The Girl and Her Religion

g 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 s

om 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 morni

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 ha

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

icapped girls. They are poor, they are plunged into a life whose manners and customs they cannot grasp, they

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 count

CAPS SHE ANTICIPATES KEE

could reveal to us if it followed these handicapped girls! It does not follow them-they come in over the blue waters of the bay, look with shining eyes at Liberty with her promise of fulfilment of all the hea

ome only through man's God-inspired effort on behalf of his brother man. In removing his brother's handicap he will remove his own and both shall be free to live. But it cannot be done in a moment. Effort is slow. It cannot be done by any organization, or church, or creed or individual. It must be done by the public conscience. Educating the public conscience is a long process and America is in the midst of that process now. Th

he Welfare teacher whose salary and rank shall equal that of the teacher of Greek, Ancient History or arithmetic will be another hand laid upon the shoulder of the girl limited by the lack of friendship and protection. It may be that houses maintained as a business proposition and paying honest returns, built in such

common kitchen tasks, then to be recommended with some equipment to the homes greatly in need of her. Even if she should choose later to go into shop or store, the State wil

attendance until a girl is sixteen, the age under which

l living of the present day and that the handicap of false standards, superficiality, display idleness, and wild pursui

ience, working out along lines in which it finds itself best fitted and

ion is looking at her, compelled to do so often against its will; City Government, School Board, Board of Health are all looking at her; women's clubs, whose individual members have never given her a thought, are reaching out a hand to her; the Church, whose part we shall study definitely later on, i

lhood but in the individual, living, real girl, that the public conscience be more deeply touched and stirred until it shall feel that by whate

ped Girl. God help her-and us-for until we have gained the wisdom to remove her handicap the whole