be ready to 
 supply the need. 
 
 As has been hinted in previous studies, the 
 Sunday-school should lend valuable assistance 
 in making the church a social center for the 
 young people who need it. To be of real vital 
 interest to the girl, the Sunday-school must 
 touch her everyday life. It does that through 
 80 
 
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 
 the social side of its work. The organized class 
 giving socials, entertainments, enjoying lec- 
 tures and music, picnics, trolley parties, skat- 
 ing or camping has a decided influence for 
 good on all the members. I know of one such 
 organized class of girls eighteen and nineteen 
 years old whiqh met three times a month for 
 an entire year. They met one week "for fun," 
 the next to "go somewhere," or "to hear a 
 talk," or "to sew and read, and talk if we 
 want to," and the third for a "sing" to which 
 they invited members of the boys' classes. All 
 these meetings were popular, well attended, 
 and have meant a strong united class with a 
 splendid spirit. 
 
 The girl in her teens needs the Sunday- 
 school because of the help and uplift which its 
 teachings are bound to bring to her. Even if 
 she belongs to a class in its early teens which 
 is given over to the giggles, to wandering 
 thoughts, to all sorts of asides in more or less 
 noticeable whispers, to the continual admix- 
 tures of the Bible lessons and the events of the 
 week just passed or to come, — even though 
 as is often the case with the American girl, 
 she is thoughtless enough to forget to be either 
 reverent or courteous, still it pays for her to 
 come. She gets something, — often more than 
 we think. 
 
 8i 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 And the Sunday-school needs the girl in her 
 teens. It needs her devotion, her enthusiasm 
 and eagerness, her close touch with both the 
 real and ideal in life, that it may keep its 
 balance, stay in the real world of need, and not 
 walk far afield by paths of theory. The Sun- 
 day-school has awakened to its need of the 
 girl, and now at its door Ues the task of mak- 
 ing her feel more and more her need of it. 
 
VII 
 
 HER RELATION TO THE CHURCH 
 
 The girl in her teens, in common with all 
 humanity, needs the upward pull. Fresh air, 
 suitable clothing, nourishing food, so desirable 
 in all stages of her development, become, we 
 have seen, an absolute necessity during her 
 teens. If not supplied, her whole future is 
 doomed to pay the penalty ; and unless during 
 the period of the awakening and strengthening 
 of ideals, a steady, uplifting, spiritualizing 
 force has a definite influence upon the rapidly 
 changing and developing forces of her nature, 
 the chances are that her whole future will 
 pay the price neglect always demands. The 
 steady, upward pull is a necessity. 
 
 There are so many things in life that furnish 
 the downward pull. Even the more fortunate 
 girl, who lives in her own home and spends 
 the greater part of each day in the enlarging 
 atmosphere of a good public school, feels the 
 downward pull. In the most carefully selected 
 of select schools, the girl, though guarded 
 every moment, feels the downward pull of the 
 petty, selfish and mean. The girl in her teens 
 83 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 hard at work among the world's toilers is pain- 
 fully conscious of it in one or more of its 
 many forms. 
 
 In the struggle between the higher and the 
 lower — the upward and the downward pull — 
 humanity finds its growth and development. 
 If there is no struggle there is no strength. 
 The girl in her teens does not know all this — 
 her teacher does, and puts forth all her effort 
 to strengthen the upward pull. 
 
 As we study and observe the girl in her 
 development one question persistently follows 
 us. To what shall we look for this upward 
 pull? There are many answers: the home, 
 the school, friends, good environment, the 
 church. With the last we are especially con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Even the most open and avowed enemy of 
 the church of to-day would not hesitate to 
 place it definitely on the side of the upward 
 pull. Its history, teachings and ideals, like 
 its spires, point upward. It says reverently 
 and steadily to a world of busy men so much 
 engaged in the rush for mere things that they 
 find it easy to forget all else, two simple, 
 tremendously significant words — God is. It 
 says persistently, above the struggle for 
 power through possessions, — "Truth, Right- 
 eousness, Justice, Love, these alone mean hap- 
 84 
 
RELATION TO THE CHURCH 
 
 piness," and at some time during his progress 
 from childhood to old age man stops to listen. 
 The most natural and effective time to stop is 
 during the early teens. 
 
 Of course the church, heing made up of 
 humanity, has its weaknesses. As an upward 
 pulling force it is not perfect. Nothing is. 
 Its most loyal friends are the ones most con- 
 scious of its faults and failures. Its members 
 feel its weakness more keenly than the out- 
 side world possibly can, just as the members 
 of a family feel more deeply than the outside 
 world the weakness and failures of its mem- 
 bers in any particular. 
 
 But in spite of its errors of creed, its lack, 
 in many cases, of authority and initiative, and 
 its temptation to shun real problems, yet the 
 members do feel the power of its upward pull, 
 and the community in general is conscious 
 of it. 
 
 To place the girl in her teens where she 
 will feel most strongly the lifting power of 
 the church is the business of her parents and 
 teachers. 
 
 In the average community the girl has been 
 more or less in contact with the church from 
 her earliest years. Her estimation of its 
 value, its purpose and power, has been built 
 up through the years by what she has heard 
 8S 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 parents, companions and teachers say of it. 
 It is a refuge for the weak, a company of 
 people who think themselves better than oth- 
 ers, a respectable moral organization through 
 which men climb to higher social planes, a 
 necessary guardian of good in the community ; 
 or, the visible expression of the religion of 
 Jesus Christ, the highest and most potent 
 force in the world to-day for the conversion 
 and uplifting of mankind. Her opinion is in 
 accordance with the general opinion of those 
 in her immediate environment. 
 
 As she approaches her teens, if her parents 
 are not church people, through the influence 
 of the Sunday-school of which she is a mem- 
 ber she usually becomes a more or less regular 
 attendant upon the services of the church. If 
 her teacher is wise she does all in her power 
 to establish the habit of church attendance. 
 If the pastor has a thought and a word for 
 the younger members of his congregation the 
 girl, interested and helped, responds accord- 
 ing to her temperament. 
 
 About the time she enters her teens, if she 
 is a Sunday-school girl, she has had, through 
 Decision Day or in answer to the direct ques- 
 tion of her pastor or teacher, the opportunity 
 of saying, "I choose to be a Christian." If 
 her teaching has been careful and wise she will 
 86 
 
RELATION TO THE CHURCH 
 
 know what being a Christian should mean to a 
 girl of thirteen, and she will make the choice 
 gladly and of her own free will. Before she 
 is sixteen she will have met the question of 
 her direct relation to the church. Shall she 
 join it in its work in the world? If "joining 
 the church" is made the simple, sincere matter 
 that it really is, the average girl responds 
 easily and earnestly. Only those who year 
 after year have helped girls from fourteen to 
 sixteen decide to take the step can know the 
 genuine, loving, devoted spirit in which they 
 come to their decisions. 
 
