The power which rescues the drifting girl is a power outside herself. It may be a call from the bank of the stream which causes her to pick up her oars and leave the current, at the call of danger, in answer to a cry for help; in times of sorrow and illness, many a drifting girl has come ash.o.r.e and rendered n.o.ble service. Those who thought they knew her looked on with unconcealed surprise and said to one another, "I didn"t think she had it in her." Yes, it was in her. There, undreamed of by those who saw her drifting. The drifting girl has within her all the possibilities. That is the pity of it. As she drifts she may lose oars, chart and compa.s.s and in the stress of the storm that is bound to come be carried out into the sea of darkness, or be wrecked upon the shoals or sandbars that line the stream of life.
A wise teacher, awakened parents, a good friend, a live church, a great book, these have the opportunity of pulling the girl out of the current, and steadying her until she fastens her life to the Ideal which can hold her.
I can see now the plain, dreamy face and great black eyes of the girl of whom parents and relatives said as they looked at her, "What will she ever amount to?" Their faces betrayed their own conviction that she would amount to nothing. She tried piano but concluded that the training necessary to make her a teacher would take too long and took up stenography. After a few weeks she decided that she was unfitted for the work and would rather be a nurse. Some weeks were spent at home just thinking about it, then she began her training. At the end of the period of probation she left--she knew she could never be a nurse. She spent the days reading, sewing a little, taking pictures in the woods and along the sh.o.r.e near her home and tinting them. She drifted through the months, through a year. One day she posed a group of children, watched her chance and caught them all unconscious and natural, interested in their pails and shovels and the tunnel she had helped to dig. The mothers of the children saw the picture. Beautifully tinted it seemed alive and they were enthusiastic. The next week she chanced to see a nine year old fishing with a child"s faith. The perfect stillness of the usually active little body, the expectant look on the small face charmed her and in a moment, her camera had them. Every one who saw the picture exclaimed at its naturalness and life and a friend who believed she saw a future for the girl took it to the best photographer in the city. That night the photographer"s call anch.o.r.ed the drifting girl. He made her feel that he had discovered an artist for which the city and many outside of it had been waiting. He fired her imagination and awakened her ambition. She felt that she had a real mission in reproducing all the sweet simplicity and naturalness of the child. She worked hard, the artistic temperament became trained and both fame and money came to the girl who would probably still have been drifting had not some one helped her find her work.
To criticize the drifting girl, even though she sorely tempts one to criticism of her, is not enough. To preach to her on the evil of drifting along without aim or purpose, just letting the days slip past, is not enough. The friends of the drifting girl must help her find her work and her mission and inspire her with the belief that she has both.
And there are the girls who drift because strong, capable, efficient mothers cannot conceive of them as anything but "little girls," cannot realize that they have grown up and continue to plan for them, to make all their decisions and choices as they did when their daughters, now twenty, were children of ten. This sort of girl needs sympathy and help, for in the years when her own powers should be developing they sleep.
Her mother, though with the best motives and intentions in the world, is compelling her to drift through the years that should be filled with experience and effort and when the time comes that she must be left to herself and depend upon her own resources, her state is pitiful. The girl in the later teens and early twenties needs direction, advice and counsel but if she is to be saved from drifting she must learn to think for herself.
There is another girl who drifts, not aimlessly about, but downstream.
She has lost her ideals. She has ignored the still small voice that tried to save her, until now it seldom speaks. One and another of her friends have been with her in the current but have left her and made their way to safety. Only those from whom at first she shrank are with her now. She has reached the place where the current is strong and rapid and escape is doubtful. Her mother still believes her good, her father still trusts her, but before long they will have to know. She began by saying not "I meant to," but "I didn"t mean to, I didn"t think it was wrong," not "I will do it tomorrow," but "I will never do it again." But she did it again and yet again. She let go of the help that the church offered and gave and went to the pleasure parks on Sunday. She let go of a good friend who held her to the truth, and made a companion of the girl who helped her invent the things she told her mother when she came home very late. She let go of the good books little by little and read the foolish stories that were exciting and absolutely impossible. She let go of the little courtesies and one by one of the laws that good society demands that its girls shall obey. She let go of modesty and in dress and speech allowed herself to drift into the current where it is swift and black.
