The Girl and Her Religion | Page 3

GIRL
They were both handicapped, as a careful observer could tell at a
glance. One stood behind the counter, the other in front of it examining
the toys she was about to purchase for a Christmas box for some young
cousins in the country. She had not been able to find just what she
wanted and was impatient in voice and manner as she explained to the
girl on the other side of the counter what she had hoped to find. She
was extravagantly gowned in a fashion not at all in good taste for
morning shopping, but she was pretty and her fair complexion, her
shining hair, soft and well cared for, the beautiful fur thrown back over

her shoulders fascinated the other girl and filled her heart with envy.
She was pale and anemic, her hair was dark and there was barely
enough of it to "do up" even when helped out by the puffs she had
bought from the counter on the opposite side. The weather had been
bitterly cold and she was suffering from sore throat and headache. She
had turned up the collar of her thin coat but it had failed to protect her
and she was thinking of that as she looked at the fur. She was worn out
by the strain of the Christmas season, had slept late, and then rushed to
the store with only a cup of coffee to help her do the work of the
morning. She did not care much whether the girl before her found the
toys she wanted or not. Toys seemed such a small part of life and
Christmas aroused in her all sorts of conflicting emotions. It was winter
and life looked very hard, as it can look to a girl of fourteen upon
whom poverty had laid a heavy hand and whose life has been robbed
by the sins and misfortunes of others, who has been handicapped from
the beginning.
The girl before the counter finally decided upon the toys, ordered them
sent to her home and looking scornfully at the cheap jewelry and
tawdry ornaments passed out of the store. She was thinking what a
nuisance cousins were, how ridiculous it was in her father to insist each
year upon her remembering his poor relations at Christmas, just when
she needed all her allowance for herself, and planning to tell him that
next year she did not intend to do it. She was in a most unhappy mood
because she had been denied permission to attend a house-party and she
could not bear to be denied anything. She was handicapped by the
heavy hand of money, newly acquired by her father and by the
atmosphere of pride, vanity and social ambition which surrounded her.
All day through the busy streets of the shopping district they
passed--the city's handicapped girls. Some were held back from the
best that life can give by poverty, which like a great yawning chasm
lies between the girl and all her natural desires and ambitions, some
held back from the joy of simple, natural living by the forced, artificial
social system of which they are a part, some pitiful specimens of
physical and mental handicap and some who showed the strain of the
handicap of sin, mingled in that Christmas crowd.

Through the open door of great sea-port cities there have poured during
the years past steady streams of handicapped girls. They are poor, they
are plunged into a life whose manners and customs they cannot grasp,
they are handicapped by a language they do not understand and by
great expectations seldom destined to be fulfilled.
According to our government statistics during nineteen hundred twelve,
ninety three thousand, two hundred sixty-one (93,261) girls from
fifteen to twenty-one years of age came to us from across the sea and in
three years an army of two hundred forty-six thousand, five hundred
fifty-four (246,554) became a part of the girl problem our country must
meet. It is hard to picture in concrete fashion how great this host of
girlhood is. Sometimes when one looks into the faces of a thousand
college girls at Wellesley, Vassar, or Smith and realizes that in a single
year more than ninety three times as many girls from fifteen to
twenty-one came to test the opportunities of a new land, the
significance of the figure becomes a little more clear to him. When he
realizes that in three years enough young girls land in this country to
found a city the size of Rochester or St. Paul, when he tries to imagine
this army of girls marching six abreast through city streets for hours
and hours until the thousands upon thousands, representing scores of
tongues and nations, have passed, some conception of the great task
facing any organization