 Through the weeks of instruction that fol- 
 low the decision, when the girl learns, under 
 her pastor's or teacher's direction, the history 
 of the church, the development of her own 
 denomination, and the statements of its creed, 
 the work the church has done, and is actu- 
 ally doing for the poor and outcast, the rich 
 and careless, her admiration for it deepens, 
 and all the love and devotion of her girl 
 heart goes out to Him whose wonderful life 
 and sacrifice have inspired ordinary men and 
 women to live in the world as real Christians. 
 
 After such instruction, when the Sunday 
 
 comes on which she is to publicly unite witt 
 
 the church she knows what she is doing and 
 
 why. She knows as fully as any one can 
 
 87 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 what she believes, for belief is a growth, and 
 life and experience always modify it. The 
 mystery of the communion service is to her as 
 clear as it is to any of us, and she prays as 
 truly and sincerely as the oldest and wisest. 
 
 How much of uplift to her whole life her 
 act has been can be known only to those who 
 year after year have walked home with her 
 after the service, received her notes so full of 
 joy, and watched her effort to live aright in 
 the weeks that follow. 
 
 So far in the relation of the church to the 
 religious and spiritual development of the girl 
 the steps have been successive, natural, and 
 easy, but now the hard part comes. 
 
 She is on Monday, after uniting with the 
 church, the same girl that she was on Satur- 
 day before doing so. If she had a bad temper, 
 she has it still; if she was easily tempted to 
 be insincere, selfish, sarcastic, careless, unkind, 
 the characteristics are with her still. She has 
 simply placed herself on the side of the up- 
 ward pull, and every one of us who comes 
 in contact with her should watch the struggle 
 against the downward pull never with con- 
 demnation and criticism, but always with sym- 
 pathy and assistance. 
 
 Here is where the church so often fails. 
 Having joined the church she is ever after 
 88 
 
RELATION TO THE CHURCH 
 
 expected to be good. "The girl has joined 
 the church, all is done," is a false and fatal 
 conclusion. 
 
 I have been watching with real interest a 
 young girl who, after a most happy engage- 
 ment, a beautiful wedding, a delightful con- 
 tinental trip, is learning to live in the prosaic 
 every day. She had forgotten that it is al- 
 ways there waiting for us. In her great up- 
 lift and happiness little things had not made 
 her as angry as before. But she found out 
 what could happen when "Harry" forgot to 
 order the cream for the dinner party at which 
 all her friends were present for the first time 
 in her new home. After her outburst of 
 anger she was so discouraged that she was 
 tempted to think the whole thing was a mis- 
 take, that she could not have loved him, and 
 she could never be happy again. She had 
 not reckoned with herself. The plain details 
 of everyday living reveal one to himself. He 
 finds he cannot live in the clouds, and that the 
 art of living harmoniously and finely in the 
 valley must be learned, and it takes time. 
 
 The girl in her teens after uniting with the 
 church and experiencing the uplift and stim- 
 ulus must come back to the every day. Like 
 my young friend, she so often thinks that she 
 will "never feel angry again." She does, and 
 89 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 with the failure to control herself or the quick 
 yielding to her special temptation comes the 
 feeling of utter discouragement. She is not 
 good enough to be a member of the church, 
 and it was a mistake. She needs help — her 
 mother or teacher — to make her see that even a 
 deep love can not in a moment overcome a 
 quick temper, nor uniting with the church 
 overcome the habit of the unkind word and 
 selfish act. It will give her comfort and cour- 
 age to know that one becomes a real Chris- 
 tian by successive steps, and it will take all 
 her life to accomplish the task. 
 
 The first thing a young member of the 
 church needs to help her become what we 
 want her to be, a sane, natural, happy girl, in- 
 terested in, enjoying and loving all the things 
 that belong to the normal girl in her teens, 
 is work. 
 
 She must have something to do, for unless 
 the emotions are given a sane, legitimate out- 
 let, she may come to the fatal conclusion that 
 religion is a thing apart from life, or there 
 may follow a lowering of ideals, or the mor- 
 bid introspection common to girls in their 
 teens, but which the Christian should escape. 
 
 So we must direct her thoughts from herself 
 to her companions. It is she who can establish 
 a bond of interest between the other girl and 
 90 
 
RELATION TO THE CHURCH 
 
 the church. She can bring the other girl 
 under its influence, and help her see what it 
 stands for in the world. 
 
 "No," said a girl to me at a conference, 
 "it isn't any of the speakers, or the books, or 
 sermons that have interested me; it is just 
 Edith and Alice. They 'are such splendid 
 girls and they just love the church and all 
 the work they are doing. They are having 
 such good times and are truly happy. I want 
 to understand it. Whatever it is I want it." 
 I have heard scores of girls say it in varying 
 phraseology. One girl influences another 
 more than we can, so we may set .her at work 
 with her companions. 
 
 But that is not work enough — and it is too 
 indefinite. She must have a part in the mis- 
 sion work, the social work, be interested in 
 the sick and unfortunate, and learn now that 
 the business of the church is to care about the 
 lonely women, the toiling women and their 
 children, the little, narrow, self-centered 
 women, and those who find it hard to be good, 
 just as its Lord and Master cared. Nothing is 
 more encouraging to those who love the church 
 than a large number of bright, attractive, nat- 
 ural girls, on whose hearts and lives this great 
 truth is beginning to make an impression 
 which must find expression. 
 91 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 The second thing necessary to the right 
 development of the girl in her teens is ideal 
 Christian women in the church of which she 
 is a member. The women of the church, 
 from those a little older than herself up to 
 those who for many years have been its sup- 
 port, must show to her what it means to be 
 a Christian woman in the church, community 
 and home. Alas for those girls who see that 
 it means only attendance upon the services of 
 the church when perfectly convenient, and 
 when minister and choir are entirely satisfac- 
 tory! Alas for those girls who see that it 
 means little more than a comfortable sense of 
 respectability and social opportunity! 
 
 Fortunate are those girls who in their early 
 teens see among the church members scores 
 of sane, true, large-hearted women interested 
 in every need, anxious to help, and wiUing to 
 serve in every way that time and means will 
 permit. 
 
