The Girl and Her Religion | Page 6

had worked hard and managed to "get
along." She was the first on either side of the family to "go to college."
No one in the family, even the most distant relative, failed to feel the
importance of the event. "Tom's Dorothy goes to college this
week--think of it," a great aunt, in a little unpainted, low-roofed
farmhouse far away in the hills, told all her friends at church.
Great ambition, hopes and dreams were packed into that trunk and the

day when she should graduate and come back to teach in the high
school seemed near. Jack and Bessie and Newton were in her plans for
using the money she should earn when those four short years were
over.
[Illustration: SHE WAS FULL OF AMBITION AND WILLING TO
WORK]
Looking at her sweet, fresh face so full of happiness one knew her to be
a privileged girl. All through high school she had had her purpose clear,
her studies were a pleasure, her simple good times were enjoyed to the
full and life, every moment of it, was worth the living. When I saw her
lock the trunk and excitedly instruct the expressman as to just how it
must be carried, I had a sudden vision of the thousands of girls, with
happy faces filled with anticipation of all that is wrapped up in that one
word, college. A great army of privileged girls, they are. One cannot
help wishing that he might feel sure that when they leave those college
halls it might be with a deep appreciation and real sympathetic
understanding of the other girls who have turned their eyes with
longing toward four years more of study and fun, but whose feet were
obliged to walk in other pathways. They are so dependent upon one
another, these girls who can go to college and the other girls who
cannot go. They do not know it now but neither girl can ever come to
her best until the privileged girl sees and understands.
One of the most interesting of the privileged girls I met one morning
going to work. It was her third month in the office. "One of the finest in
the city. There's a chance to work up, and me for the top," she told me,
her face beaming. Her father had come across the sea from Sweden
when a boy. Long generations of honest folk were behind him and he
made good in the new land. He saved a good share of the wages he
made in the bicycle shop, studied with a correspondence school and
assumed more and more responsible positions with higher wages. At
last he was able to build a house for his young family, at the end of the
car line where the children had room to play and the cow and chickens
kept the boys busy and taught them to work. Olga was the eldest and it
was a proud night for the family when she graduated from grammar

school. Going home on the trolley her father determined that she should
have the desire of her heart and go for two years to business college.
There was great rejoicing on the part of the family when he made his
decision known and Olga hardly slept that night. When the two years
were over the principal of the school had said such fine things of her
work that Olga had blushed to hear them. More than that, he offered her
the best position open to his students. He was a little astonished the
next morning when Olga's father came down to ask in his careful
English regarding the character of the men in the office where his
daughter was to work. To Olga's great joy he was able to satisfy the
father to whom the matter was of enough importance to make him put
on his best clothes and take half a day off, in order to make sure that all
was right.
It was a great day when Olga came home with her yellow envelope and
laid the money on the table. Not a cent would her father take. "No,
Olga," he said, "the money is yours. You shall keep the account of it
and show it to your father. You shall buy the new bed for your room
and the chairs. Your mother wants the house made pretty. Perhaps you
will help. That will be very good. But the money is yours." No one
seeing the girl's face as she related her father's words could doubt the
appreciation in her heart. Her girl friends had "paid their board" and she
had expected to do the same. That night she refurnished the house in
her dreams and the memory of that dream room of her mother's, with
paper on the wall