The Girl and Her Religion | Page 8

solution of many of the problems of the other girl. Our country looks to
them for another generation of privileged girls even stronger and wiser
than they.
One of the greatest of the problems with which our country is
concerned today, the solution of which involves every phase of social,
religious and economic life, is the providing of ways and means by
which the unprivileged girl may, in large numbers, be promoted into
the privileged class.

IV
THE GIRL WHO IS EASILY LED
She is a chameleon sort of girl but she is not rare. So often she is sweet
and lovable. Almost without exception she is obliging, a jolly
companion, fearless and frank. One often finds her a girl of talent and

natural ability. She is the very opposite of the indifferent girl for she
responds to everything. The girl she will finally become depends upon
the companions whose lead she follows. Her safety lies in the
establishment of the habit of going in the right way. She is the girl who
most needs care and guardianship. So much depends upon her choice of
friends that parents and teachers must be wise for her.
A little ten-year-old, in whom all her teachers were interested because
of her versatility and quick response to every interest, moved into a
new neighborhood. Some weeks later because of her ability to learn
rapidly she was put into a higher grade. Her new home and new
classmates in a short time entirely changed the character of her
environment. Before long the girl herself began to show the result of
the change. She had always been too much interested in her studies to
waste time or disobey the school rules. Following the leadership of
some of the newly made friends she entered into all the little
conspiracies of a group of girls and boys who made things hard for the
teacher, a rather weak disciplinarian. One day, the girl hitherto
perfectly honest, told a lie to get out of the trouble into which the
following of the new leaders had brought her. It troubled her
conscience and she cried on the way home from school, but her
companions laughed at her, told her she was "all right," and had stood
by them splendidly. They made her feel heroic and she dried her eyes
and stifled her desire to tell her mother. Before the year was over the
child had entirely changed. Her studies suffered, she seemed to lose her
ambition, her naturalness and spontaneity vanished. Her mother began
to discover increasing untruthfulness. One day, toward the close of the
school year, the child asked to wear her best dress to school, saying
there was to be an entertainment. There was no entertainment. Instead
there was a party at the home of one of the girls of whom her mother
disapproved. The party began later than they had planned and it was
nearly six before the child reached home. She found her mother greatly
troubled and said quite glibly that she had stayed after school to help
the teacher. Next day the mother called at the school to remonstrate
with the teacher for keeping the child so often and so late to "help" her.
Then the whole truth came out and the mother was dismayed. She felt
that the matter was so serious that she must remove her daughter at

once from her companions and before school opened in the fall the
family had moved back to their former neighborhood and the parents
were permitted to send the little girl to another school where new
associates were carefully chosen. Before she left that grammar school
she had recovered her frank, sweet spirit, her interest in her studies
returned, and surrounded by a group of fine boys and girls she went
through the high school with the love and respect of teachers and
companions.
This child is the type of many, who as early as ten years and younger,
are so easily led that their natural tendencies toward good are wholly
transformed by association with evil companions whose strong
personality and power of leadership can so easily turn the weak wills
into the wrong pathway.
Parents and teachers cannot be too careful of the companions of a girl
of vacillating, easy-going, versatile temperament, for they may ruin or
make her.
When Leonora moved from the great manufacturing city, which had
been her home for fourteen years, to the home of her aunt, in a quiet
suburb, where the children attending the high school were from homes
of real culture and refinement, she was disconsolate. Voices, language,
games, manner of recitation, behavior on the school grounds and street,
perplexed her. She seemed lost in her new environment. She had never
been a leader but had followed with all her