 The church of whose women the girl in her 
 teens, watching with her keen eye, can say, in 
 
 her ardent way, "I'd rather be like Mrs. , 
 
 than any one I know — she is perfectly lovely," 
 is of real value as an uplifting, vitalizing force 
 in the world. 
 
 The girl in her teens needs the church to 
 furnish the upward pull and there is need 
 92 
 
7 
 
 RELATION TO THE CHURCH 
 
 of greater effort in every line and by every 
 member to bring her into contact with it. 
 
 The church needs the girl in her teens with 
 all the intensity of her power of devotion and 
 genuineness of her love; with all the strength 
 of her emotions so easily turned under right 
 conditions toward the best things in life. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE 
 
 One beautiful June Sunday I stood wait- 
 ing for my car at the transfer corner, think- 
 ing about the Sunday problem and watching 
 the crowd hurrying away to the parks and 
 the lakes, when a most interesting group of 
 girls passed. There were six or eight of them 
 about sixteen years old, and in their light 
 dresses, their fresh, sweet faces half hidden 
 by hats that were "too dear for anything," 
 they made a picture good to see. 
 
 They were evidently returning from Sun- 
 day-school, for most of them carried Bibles, 
 and, as I watched them out of sight, I was 
 plunged into a wilderness of questions as to 
 what that wonderful old Book, written in the 
 dim, hazy past under foreign skies, in lan- 
 guages almost forgotten, could possibly have 
 to do with gay, happy, laughing girlhood — in 
 the midst of the things of to-day. And I 
 knew that to the majority of girls in their 
 teens it means little. Most of them own it, 
 respect it, and feel a certain reverence for 
 what it says, but it plays little part in their 
 everyday lives. 
 
 94 
 
HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE 
 
 The average girl in her teens uses it more 
 or less in the preparation of her Sunday-school 
 lesson. She hears certain portions of it read 
 without comment in opening exercises in 
 school; in a comparatively few instances it 
 is read in the morning or evening at home. 
 That is practically all that most girls have to 
 do with the Book whose teachings have so 
 largely made possible the wealth of happiness 
 of the girlhood of to-day. 
 
 How to bring the girl in her teens into touch 
 with this Book of books so that it shall exert 
 upon her individual life its wonderful power 
 of transforming, purifying, and strengthening 
 character is a problem. 
 
 But those who have been trying hard to 
 meet it have learned some things. They have 
 found out that the girl in her teens knows lit- 
 tle of the history of the Book, and that when 
 she is told the story of how we got our Bible 
 she is intensely interested. Its wonderful his- 
 tory, from the time before it lay in parchment 
 rolls on monastery shelves and on through the 
 centuries until it reached the hands of ordinary 
 men and women, and the period of their strug- 
 gle to learn to read that they might know 
 what it said, stirs the imagination and awakens 
 a host of questions that lead to knowledge. 
 
 When she begins to understand what it has 
 95 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 cost to preserve the book, how not only men 
 and women, but boys and girls, have loved it 
 and died rather than betray it or disobey its 
 commands, it becomes to her a new book, 
 worthy of her study. 
 
 But the history of the Book, although it 
 is necessary and does deeply interest the girl 
 and increase her respect for it, is by no means 
 all we want her to have. 
 
 The fragmentary knowledge of Abraham 
 and David, Esther, Ruth and Paul which she 
 has gained in her childhood must be supple- 
 mented now by the knowledge of great periods 
 and what the world learned through them. 
 She needs to be shown what the Psalms and 
 some of the chapters of Isaiah and the other 
 prophets have meant to the literature, music 
 and art of the world. 
 
 I remember with pleasure the class of girls 
 sixteen and seventeen years old who studied 
 the books of Job and Jonah with me one year. 
 The dramatic element held us, and Job and 
 his friends, Jonah and his struggle, became 
 very real to us. Two years afterward one 
 of the girls, in talking about references to the 
 Bible in literature, said to me, "Well, whea* 
 they refer to Jonah or Job I'm safe, for thos« 
 two books I shall never forget." She can grasf 
 a book as a whole, remember it and enjoy it 
 96 
 
HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE 
 
 But the study of the Bible under guidance 
 and with every means used to make it inter- 
 esting and helpful is not all that we want for 
 our girl. She must be led to find in the Bible 
 personal inspiration and help. 
 
 Experience so far has taught me that unless 
 the girl in her teens is a member of a Chris- 
 tian Endeavor Society or kindred organization, 
 or a member of the church, she is not likely 
 to read the Bible for herself, nor is it easy 
 to interest her to do so. She may enjoy 
 poetry and really good literature, and be an 
 omnivorous reader, yet never read the Bible. 
 She has often told me frankly that she really 
 does not like to read it because it is not inter- 
 esting and she does not understand it. 
 
 We understand her feeling perfectly. The 
 phraseology is unfamiUar, and her knowledge 
 is not broad enough to help her with the con- 
 text ; and to do anything voluntarily with reg- 
 ularity, unless it is absolutely necessary, is not 
 easy for the average girl in her teens. But 
 every one interested in the future develop- 
 ment of the girl's personal religious life is 
 anxious to establish now, in her early teens, 
 the habit of reading every day the words that 
 have brought new life and salvation to the 
 world. 
 
 It needs no argument to show that any girl 
 
 97 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 is safer, finer, and less easily led into danger- 
 ous byways of thought and action if in be- 
 ginning the day, or when it closes, she takes 
 time to read "Blessed are the pure in heart : for 
 they shall see God," "Do unto others as ye 
 would that they should do unto you," or the 
 story of the Good Samaritan, the healing of 
 the blind, the parables, the thirteenth of First 
 Corinthians, or, "If any man thinketh himself 
 to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue 
 but deceiveth his heart, this man's religion 
 is vain," or the next verse, with its clear-cut 
 definition so plain that any girl can understand. 
 Through these and the other words of the 
 New Testament she is coming daily into touch 
 with the deepest, most fundamental truths to 
 which men have ever listened. More than 
 that, she is coming through these words into 
 touch with Christ. No girl can read day 
 after day the words he spoke or the record 
 of his works of compassion and love, the 
 story of his patient, brave endurance of the 
 cross, his faith that the disciples he loved 
 would carry on his mission, without becoming 
 a finer type of girl. And if after reading she 
 bows her head for a moment only, and sin- 
 cerely prays for strength to do right all 
 through the day, or when the day is over, asks 
 for pardon for what she has done amiss, then 
 98 
 
HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE 
 
 we need not fear that she will go far wrong 
 on her way through life. One may be in- 
 sincere under many circumstances, but one 
 is rarely insincere when, alone, at the begin- 
 ning or close of the day he reads the words of 
 that Book, and prays. So we, who long for 
 the best for our girl in her teens, are willing 
 to do anything in our power to help her es- 
 tablish the habit of sincere reading of the 
 teachings of Christ, and of genuine prayer for 
 strength to live them out every day of her life. 
 
