UC-NRLF 
 
 $B 2Sfl ATM 
 
 Building 
 
 Your 
 
 GIRL 
 
 KENNETH H. WAYNE 
 
GIFT or ^ 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/buildingyourgirlOOwaynrich 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
By the Same Author 
 
 BUILDING YOUR BOY 
 
 16mo .... Netf 50 cents 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO., 
 
 Publishers 
 CHICAGO 
 
Building Your Girl 
 
 BY 
 
 KENNETH H. WAYNE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 Building Your Boy^^ 
 
 5 ;-' • : 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1911 
 
Copyright 1911 ^ vjA 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 Published September, 1911 
 
 cy'tS 
 
 
 
 ■ C) 
 
 The Caslon Press 
 Chicaeo 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOK 
 
 I The New Position of Femi- 
 ninity 9 
 
 II The Girl in the Home . . 19 
 
 III The Physical Basis m Girl- 
 
 Building 25 
 
 IV A Girl and Her Readmg . 87 
 
 V Your Girl and Her Ethical 
 
 Training 55 
 
 VI Your Girl and the Elements 
 
 of True Womanhood . . 69 
 
 VII Your Girl in Relation to Do- 
 mestic Science and Charm 88 
 
 VIII Your Girl and Her Relation 
 
 to Marriage 103 
 
 IX Your Girl and a College Career 123 
 
 X Your Girl on the Threshold 
 
 of Real Life • • • .134 
 
Building Your Girl 
 
 I 
 
 THE NEW POSITION OF 
 FEMININITY 
 
 BECAUSE the Girl in her mid- 
 dle teens, and a little beyond, is 
 the mother of the woman; in- 
 deed, under our system of rapid 
 twentieth-century development, when 
 everything is precocious and well-nigh 
 marvellous, she is almost the woman 
 herself; and, because the swing of the 
 pendulum of modernity has carried 
 woman, unwontedly, to a more exalted 
 position and to a larger share and in- 
 fluence in the affairs and activities of 
 life than she has hitherto enjoyed, that 
 part of the life-work of fathers and 
 mothers pertaining directly to the build- 
 ing of the Girl presents new and in- 
 teresting, as well as vitally important, 
 phases, well worth candid attention and 
 
lp;>3X;rL;I)INe YOUR GIRL 
 
 study. To invite this attention and 
 induce this study, mayhap to offer some 
 suggestions which shall prove helpful, 
 is the object of this booklet. 
 
 Primarily, there is the same beautiful 
 ordination of fatherhood and mother- 
 hood, in this Girl-building. And it will 
 go without saying that nothing in 
 human life and living can be more 
 appealingly beautiful than this ordina- 
 tion of parenthood, where it is true and 
 loyal to its elemental thought and de- 
 sign, and so suffused with love, and care, 
 and pride, and interest, that its respon- 
 sibilities, while actualized, are gladly 
 accepted; where the fathers and mothers 
 never become so conscious of its cares 
 and obligations as to think of them as 
 burdensome and to wish that they might 
 end, but instead, have a positive dread 
 of the quickly oncoming time when their 
 children have grown and are gone, and 
 they, the parents, sit in their empty 
 homes; no boys and girls to put them 
 in disorder, no more the kiss of baby 
 lips, the patter of little feet, and the 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 11 
 
 sight of the dear heads safe on their 
 pillows. 
 
 Human life presents no feature more 
 captivating and more desirable to the 
 average man and woman than this, nor 
 any so fraught with the richer, purer 
 joys coveted by them, nor yet any whose 
 retrospection in after years, promises so 
 much of unmingled joy and satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 In such parenthood as this, manhood 
 and womanhood rise to the highest pos- 
 sible plane of life and living. It touches 
 the ideal that had its birth and fashion- 
 ing in the mind and heart of Infinite 
 Wisdom. The ideal is that beauty 
 which is above and beyond the beauty of 
 the artist ; the truth which is above and 
 beyond the truth of the philosopher; 
 that sacredness which is above and be- 
 yond the sanctity of the saint; that love 
 which transcends all other love. In art, 
 the loss of the ideal would be its degra- 
 dation to mere realism. In human life, 
 the loss of the ideal of parenthood and 
 home would be degradation and death 
 
12 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 to the individual and the nation. The 
 self -constituted and so-called reformers, 
 who speak with contempt of this parent- 
 hood, as being unworthy, and beneath 
 the dignity of men and women of our 
 day, are the enemies of the race, and 
 the heralds of moral vagabondage. 
 Only reverence for the ideal of parent- 
 hood and the home will save civilization 
 from decay and death. The home made 
 sacred by the institution of marriage, 
 where children are nurtured in an at- 
 mosphere of love and good comradeship, 
 and brought to manhood and woman- 
 hood, is the fountain from which every- 
 thing else of value springs. 
 