If only parents had watched more closely, if girl friends had been stronger, and older friends wiser, it would have been so easy when the current just touched her and she was still near to all that is pure and good. But she is drifting--drifting more and more rapidly farther and farther downstream. Now and then she looks back, remembers all the ideals she once dreamed to reach and makes a feeble struggle to resist but the current bears her on. Only some mighty Power can save her.
To the girl who "means to," and "intends," to the girl who dreams and waits and dreams again, to the girl who has let go and is in the current this chapter throws out the challenge--_Act now._ You can! There is help. Take it.
IX
THE GIRL WITH HIGH IDEALS
Ideals make men and women and the process of ideal making begins in childhood. A great deal has been written and said about the value of the early ideals born in the home, but too much cannot be said, and the value of the influence of good homes and parents whose ideals are high cannot be overestimated. The girl whose home life during the first seven years has not brought to her the high ideal must struggle all her later life to build up and intrench in her mind what might have been hers without conscious effort. Very early in her life the little girl reveals in her play, in her conversation, in her countless imitative acts, the ideals which are being formed.
One day a little four year old told a lie in my presence. Her mother looking the child straight in the eyes, said, "Did Esther tell true?"
For a moment the child wavered then nodded her head and said, "Yes, Esther tell true." The mother simply said, "Very well" in the coldest of tones. After a moment the little girl turned to her dolls. She took them to a party, brought them safely back and carefully tucked them into bed. Then she sat quietly looking at them. Finally she took one from the group, placed it in the little chair, very straight and said "Look at me! Did "oo tell true? "Oo _didn"t_ tell true. Naughty girl." A sigh followed. Then slowly Esther came over to her mother, ignoring my presence. Her lips quivered and smoothing her mother"s hand she said sadly, "Esther didn"t tell true. Naughty, naughty girl." The little girl at four years of age had her ideal of a good girl and she acted according to its dictation. She must "tell true." At fourteen she is a remarkably truthful girl and very accurate in her statements. Through fear, that mother as a child had become untruthful and in later years had a bitter struggle with the temptation to sacrifice the truth to save herself any annoyance. She determined to give to her own little daughter an ideal of the beauty of truth which should save her, and she succeeded.
Many a little ten-year-old girl has fine ideals of truth, unselfishness and honor and they steady her through the teen years when temptations press hard.
The twelve-year-old girl on the edge of the African jungle arranges her hair in "mop" fashion because that headdress represents her ideal of beauty. Rings in the nose, wonderful decorations of ankles and toes, represent ideals of fashion and beauty. The girl in j.a.pan, China or the Philippines thinks she has made herself beautiful when she has arrayed herself in accordance with her ideals. We often term her "awful" and "ridiculous," shrinking even from her picture and she makes sarcastic remarks, laughs heartily and never fails to express her curiosity regarding us and our strange fancies and fashions.
It is our _ideals_ which act as a great commander-in-chief and we follow in obedience to their commands. Our country needs today more than ever before, the girl with high ideals, for it is when ideals are lowered that character is weakened and sin and evil have their opportunity.
There are many things in the life and surroundings of the girls of today that tend to lower and dim their ideals which did not enter at all into the lives of the girls in our grandmother"s and great grandmother"s time, and the girls of today must be stronger if they are able to resist them. Our great-grandmothers lived in the home and did not enter into business life. It is hard for the wide awake business girl of today to imagine how that girl of long ago managed to enjoy life. But monotonous as her life often was, she was spared many things. She never rode alone in trains and trolleys nor learned to jostle and push through crowds.
She was not compelled to return home late at night without proper escort as countless girls are today. She never spent the evening on the streets, nor was she obliged to join the great army of girls who today live alone in boarding houses in great cities, suffering from discomforts and desperate loneliness. Her parents were more careful than the majority of parents today and she knew what _protection_ meant.
It is because these things are so that one feels like giving added praise to the girls who today _are_ girls of high ideals, who refuse to let the carelessness of the times in which they live gain entrance to their hearts to tarnish those ideals.