 Oftentimes such little things help in form^^ 
 ing the habit. I know of one teacher success- 
 ful in reaching the secret recesses of girls' 
 hearts, who, with three of her fourteen-year- 
 old girls, read every night for a year the 
 same Bible chapters, she assigning them one 
 week in advance. After they read the short 
 selections they prayed for one another and 
 the members of the class not Christians. 
 Just how the prayers of those girls for their 
 friends could or did affect their lives none of 
 us can understand, but that they did have a 
 definite moulding influence on the lives of the 
 girls themselves and their relation to other 
 girls was plainly evident. 
 
 I know of one impulsive, imaginative, six- 
 teen-year-old girl who formed the habit of 
 reading, while retiring, a chapter or more from 
 99 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 the weak, sentimental, but nevertheless fasci- 
 nating, love stories which just then were her 
 delight. She found it hard to go to sleep, and 
 often lay for hours in a highly excited emo- 
 tional state, going over and over the words of 
 the hero and heroine. 
 
 At Christmas, an older girl whom she 
 greatly admired gave her a Year Book having 
 a Bible verse at the top of each page, followed 
 by quotations or forceful words of explanation. 
 She asked her young friend to read it the 
 very last thing every night, and underline with 
 pencil anything she thought especially fine or 
 true, and put a question mark beside anything 
 she did not understand, and every few weeks 
 they would look it over together. The six- 
 teen-year-old decided to learn the Bible verses. 
 Often she looked up the reference in the Bible. 
 She faithfully underlined, questioned, and 
 went to bed with some of the finest thoughts 
 in literature filling her mind. Any one who 
 heard her testimony, while in college, as to 
 what that year's reading meant to her might 
 be almost tempted to present year books to all 
 girls in their teens. 
 
 Another very earnest young teacher, in love 
 with girls, purchased for her class cheap New 
 Testaments and small unruled blank books. 
 She assigned a topic for a month's reading, 
 
HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE 
 
 such as faith, love, courage, justice, and asked 
 the girls to cut from the Testament all verses 
 on that subject, and paste them under the 
 proper headings. The result was a group of 
 girls reading every night on the assigned topic, 
 and at the end of the month able to read 
 from their blank books all that Christ and 
 the apostles had to say on that subject. Many 
 of the girls added quotations and poems refer- 
 ring to the special subject, thus enlarging their 
 own conception of it. 
 
 The girls valued their blank books highly, 
 and exhibited them with satisfaction. The 
 teacher did not seem especially proud of the 
 books, but exceedingly pleased that the class 
 had grown familiar with so many of the 
 verses. She had a right to feel gratified with 
 her work, for she was helping them to become 
 acquainted with the Book, just as I help my 
 girls in their teens in school to become familiar 
 with the encyclopaedia — by sending them to it 
 repeatedly, until they form the habit of con- 
 sulting it. 
 
 That many girls in their teens are steadied 
 and helped through hard experiences by the 
 words of comfort and encouragement which 
 they find in the Bible any teacher of experi- 
 ence in Sunday-school work knows. 
 
 I am looking now at the picture of the sweet, 
 
 lOI 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 strong face of a girl of seventeen. She is hard 
 at work helping support the family. The 
 father has tried many times to reform and 
 let drink alone, and as many times failed. 
 The girl can hardly endure the life at home, 
 yet for the sake of the younger children she 
 must stay. Recently, when I told her how 
 much I admired her, she said, "It has seemed 
 this year as if I couldn't keep on. I can't tell 
 you how much two verses on my calendar have 
 helped me. I keep saying them over and over, 
 'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,' and 
 'Fear not, I will help thee.' " 
 
 Another girl, struggling to overcome the 
 habit of exaggeration which has been a char- 
 acteristic of her family for generations, said 
 to me one day, "I think so often of that verse, 
 'With God all things are possible.' If it 
 weren't for that I would give up, for just as I 
 think I am improving I fail again, and it seems 
 as if I never could tell things as they are." 
 
 I have found many girls in their teens lonely, 
 discouraged, misunderstood, or in the presence 
 of great sorrow, turning to the words of the 
 Book, and really finding help and comfort. 
 
 If, then, the girl in her teens can be taught 
 something of the history of the Bible, — the 
 languages in which it has been written, the 
 methods by which it was compiled and trans- 
 
HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE 
 
 lated, and finally printed, — so that she will not 
 half believe that in some mysterious way it 
 dropped down from heaven, or else never even 
 ask where it came from; if she can be taught 
 that its men and women were real and lived 
 under real conditions in a real world; if she 
 can know something of their struggles, defeats 
 and victories, and learn to love their psalms 
 and poems ; if she can be led to see something 
 of their growth and development as they 
 waited for the Christ to come, then the Bible 
 will be to her a real book, not a fetish to be 
 worshiped afar off. 
 
 And if she can be led to seek in the Gospels 
 and letters of the New Testament help and 
 inspiration to live honestly and sincerely, then 
 the Bible will become a tremendous force for 
 righteousness in her daily life. 
 
 When she meets the hard things of life or 
 the temptations of leisure a girl so taught and 
 trained will have something to help her; and 
 such a girl, as she enters college and takes up 
 critical study of the Book, will have nothing 
 to fear. 
 
 The secret of the marvelous influence of the 
 Old Testament on human life lies in three 
 short words, — "And God said," and the secret 
 of the marvelous transforming power of the 
 New Testament lies in one word, "Christ" — 
 103 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 "Christ"— "Christ." When the girl in her 
 teens opens daily to read for herself what that 
 Book has to say of the leadings of Jehovah 
 and the teachings of Christ, she is on the road 
 to safety, — therefore the work of every teacher 
 is to help her to open it. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 HER RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY 
 
 The girls in her teens, although she is able 
 now and then through her imagination to 
 transfer herself to a land of day-dreams, where 
 all she desires is hers, for the most part is 
 obliged to live in the everyday, and often she 
 finds it hard. 
 
 But she is young — and one may always hope 
 when in her teens. If she is ill, health may 
 come in a few weeks, a month, a year at most. 
 If she works hard, she may always hope for a 
 "better place with more money," or by and by, 
 just in the future a little way, a happy home 
 of her own where she will have everything she 
 wants. 
 