 It is a matter for congratulatory 
 thought with all straight-thinking peo- 
 ple, particularly with fathers and 
 mothers busy with the enviable privilege 
 of Girl-building, that the new order for 
 femininity revises, if indeed it does not 
 wholly repeal, the long-accepted defini- 
 tion of life, and the economy of the 
 practices and principles applied in 
 training for it, as these concern the 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 13 
 
 building of the Girl. The education and 
 training are so radically different, that 
 there is scarcely any correspondence or 
 semblance between the old and the new 
 order. Our young women are being 
 equipped with ability to look upon life 
 in its largeness; to recognize beauty in 
 all service; all life as a warfare for the 
 higher good; the world as a working- 
 place in the interest of what is fin- 
 est and best — best in a religion that 
 has service to humanity as its creed — 
 best in ethics, best in all intellectual 
 belongings. 
 
 No sane man who takes account of 
 the pilgrimage of events at their depths, 
 and with whom the spasmodic and 
 superficial weigh nothing, has any idea 
 that there will be ever a return to what 
 occurred in old Egypt, as the one devia- 
 tion in the world's history, from the 
 prejudice in favor of sons at the expense 
 of the daughters, when the pendulum 
 swung to the opposite extreme, and 
 femininity was not only a badge of 
 equality with the other sex, but a recog- 
 
14 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 nized mark of superiority over it. Even 
 the title to the throne was transmitted 
 through the female line. All property 
 was bequeathed in like manner. At 
 marriage, the husband assumed the 
 name of the wife, and the sons of the 
 family were named for the mother. All 
 political and commercial interests were 
 controlled and directed by the women. 
 There was no such thing as a philosophy 
 of physical strength and authority. 
 The men did the work and the fighting, 
 but the women were supreme in the 
 administration of everything. As they 
 looked at it, those were halcyon days 
 for the women of the old land, but the 
 fact that it did not long endure may be 
 said to prove that it was not best, even 
 for them. Nor are we to conclude that 
 a similar system ; one that differentiates 
 in favor of the sterner sex, is either right 
 or just. 
 
 While it is true that, in the nature of 
 things, the relations of the two sexes 
 cannot be adjusted on a basis of perfect 
 equality, because there are differences 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 15 
 
 of capacity and adaptability that can- 
 not be reconciled by legislation or any 
 other artificial process, the fact remains, 
 that men and women have certain rights 
 in common, which are to be respected 
 without any reference whatever to other 
 considerations. This involves certain 
 general principles of honor and equity 
 which cannot properly be antagonized. 
 
 Women are, no doubt, disqualified 
 for many pursuits ; but there is no war- 
 rant in that fact for any contention that 
 they are an inferior class of beings, or 
 that preference should be given to men, 
 in any degree that amounts to a con- 
 demnation of womanhood, either as a 
 fault or an inferiority. The fact that 
 the physical strength of a woman may 
 be less than that of a man, or that her 
 capacity for motion may be less than 
 and inferior to that of a man, is no 
 warrant for her exclusion from the field 
 of practical work, even the scientific 
 activities of the world. 
 
 And so the new order, or regime, or 
 system (whatever we may term it), 
 
16 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 recognizing the manifest and inherent 
 rights and equities of woman, insists 
 that her training and development — or, 
 in other phrasing, her building — be- 
 ginning in her early girlhood, shall be 
 largely, almost wholly, on the ethical 
 and intellectual side; maintaining, and 
 rightly, too, that the highest benefits 
 have been from the ethical; that the 
 ethical is the true basis of permanent 
 and beneficent truth. 
 
 The supreme blunder of the so-called 
 religious fathers, was their holding to 
 the creed and belief that all good came 
 to men through religion and the church; 
 that nothing was good that did not come 
 over that thoroughfare. Churchmen 
 there are, who still cling to the skirts 
 of that notion. And that, too, in the 
 face of the truth, that the highest and 
 best teachings and influences for the 
 good of humanity, came from the purely 
 ethical nature of the Galilee Man in 
 brown serge. The ethical was by far 
 the largest and most active part of his 
 nature and personality. His work was 
 largely in wakening men to the con* 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 17 
 
 sciousness of an ethical ideal, setting 
 before them true and lofty standards. 
 He did not, perhaps, regard culture 
 and religion as two opposite powers, 
 but in his teaching the ethical had the 
 preference. 
 
 It is an omen presaging untellable 
 good, that the training and education of 
 our young women is, from now on, to 
 be in the main of an ethical character; 
 the cultivation, not merely of certain 
 technical and professional faculties, but, 
 over and above these, of the whole per- 
 sonality, called woman. She is to be 
 educated and trained to take her place 
 side by side with the man; she not to be 
 independent of him, nor* he to be inde- 
 pendent of her; they to be co-equal and 
 co-important. In the home and social 
 life, each is the equal and complement 
 of the other, for each has what the other 
 lacks, and lacks what the other has. 
 Differently constituted and organized 
 as they are, yet in intellect and heart and 
 sensibilities the two make up sjrmmet- 
 rical humanity. 
 
