Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! | Page 2

in the story, they can cause the hedge to turn to roses, and
open wide before them?
A girl needs, first of all, encouragement. She should not be told what
things are to oppose her, if she has ambition to excel in a certain
direction, but what things are to help her to attain her purpose. She
wants praise, but not flattery. A girl knows when she is flattered sooner
than a boy. If conceit is engendered from praise, that will do no harm.
Time will destroy conceit, if a girl has much to do with sensible people
and sensible books.
A girl needs to be trusted. Nothing will be more efficacious than
making her feel of certain importance and usefulness to others. It is
evident she wants sympathy in her endeavors and disappointments. I do
not mean that she should be indulged, or that she should not be made to
work out her own salvation; but that she should realize that, if she tries,
some one will know and bless her, and if she stumbles, some one will
help her up again. Just as truly should she know that, if she is careless
of endeavor or negligent of her days, she will meet with disparagement
and punishment.
It is most necessary for a girl to have a motive placed before her, that
she may bring out whatever undeveloped faculties may be latent within
her. This motive may be a comparatively slight one,--no more than the
training of a window-garden, the collecting of newspaper slips, or the
making of bread; but, if she does her particular work better than others,
she will attain a certain degree of superiority, and her time has, for her,
been as profitably filled as that which another person devotes to a
larger work. By motive, let me repeat, I mean something given a girl to
do which shall be especially her work: not always an ambitious one,--a
desire to shine in society, letters, or the arts,--but something just for
herself, with its own rewards.
How much more numerous the motives which can be given an
American girl than one who lives on foreign soil! Look at the German
girl, for example. Her country arbitrarily divides its people into high
and low. The peasant maiden has so long stayed one side of the barrier,
she thinks she always must; so, with her scanty loaf of black bread near
her on the ground, she leans against a tree, knits her stocking, and tends
the flock. When night comes she goes home to her rude stone cottage,
lifts a prayer to the Virgin, if she is an Austrian, and one for the king.

Her mind never strays beyond the village gate. The more fortunate girls
in towns and cities receive the allotted years of study in the schools,
and when these end at fifteen, about the time of confirmation, the girls
are put into families away from home to get a year's experience in
domestic matters. Then they marry, and obediently follow the
commands of their husbands.
It may be thought that a society girl needs no incentives to a right use
of time and privileges, but she most certainly does. Her responsibility is
great: she will either sway a circle or a household. Her influence will as
surely affect her associates as did the influence of those celebrated
French women whose salons were the places where battles were fought
and decisive moments gained. Society is in great need of women: it
always will be. Now this period of young womanhood is precisely the
time for cultivating those principles which will later be most helpful to
society.
Surely, for those who are to bear more heavily the weight of life, who
are to work as they wish not; in fact, in a way against which all but
principle struggles,--certainly, for these, there is every need of motive.
This class increases daily, and the discouragement and distrust of its
members grow with sad rapidity.
Girls, girls everywhere,--my girls,--do not think I mean to flatter you!
Do not think I mean to praise you more highly than I ought! I simply
want you to know your own capabilities, and to realize that much, very
much, depends upon every one of you. How much there is for you to do!
You are frank and honest now, or ought to be; you have not learned to
imitate the falseness of so-called proprieties. It is fully possible to keep
young, genuine, girlish even, and at the same time to be womanly. The
world is not sunshiny enough; there are too many November days in
the year: bring fairer weather and fresh June mornings.
You are not awkward, even if you have not learned just how to be
graceful; you are not useless, though you