 If she is struggling for an education, the 
 joy of what she will be able to do some day 
 sustains her. If she is a care-free girl with 
 no burdens, one whose parents give her every 
 advantage and strive to make her girlhood 
 happy, life is one great joy and the future 
 an even more wonderful dream. 
 
 But these girls, every one of them is 
 obliged to live in the ordinary world, and 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 we who realize it must so train them that 
 when they meet it in reality they will be able 
 to live happily. 
 
 One reason why there is so much misery 
 and unhappiness in home life to-day is because 
 the girl in her teens is not trained to live. 
 Even those who love her most say, "Oh, she's 
 young yet, there's time enough." Meantime 
 habits are formed and when the "time" 
 comes effective training is not possible. In 
 spite of hopes, castles, day-dreams, most girls 
 are destined to live amid the commonplaces of 
 life, and unless we prepare them, many will 
 fail to learn that 
 
 "The trivial round, the common task 
 Will furnish all we ought to ask; 
 Room to deny ourselves, a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God," 
 
 and so insure our happiness. 
 
 The Sunday-school is limited of course in 
 what it can do to guide the girl in the every- 
 day, so many other agencies enter into her 
 training, and yet we have seen that what we 
 teach on Sunday must influence her on Wed- 
 nesday as she settles some question, or we 
 have not really helped her. 
 
 As we try to plan how we may best help 
 her to live, we ourselves meet the question, 
 io6 
 
RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY 
 
 "What, after all, do we want her to be in this 
 world of the everyday?" 
 
 It is a little hard to answer, we want so 
 much for her, and yet it can all be summed 
 up in one sentence, "We want her to be com- 
 fortable to live with." 
 
 When we stop to think of what a flood of 
 blessing would come to this old world if all 
 the girls now in their teens were comfortable 
 to live with, and will be as they develop into 
 full womanhood, we know no effort should 
 be spared to make them so. 
 
 If the girl in her teens is comfortable to 
 live with she will be content in the place 
 where she is. She will have that sane satis- 
 faction which is not apathy but which makes 
 the best of what it has till something better 
 can be found. 
 
 Very early in her teens the girl begins to 
 pencil upon her face the first tiny lines which 
 in later years, grown deep and heavy, will 
 mark her discontent. There are so few faces 
 that show their owners have learned to be 
 content. 
 
 A sixteen-year-old girl friend of mine the 
 other day said in a discouraged way, "Well, 
 I wish Frances' mother felt differently about 
 their home. Her mother is such a lovely 
 cook, and their house is neat and pretty, too, 
 107 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 but she will never let Frances have any of the 
 girls to dinner because they haven't a maid. 
 She wouldn't let even me go upstairs to Fran- 
 ces' room, and I know it must be so pretty by 
 the way she describes it. It is too bad; we 
 just love her, and we could have such good 
 times. She can't accept our invitations very 
 often because her mother won't let her enter- 
 tain us. It is just too bad." 
 
 The girl was right. It was "too bad" to 
 deprive Frances of the society of these girls, 
 who, though they came from homes where 
 more money was expended, would have so 
 enjoyed her simple hospitality. 
 
 Although not meaning to do it, her mother 
 is teaching Frances to place wrong values 
 upon things, and her life will be narrowed 
 and made more and more unhappy because 
 the living-room is small, and the floor not of 
 hard wood, but painted around the outside of 
 the rug, and she will come to believe that hap- 
 piness consists of possessions. When she mar- 
 ries, like thousands of other girls she will be 
 unhappy unless her own new home is per- 
 fect in equipment from the start, she will 
 want the new, "up-to-date" things faster 
 than her husband's salary can supply them, 
 and the long line of misery that follows may 
 easily be hers. 
 
 1 08 
 
RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY 
 
 If, instead, her mother could demonstrate 
 that a neat, clean, and therefore attractive 
 home is a fit place in which to entertain any 
 friend by welcoming her daughter's friends for 
 a good time, how quickly for that girl things 
 would assume their right places in the scale 
 of importance. We can help her to be happy 
 and content by showing her in what very 
 simple ways good times may be had. 
 
 If the girl in her teens grown to woman- 
 hood is to be comfortable to live with she must 
 be trained to be kind. Kindness is born in 
 unselfishness, and if we expect her to be un- 
 selfish, the days of her teens must be her train- 
 ing days. She must be carefully guarded from 
 daily association with women who speak cyni- 
 cally of life, and shielded from close contact 
 with those whose conversation is invariably 
 the criticism of their neighbors. She must be 
 led to let her heart speak — the heart is rarely 
 unjust and seldom unkind. Her thoughts 
 must be continually turned, as were those of 
 Frances Willard and Alice Freeman Palmer, 
 toward her neighbors in need, until a world- 
 sympathy is born in her, and the joy of help- 
 ing makes her keen to help. The girl to whose 
 lips almost involuntarily spring the words 
 "Let me help you" will not find it so easy 
 to utter the cutting word or the phrase that 
 109 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 leaves a sting. A real interest in "the other 
 girl" will tend to make her unselfish. 
 
 If she is comfortable to live with she must 
 be thoughtful. Thoughtfulness also has its 
 birth in unselfishness. The girl wrapped up 
 in thoughts of herself has little time to be 
 concerned with others, and demands invari- 
 ably that she be the center -of the circle. She 
 does not make others comfortable and is not 
 good to live with. 
 
 The girl who is good to live with in the 
 world of the everyday, shares her joys and 
 pleasures with the family. How many times 
 I have seen a tired mother forget her cares 
 listening to the recital of her daughter's "good 
 times" ! Her petty little annoyances, her dis- 
 appointments, she keeps to herself. 
 
 After all, when we sum up the qualities of 
 the girl in her teens which endear her to every 
 one, and make her good to live with, we can 
 put them under the one word unselfish. If 
 she is this, then she will apply herself to her 
 studies; she will remember her mother's bur- 
 dens and not add to them; she will think of 
 all she owes to her father and show her grati- 
 tude to him; she will be a helpful friend to 
 the boys and girls with whom she associates, 
 and she will have a good time, as the unsel- 
 fish girl invariably does. By frequent illus- 
 
 IIO 
 
RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY 
 
 trations taken from life, the Sunday-school 
 teacher may hope to make her see how true 
 these things are. An absolutely unselfish girl 
 may be, as those in their teens say she is, "im- 
 possible," but the impossible can be made won- 
 derfully attractive by the teacher who can 
 picture the girl in her teens at her best. 
 
