The Girl and Her Religion

and quickened into life. A passion to serve had been awakened in her and as she told me of her new visions and desires I confess that I feared for her. Here she w

isfied church; she attended a Sunday-school where the teacher made the lesson interesting without requiring much from the girls; she spent the afternoon with a book, the piano, and the relatives and friends who came to call. Church, home, friends, seemed content with her just as she was. She meant to do so much and to some of her friends she told with great enthusiasm her plans for future wor

" and "I mean some day to." She enjoys the present but all that she hopes to do she puts into the future. She does not realize at first that the future always has a day of reckoning and that suddenly when one least expects it, the future meets her in

gthened in character she must be helped to substit

lesson in drawing or painting, the girl promised that the book should be brought, the picture would gladly be loaned by her father, the poppies or tulips she would get from her garden. Almost never was the promise fulfilled, still she continued to promise. One afternoon her teacher talked with her after school and showed her a list of twenty-one things she had promised to do and had not done. "

every one of them. Let me see them." Then she burst into tears and the old ex

e things had been done by others. The inconvenience and unhappiness caused by many of these unkept promises were explained to her

ou. I must!" she cried with all th

her responded, "is that you

f her. "She asked me," said the mother, "to compel her to do everything she promised to do, or said she was going to do and to punish her if she failed. I asked her to explain her strange request and learned of the struggle

e requests for such services as seemed perfectly possible for her to render, being careful that but little time need elapse between the request and its required fulfilment, in order that action might follow rapidly the resolution to act. In the months that followed, the girl's effort to do what

s left undone. But those interested in her welfare will spare neither time nor thought in the effo

y selfishness and fretfulness and many more showing dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and her mind goes back involuntarily to the fairy story wi

ess to make her see to what failure and unhappiness, meaning to do and never doing will invariably lead one. If a girl who some day "means to" should read this chapter let her seize at once the only life line whic

and puts all her effort first upon this thing then upon that but never works long enough to complete anything or learn to do it well. In school she changes her courses just as often as it is permitted, in business she changes her position never remaining long enough in any one place to qualify for a better. If at home she drifts from settlement work to domestic science, from domestic science to a dancing club and the golf links. She giv

g girl has come ashore and rendered noble service. Those who thought they knew her looked on with unconcealed surprise and said to one another, "I didn't think she had it in her." Yes, it was in her. There, undreamed of by those who saw her drifting. The drifting girl has

ok, these have the opportunity of pulling the girl out of the current, and

e, taking pictures in the woods and along the shore near her home and tinting them. She drifted through the months, through a year. One day she posed a group of children, watched her chance and caught them all unconscious and natural, interested in their pails and shovels and the tunnel she had helped to dig. The mothers of the children saw the picture. Beautifully tinted it seemed alive and they were enthusiastic. The next week she chanced to see a nine year old fishing with a child's faith. The perfect stillness of the usually active little body, the expectant look on the small face charmed her and in a moment, her camera had them. Every one who saw the

er on the evil of drifting along without aim or purpose, just letting the days slip past, is not enough. The friends

, were children of ten. This sort of girl needs sympathy and help, for in the years when her own powers should be developing they sleep. Her mother, though with the best motives and intentions in the world, is compelling her to drift through the years that should be filled with experien

her still believes her good, her father still trusts her, but before long they will have to know. She began by saying not "I meant to," but "I didn't mean to, I didn't think it was wrong," not "I will do it tomorrow," but "I will never do it again." But she did it again and yet again. She let go of the help that the church offered and gave and went to the pleasure parks on Sunday. She let go of a good friend who held her to the truth, and made a com

r and she was still near to all that is pure and good. But she is drifting-drifting more and more rapidly farther and farther downstream. Now and then she looks

s and dreams again, to the girl who has let go and is in the current this