A short distance up the sh.o.r.e as I write I can hear the roar of the tide as it rushes into the very center of a great rock of granite. The geologist can find in that ma.s.s of rock the tiny crevice where the water first gained entrance. It has split it asunder because it was able to gain entrance through a little crack and each day sent in its drops of water where now with that roar rushes the tide. Farther along the sh.o.r.e is a solid block of granite. Its face is polished smooth by the dashing waves. There is not a crack in it, not a tiny crevice. It presents its splendid, shining surface to the great sea but offers it no opportunity for entrance.
One cannot help wishing with all his soul that we may have more and more girls who are like that bit of solid granite, strongly resisting those things that seek a tiny crevice by which to enter. For we have so many who through some weak spot have let the tide of evil in and slowly it has done its work until now the once strong and fine ideals lie broken and beaten by the waves.
The strong girls of high ideals are with us and it is a comfort and a joy to look into their young faces so full of promise and of courage.
We find them among the very rich and among the very poor as well as among the girls who live in comfort with neither riches nor poverty to make things exceedingly hard.
Irene is one of the girls who amidst poverty and sin has been able to keep her ideals high. Her home is poor because her father, a mechanic, who _can_ earn good wages is a hard drinker. Her mother, an honest, clean, hard working woman, is nervous and fretful, worn out by the hard things she has had to meet. It is a quarrelsome household and when the father comes home intoxicated the law is obliged often to interfere. One of the boys was expelled from school because his language is so dreadful. Amid this environment the girl lives. She studies her lessons in school and at the library. Her mother constantly urges her to give up school and go to work but an uncle who furnishes her meager supply of dresses, shoes, coats and hats, says it would only make her father feel that he could give still less to the family"s support and so she continues to attend. Every evening she helps her mother and on Sat.u.r.day works hard for a neighbor with only a pittance for pay.
The school and the Sunday-school have furnished all her ideals and she is holding on to them while her father taunts her with being a "saint,"
and the girls of the neighborhood tempt her to join with them in the things she knows are wrong. The hour on Sunday is a great help and on Monday she loses herself in her lessons and enjoys her school friends.
She is only sixteen and she cannot help hoping that things will be better soon. But Wednesday there is another dreadful quarrel, bitter words and her father"s drunken threats. When late at night all is quiet and she creeps into bed beside her little sister, her ideals seem far, far away, out of her reach, but she says, "I _must_ reach them, I _must_, I _will_." And so day after day she presents to all the waves of discouragement and evil the strong, granite-like determination that will not let the tide come in.
Strong as she is she does not excel another girl surrounded by extravagant wealth, praised, flattered and pampered, trained to think of one thing supremely, and that _herself_. But she is a girl of high ideals. When a little child her old nurse told her the stories and taught her the prayers that she never forgets and helped her feel a deep sympathy for all who suffer and have need. A fine young uncle who has used his wealth to comfort the old and save the sick, told her many a tale that stirred her soul, and her admiration for the young man of millions who worked as hard every day as any man in his office but never for himself, helped in forming her own ideals. And so she reads and studies, dreams and plans the good she will do some day, meanwhile helping in every way open to her and standing firmly for the things she knows are right, resisting with granite-like determination the onslaught of the waves of self-indulgence and the tides of wild extravagance and display.
The girl of high ideals is everywhere. Every school can claim her.
Despite teasing, sneers and laughter, she remains true to her ideals.
She is not a book-worm but she studies, she is not prudish but she is high minded and pure, she has fun but it is wholesome and clean and kind.
She is found in every shop, every department store is aware of her presence. Honest, attentive, true, interested in her work, following amidst many insidious temptations her own high ideals.
Every college knows her. She resists the petty sins of college life. She banishes jealousy and self-a.s.sertion. Sn.o.bbishness she will not tolerate. She seeks no honors save those fairly won. Keen, alert, pure and true, capable of sacrifice and hard tasks, sympathetic with all need, a lover of true sport and real fun she represents the college girl of high ideals.
Every factory has her among its operatives. A good worker doing honest work, refusing to allow the stain of coa.r.s.e jests to touch her, or the temptations which come with low wages and great fatigue to enter her life. Again and again she has revealed her ideals in moments of disaster and death. It is hard to find words to express one"s admiration for the factory girl as she holds to her high ideals.