 In her life in the everyday, no matter what 
 her circumstances may be, the girl is con- 
 stantly tempted to live below her best. The 
 temptation to be disagreeable about the house- 
 hold tasks that fall to her, to forget the er- 
 rand she is asked to do, to be careless about 
 her room, to leave things for her mother to 
 look after and put away, to be impatient with 
 younger brothers and sisters — all these things 
 are so easy. Not to yield to them requires 
 constant watchfulness and struggle, and the 
 word of warning on the part of the teacher, 
 through story and illustration each Sunday, 
 helps the girl see these faults in all their mis- 
 erable littleness. 
 
 In her school life she meets the temptation 
 to neglect her studies, and to spend too much 
 time on the social side. Many girls are 
 tempted to yield to petty deceptions; some 
 are tempted to copy or exchange work ; many 
 are discourteous, and many more do nothing 
 to make school life happy for any except those 
 III 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 in their own "set." Some whose parents are 
 so unwise as to leave them without knowledge 
 or protection fall into temptations from which 
 they never escape. 
 
 The high-school girl needs from the earnest 
 lips of a woman she admires the weekly word 
 of warning, and the oft-repeated plea to keep 
 herself pure and fine. 
 
 If the girl in her teens is in business she 
 meets daily the temptation to let her own 
 interests interfere with her employer's, to 
 waste time, to give excuses, to indulge in 
 pleasures that do not uplift, but mean late 
 hours, little sleep, and physical unfitness for 
 work. She needs every Sunday the practi- 
 cal words of warning and inspiration straight 
 from the heart of a woman who understands 
 her temptations and can help her to over- 
 come them. 
 
 Wherever the girl in her teens finds her- 
 self she needs some one to make her want 
 to be her best amidst all the things which tend 
 to pull her down. She needs strong words 
 that will show her to herself in all her weak- 
 ness making her ashamed if she has yielded, 
 and at the same time arousing in her the de- 
 termination not to yield again. 
 
 When the teacher understands the girl in 
 her teens and lives close enough to her to 
 
 112 
 
RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY 
 
 become her confidante, she knows how hard 
 the fight to be good and fine and strong in 
 the everyday is, and she realizes more and 
 more as her experience broadens that while 
 the girl's love for her parents is a great in- 
 centive toward right living, and desire to 
 please those whom she greatly admires is a 
 help, and while unhappiness and other con- 
 sequences of evil-doing act as deterring agents, 
 yet no one of these things, nor all of them 
 together, will prove strong enough to keep 
 her pure and honest and make her unselfish. 
 
 What will? Nothing will make her ab- 
 solutely perfect. Only one thing, so far as 
 I know, will keep her safe and strong in 
 the life of the everyday. That thing is the 
 consciousness that she lives in the presence 
 of God, accepting Jesus Christ as her example 
 and her Helper in her effort to live aright. 
 1 A girl conscious that she lives out each day 
 under the pure, kind eye of an infinite per- 
 sonality, interested in her efforts toward right- 
 eousness, and that she need not be afraid to 
 ask for strength or for pardon, finds it easier 
 to do right and harder to do wrong than the. 
 other girl who leaves him out of the struggle.) 
 
 In all the hundreds of girls and women I 
 have met, the most thoughtful, generous and 
 unselfish, the purest in heart and mind, those 
 "3 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 richest in the finer traits of humanity, have 
 been conscious of the presence of God in the 
 world of the everyday. 
 
 They live as in the presence of a perfect 
 father, and live aright, not because men see, 
 but because he sees, and they are able to live 
 as they' do because they ask for help and re- 
 ceive it. If we are to be of real help to the 
 girl in her teens, this consciousness of the 
 reality of God we must give to her. 
 
 I have so often seen it help in the lives of 
 individual girls. I am thinking now of Vivian, 
 whose parents had given her up in despair. 
 She was careless, rude, and untruthful. In 
 school her teachers considered her "a bad 
 girl." The Sunday-school teacher who took 
 her class when she was fifteen was one to 
 whom the Christ was very real. She talked 
 about him reverently, as if he were a real 
 friend and a great help in everyday life. She 
 interested Vivian. At Christmas she gave 
 her Hoffman's "Christ." Vivian put it on 
 her bureau, dusted the picture every day, and 
 thought about it often. The teacher loaned 
 her books of the sort which made Christ seem 
 a real friend. She began to think of him as 
 such and to pray that he would help her over- 
 come the things that everybody despised. She 
 read "What would Jesus do?" several times. 
 114 
 
RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY 
 
 She began to feel that God saw and cared, and 
 as she worded it, "I felt that in all these hard 
 things Christ would help me, and I asked him 
 many times every day to make me do as he 
 would." 
 
 Her room showed that something had come 
 to Vivian. A quietness came into her con- 
 versation. She treated her mother with a 
 gentleness that was so different that her 
 mother cried when she told the teacher about 
 it. The girls saw the difference. Twice when 
 she had been untruthful she went to her teach- 
 ers and confessed it. She made a desperate 
 struggle to speak accurately. Her father 
 called her a changed girl, and his face showed 
 his joy over the change. She is to-day one 
 of the sweetest, strongest young women I 
 know, prominent in her college and trusted 
 and loved by scores of girls. 
 
 She is one of many whose lives I have seen 
 changed, and as the years pass, and I see the 
 power of the Christ still working miracles in 
 girls' lives, I long for more teachers like that 
 one who opened Vivian's eyes. 
 
 The greatest thing which the teacher can do 
 for the girl in her teens is to open her eyes 
 to a real Christ, for then all the incentives for 
 pure, unselfish living in the commonplaces of 
 life's "everyday" will be hers. 
 "S 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 HER TEACHER 
 
 When for a moment one remembers the girl 
 in her teens, the long line that lives in the mem- 
 ory from those just thirteen up through the 
 sweetest and prettiest at sixteen, to the beau- 
 tiful, graceful, and dignified ones just twenty, 
 it makes a picture hard to equal. 
 
 There is such evident joy in just living! 
 When one catches a glimpse of the groups in 
 their light dresses, with hair ribbons of every 
 size and color according to the wearer's inter- 
 pretation of the latest fashion, wending their 
 way to the high school, he feels that life is in- 
 deed a glorious summer morning. Though 
 sighs and complaints may be heard over les- 
 sons too long and too difficult, they are not 
 very deep, and are soon forgotten ; though low 
 marks do make very serious students with 
 minds concentrated on work for a few days 
 after report cards are out, yet with the ma- 
 jority the depression is short-lived, and life is 
 sunshine once more. 
 
 When as whistles blow and factory gates 
 swing wide, one catches a glimpse in the early 
 ii6 
 
HER TEACHER 
 
 morning of the girl in her teens going to work, 
 he hears snatches of happy laughter and jest- 
 ing. No matter how hard the work, it cannot 
 crush out the laughter in the heart of the girl 
 in her teens; the good times after work is 
 over or at the week end when she puts on her 
 ribbons and gay attire make easier the crash of 
 machinery and less painful the aching muscles. 
 
 The girl in her teens is glad she is alive, and 
 her evident and keen enjoyment of a world 
 which some of her elders have found hard and 
 a little disappointing does more to cheer and 
 brighten the dull gray of the commonplace 
 than she knows, or than we stop to remember. 
 
 As we think of this long procession of the 
 girl in her teens which memory can so easily 
 recall, and then see in imagination the host of 
 those who call themselves her teachers, we are 
 tempted to cry, "Her teachers ! What manner 
 of beings are they who pretend to instruct, en- 
 lighten and guide all this energy, this fascinat- 
 ing line of possibihty and promise !" 
 
 It is easy to write or speak of the "ideal" 
 teacher for all this fresh young Hf e, filled with 
 inexpressible longings for success and happi- 
 ness. But the study of the very human and 
 very real teacher, ideal only in the highest 
 sense, in that she is struggling after perfection, 
 will be much more practical and helpful to us. 
 "7 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 Should the teacher of girlhood in the years 
 of the teens ever be a man ? 
 
 Yes, there have been many fine, successful 
 teachers whose strength and manly qualities, 
 whose sincere devotion to Christ and his teach- 
 ings, have had a lasting influence for good 
 upon the girl in her teens. 
 
 It is a good thing for the girl to see the 
 world and its relation to moral and religious 
 life through the eyes of a far-seeing man. It 
 is a help to her to get his mental grasp of situ- 
 ations as from week to week they follow to- 
 gether the life of Christ and his teachings or 
 seek to understand the characters of Old Tes- 
 tament days. 
 
 A fine man's frankness, sincerity, and gen- 
 eral freedom from the annoyance of little 
 things prove a stimulus and a help to the girl. 
 It is almost unnecessary to say that he must be 
 the right sort of man, large-hearted, strong, 
 and free from all suggestion of the "goody- 
 goody." 
 
 However, it has been my experience that 
 while a man makes a most efficient teacher for 
 the class during the hour of the Sunday-school 
 session, he cannot guide and influence a girl's 
 life in the everyday as can the right sort of 
 woman. Unless he has a home and a wife 
 thoroughly interested in his work, or herself 
 ii8 
 
HER TEACHER 
 
 active in the work of the Church, he can do 
 little in a social way during the week. If he is 
 a successful, hard-working man he has little 
 time to think of the girls or their needs except 
 on Sunday, and unless he is a man of wide 
 experience or has daughters of his own he 
 does not understand girls, and must per- 
 force deal in generalities. 
 
 In this matter, as everywhere in life, there 
 are exceptions, and no hard and fast law can 
 be laid down, but my experience thus far has 
 been that, all things considered, a womanly 
 woman is best fitted to meet the many needs of 
 the girl in her teens. 
 
 She must be a womanly woman, else she will 
 have forgotten her own girlhood days and can- 
 not come near enough to the girl in her teens 
 to appreciate her need, nor will she have the 
 personality that wins her confidence and love. 
 The cold, hard, mechanical sort of woman one 
 occasionally finds in charge of a class of girls 
 is not the one whose influence will be felt in 
 the years to come. 
 
 We have seen again and again in previous 
 chapters that the teacher of the girl in her 
 teens must be injove^with life. If she has 
 found it hard, she must not let that embitter 
 her. The fact that she has met hardships and 
 conquered them, has met sorrow and it has 
 119 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 only deepened her sympathy and broadened her 
 outlook on life, makes her a real inspiration to 
 the girls who meet her each week. 
 
 I am thinking now of such a woman, into 
 whose life one heavy sorrow after another has 
 come. At thirty she is alone in the world, hav- 
 ing lost in ten years parents, husband and two 
 children. Yet there is no bitterness in her life. 
 She is not in any sense a cynic. More than 
 twenty girls, from sixteen to nineteen years of 
 age, who make up her class, leave the presence 
 of that sweet, strong woman with her tender, 
 sympathetic spirit, and her calm, steady faith, 
 able all the week to live better, more whole- 
 some lives because they have been with her for 
 one hour. She never speaks of herself, but 
 often of courage, of hope, of making the best 
 of things, of giving all one can in service to the 
 world, of unselfish, cheerful living, and the 
 girls listen and believe that all she says is true 
 and possible. 
 
 The teacher must be an optimist. She is not 
 self-deceived, she sees the faults of the girl in 
 her teens. She is conscious of the thoughtless- 
 ness, the utter lack of courtesy, the love of the 
 extreme in everything, and the greater faults 
 of insincerity and pretense that characterize 
 to so great an extent the girlhood of to-day. 
 But while she is pained she is not dismayed. 
 
HER TEACHER 
 
 She is a good diagnostician. She examines her 
 individual patients, finds the weak places, dis- 
 covers the cause of the disease, and then goes 
 to work systematically to eradicate it, trust- 
 ing to the normal, unaffected organs and tis- 
 sues to aid in restoring perfect health. She 
 believes in and uses preventive measures and 
 they pay. 
 
 The teacher must herself be an example in 
 thoughtfulness and courtesy, respectful to 
 those higher in office, and willing to co-operate 
 with, instead of criticizing, those who have 
 plans by which they hope to add to the effici- 
 ency of the school as a whole. 
 
 None of these things are lost upon the keen- 
 eyed girl in her teens; indeed, the teacher's 
 dress, even the condition of her gloves, makes 
 an impression and has an influence. 
 
 It has become a truism that to be successful 
 in teaching one must know the pupil ; yet only 
 last week I met a teacher anxious for a new 
 course of study which would interest her class 
 of girls sixteen and seventeen years of age, 
 who revealed in conversation the fact that she 
 knew practically nothing of the girl's homes. 
 She did not even know the section of the city 
 in which many of them lived, had made no 
 calls and could tell the occupation of only two 
 of the fathers. She did not know for what the 
 
 121 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 girls were preparing themselves, nor any of 
 their hopes or desires, and she had taught the 
 class for two years. She said the girls were 
 not interested, and did not prepare assigned 
 work. 
 
 This type of teacher is fast disappearing, but 
 wherever she exists the fact that the class 
 seems to be "not interested" indicates very 
 clearly that those who insist that the teacher 
 must know the girl are right. 
 