Many a kitchen knows her. Neat, clean, honest, capable, happy in her work, resisting all the temptations that come through loneliness and deadly routine, she clings to her ideals with courage.
Every set in society knows her; turning her back upon temptations to excess, vanity, pride, scorning all forms of gossip, neither listening to, nor repeating the words that "they" say, she keeps her mind and heart fixed upon the undimmed ideals she has set for herself.
Many a schoolroom and office know her, the girl who does her best work though no one sees and none commend, refusing to lower her ideals in obedience to subtile suggestions or definite temptations; a girl who does what is expected of her and more, who puts her heart into her work and glorifies it.
The girl, whatever her station in life, whatever her occupation, who has kept her ideals high has the right to be happy. She can afford to be light-hearted, to enjoy fun and frolic and to get the most out of everything, for she need not spend days in regret, nor wet her pillow with tears of remorse. Nothing in the world can make up for the loss of a pure and high ideal. If girls could see the sad faces and know the suffering hearts of the women who in girlhood forsook their ideals, they would understand.
If a girl of high ideals is thinking about them now and knows that she has of late been tempted to lower them a little, let me ask her to look at them very earnestly before she consents to tarnish them _even a little_. Perhaps it is only to wear upon the street the sort of dress which attracts attention and causes remarks to fall from the lips of loafers as she pa.s.ses, perhaps to accept invitations from those who do not measure up to the standard, perhaps to engage in a dance in which the ideal could not join, to repeat gossip which is interesting but may not be true or to be mean and unkind. Let me beg of every girl to cling with all her might to the highest ideal of her mind and heart. Never let it go. Pay the cost of keeping it whatever that cost may be.
X
THE AVERAGE GIRL
The average girl does not want to be average. She wants to stand for something, to _excel_, to be beautiful, to do great good in the world, to sing, to play, to be a social leader, to dress well, to be very popular, to be _something_, so that people will single her out and say, "That is Charlotte Gray; she is the prettiest girl in town," or "That is Charlotte Gray; she has a most wonderful voice," or "She is the most popular girl in the office," or "She is the finest girl athlete in the city." In her day dreams she pictures herself the center, but in real life she does not find herself there--she is just plain Charlotte Gray.
The average girl has all the elemental powers of the race; there are always undeveloped resources in her, always the possibility that she may bless the world by new ministries, enrich it by the discovery of the art of living n.o.bly amid the common-place, that she may be the mother of the great.
The average girl has some handicaps and some privileges, in some things she is easily led, she is often misunderstood, she has periods of being indifferent, she spends too much time following the dictates of fashion and too much strength endeavoring to have a good time, she means to do things that never get done, she has times of drifting, she has some high ideals to which she clings with more or less tenacity--she is a combination girl.
The average girl is in many ways the most important member of society, for what the average girl is, that society is. Society cannot be more generous-hearted, pure, altruistic, content and happy than its average girl.
I am thinking of two towns whose inhabitants number between three and four thousand. In one, the girls are careless in dress, vulgar in speech, spend their evenings in the two dance halls and the cheap picture shows. While still young girls they marry men who drink and gamble, start homes with practically no money, are poor cooks and housekeepers and know nothing about the care and training of their children when they come.
There are beautiful homes in that town and sweet, fine girls with the highest ideals. There are wretched hovels in that town with wicked and criminal inmates. But neither the girl with the highest ideals, nor the girl with the lowest, can stamp that town; neither the sweet, refined, cultured girl, nor the immoral and vicious one can stamp that town. The _average_ girl determines the character of it.
In the other town the girls impress every stranger with their cleanliness in dress and in speech; the streets are clean, the homes are simple and neat. The girls spend the evenings in their own homes, in "The Center," a house dedicated by one of the churches to the young people of the town for their enjoyment, in the one excellent moving picture establishment. They have a debating society, a dramatic club, and do fine work in the gymnasium. They marry young men of simple tastes like themselves, start their homes with at least the necessities, they know how to keep house and they make good mothers.