 In the series of studies of the girl in her 
 teens an article appeared in The Sunday School 
 Times^ giving the opinions of several hundred 
 girls as to what constitutes "a lovely teacher," 
 and according to the statements of these girls, 
 a lovely teacher is, "pleasant," "fair to every- 
 body," "treats every one alike," and "is inter- 
 ested in what you are doing." "She writes 
 notes to you when you are ill," "calls on you," 
 "is kind and patient," "makes the lesson inter- 
 esting," "explains what you don't understand," 
 and "knows a great deal." 
 
 Upon these as necessary qualifications of "a 
 lovely teacher," the girl in her teens from all 
 sorts of homes and from various parts of our 
 country is agreed, and as we think about it we 
 feel inclined to trust her analysis. 
 
 When the average teacher tests herself by 
 
 ' "A Lovely Teacher," March S, 1910. 
 
 122 
 
HER TEACHER 
 
 these standards, she finds deficiencies, but they 
 are not discouraging ones, because every char- 
 acteristic named by the girls is possible to every 
 teacher. 
 
 She can make things interesting if she is in- 
 terested and takes time to prepare her lesson 
 material. It is a never-failing source of sur- 
 prise to discover what interesting material, — 
 anecdotes, illustrations, pictures and informa- 
 tion, — can be found upon every subject when 
 one is looking for it. 
 
 It is perfectly possible for the average 
 teacher to be "pleasant" — to carry about with 
 her the atmosphere in which work becomes 
 a pleasure and difficult problems are just things 
 to be conquered. This atmosphere of cheer- 
 ful hopefulness makes everything easy. For 
 many teachers it is the natural attitude toward 
 life and work, which comes from constant 
 association with eager, buoyant youth. If it 
 is not natural it may be cultivated. 
 
 "Notes" and "calls"— acts of thoughtful 
 kindness on the part of the teacher when ill- 
 ness or trouble enters a home, may be small 
 things in themselves, but they mean much to the 
 adolescent girl, and they bring their own re- 
 ward. They also are possible to every teacher. 
 
 The confidence of a girl is more easily gained 
 if one, to use her own phrase, "really likes" 
 123 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 her. If a teacher knows her pupil, that is, sees 
 her as an individual, learns her ambitions, 
 longings, hopes and fears, she does "like" her. 
 It is almost impossible not to like the average 
 girl when one knows her. Every teacher can 
 learn to teach individuals, not classes, and 
 girls, not subjects alone. 
 
 The wise men of the past have told us, and 
 experience and observation have proved, that 
 we grow to resemble that which we admire. 
 Admiration means imitation, therefore the 
 necessity that those who are striving to awaken 
 the best in the girl in her teens be those she 
 can and does admire, and have traits of char- 
 acter she ought to imitate. 
 
 There never was a time in the history of re- 
 ligion when so many tools and such fine equip- 
 ment for service were ready for those who 
 want to be skilled workmen, and the teachers 
 who desire the skill to make their work on 
 Sunday really count in life every day in the 
 week, have but to begin just where they are 
 and progress as fast as possible. Bible classes 
 for those who want and need to know more of 
 the Book they teach are easy of access to many, 
 and courses of study are open to all. The 
 training class, where the characteristics of the 
 various ages, and the needs of pupils, and how 
 to meet them, may be intelligently considered, 
 124 
 
HER TEACHER 
 
 is possible in any community, and good corre- 
 spondence courses are now available. 
 
 If one desires to do so it is perfectly possible 
 for him to become a better teacher for the sake 
 of those whom he instructs. For it is in de- 
 sire, after all, that action is born, and that 
 which one greatly desires he will seek after. 
 To help the girl in her teens see the best in life 
 and desire it, we have said, is the business of 
 her teacher. Through the physical, mental, 
 and spiritual sides of her nature, the teacher is 
 to lift the girl to the place where she can see 
 for herself. 
 
 There are so many girls all over our country, 
 and in the farthest corners of the earth, to-day 
 rendering splendid service to the world, some- 
 times in the shelter of their own homes caring 
 for their children, sometimes in great hospitals, 
 or lonely outposts as nurses, sometimes as 
 teachers or missionaries, often as servants of 
 every sort, who are living with a broad out- 
 look and deep, sympathetic insight, because 
 somewhere, back in the teens, by the patient 
 effort of teachers they were lifted out of their 
 narrow selves to the place where they were 
 able to catch a glimpse of the real meaning 
 of life. 
 
 Finding it impossible one day to make my 
 way through the crowds on the street waiting 
 
 125 
 
THE GIRL IN HER TEENS 
 
 for a procession to pass, I stopped, and stand- 
 ing back a little from the curb watched the 
 eager faces gazing up the street. Right in 
 front of me stood a group of men in their 
 working clothes, and in their midst a tall, 
 broad-shouldered expressman, explaining the 
 reason for the "parade." In a moment the 
 sound of brass instruments burst upon us, a 
 line of policemen swung into sight, the crowd 
 of small boys following close beside the uni- 
 formed men, their eyes on the flying banners, 
 and keeping step as only boys can. 
 
 Suddenly above the noises of the street, 
 above the commands of the officers and the 
 music of the band, I heard a little, thin, shrill 
 voice from the crowded corner where the men 
 stood, cry out, "Lift me up so I can see !" It 
 was a street child, a little girl, whose dress and 
 face showed that neither money, time, nor 
 thought had been expended upon her. She 
 looked so tiny as she stood there trying to peer 
 through the crowd at the procession in the 
 street. But she was not afraid. Again it 
 came, "Lift me up, I say, so I can see!" 
 Eager, insistent, filled with desire, the voice 
 attracted the attention of the men. There was 
 a moment's hesitation, and then with that look 
 one loves to see upon the face of a strong man, 
 the expressman stooped and picked her up. 
 126 
 
HER TEACHER 
 
 As he held her there, high above the heads of 
 the others, one little arm went round his neck, 
 and she "held on tight" while the other hand 
 pointed at horses, banners and men, and she 
 called out again and again in her joy and de- 
 light, "Now I can see, I can see everything!" 
 The procession passed. He placed her on 
 the sidewalk, and as the crowd scattered she 
 hurried away, satisfaction written upon her 
 small face. But as I walked slowly back to- 
 ward ihe great school buildings on the hill, 
 her voice rang in my ears, "Lift me up so I can 
 see !" And I knew that that is the unconscious 
 cry of the childhood of the world to the teach- 
 ers of the world ; that those words are the plea, 
 often unexpressed, of the girlhood of to-day — 
 "Lift me up — so I can see !" And I know that 
 those who answer must themselves have eyes 
 opened by the Christ, to see, and hearts quick- 
 ened by his power, to lift. 
 
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