 If the man, giving much or little of 
 
18 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 himself to the affairs and activities of 
 the world, finds his mind and heart 
 broadened and deepened and strength- 
 ened by the attrition, the woman has the 
 right to the education and training 
 which fit her for a kindred service and 
 enjoyment; not for a "career," in the 
 conventional sense, but for the greatest 
 possible capability for the rational use 
 and enjoyment of her powers, in con- 
 tributing to the bulk of the world's 
 work, to its upbuilding and enrichment. 
 There is a distinct gain in this newer 
 outlook; a clear prophecy of good. It 
 is rational, and it is justified by the 
 exigencies of modern life. 
 
 With these and kindred thoughts and 
 views in illustration of the basic and 
 fundamental principles in the new order 
 for femininity, we come, pleasantly, to 
 the more practical discussion of their 
 adaptability and desirability in real life 
 — in the building of the Girl. 
 
II 
 
 THE GIRL IN THE HOME 
 
 AMONG the most picturesque and 
 JLJL attractive pen-drawings in the 
 Gospels, is that one made by the gifted 
 and versatile Doctor Luke, descriptive 
 of the visit of the Master to the home of 
 the Mayor of Capharnahum. As a 
 mere picture it is exquisite; but he 
 makes the scene one of such extraordi- 
 narily vivid coloring, and so intensely 
 dramatic, blending the human and 
 divine by its grouping and action, that 
 it is very impressive and suggestive. 
 
 As we take the Master's being a 
 helpful, participating guest, at the Cana 
 wedding feast, as his tribute to, and 
 indorsement of, the institution of mar- 
 riage, and the delightful social features 
 of these occasions, we have equal war- 
 rant in taking this visit to the home of 
 the Mayor of Capharnahum, and what 
 he did there, as a visible and purposed 
 illustration of his sanction of iand in- 
 
 19 
 
20 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 terest in the institution of the home, as 
 well as the worth, and beauty, and com- 
 fort and joy, of the Girl in it. 
 
 The little daughter of the Mayor was 
 sick unto death, and with swimming 
 eyes and piteously quavering lips, at 
 the threatening bereavement and loss 
 and sorrow, they had besought the 
 Master to come and save her. He con- 
 sented, but ere he had reached the home, 
 the cruel stroke of an alien hand had 
 fallen, and the fair young face of the 
 little girl had paled under the dusky 
 shadow of the death-angel's wing. She 
 had died. His great heart, throbbing 
 with sympathy for the father and 
 mother in their bereavement and sorrow, 
 and realizing what a glad joy the- pres- 
 ence of this little girl in the home had 
 been to them, the Master comes to the 
 couch on which lies the lifeless form, to 
 manifest his sympathy by the restora- 
 tion of that joy. Taking the lifeless 
 hand of the dead girl in his own hand of 
 helpfulness and power, and using the 
 old-while Jewish mother call, he said. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 21 
 
 " Chad, awake." Instantly she opened 
 her eyes and stood up. With another 
 touch of the human added to the scene, 
 " Give her something to eat," he leaves 
 them. 
 
 A study of Doctor Luke's pictured 
 scene ought to be inspirational, giving 
 us, as it does, a clear look into the heart 
 and mind of the Great Teacher, his 
 thought and interest in relation, not 
 only to the ordination of parenthood, 
 but to the worth and beauty and joy of 
 children in the home. 
 
 Let us suppose that you have in your 
 home a Girl. As to age, she is near her 
 middle teens. She is your Girl. She 
 is bright of mind, fairly clever, has an 
 attractive prettiness of face and figure ; 
 in both, the promise of more than the 
 average share of beauty at womanhood. 
 She is in health. She is not demure, nor 
 is she hoydenish. She is hearty in her 
 enjoyment of the pleasures, amuse- 
 ments, and merriments of her age. She 
 has many lovable qualities of disposition 
 and temperament. She is fiilial and 
 
2« BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 affectionate; unselfish and helpful; 
 cheerful in her tasks and studies. She 
 is the average Girl of the average 
 American home. 
 
 She is your Girl, and she is in your 
 home for your building into young 
 womanhood. What this Girl becomes, 
 physically, mentally, and morally, 
 through education and training, rests 
 largely with you. What you do for and 
 with this Girl, consciously and uncon- 
 sciously, will crystallize into character, 
 habit, conduct. Parenthood fixes the 
 responsibility. The home is the build- 
 ing place. You cannot evade the 
 obligation if you would. It is taken for 
 granted that you would not if you 
 could; that you accept it gratefully, as 
 a privilege, something of the impersonal 
 that rises to heights not touched by 
 simple duty. Duty is more or less 
 coercive. Privilege, like devotion, is 
 impelling, with no hint of compulsion. 
 
 In the home, a Girl, because she is a 
 girl, has a larger share of its intimacies, 
 associations, and confidences, than a boy. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 23 
 
 her brother. She has need of, and is 
 accorded, more of its sheltering condi- 
 tion. By nature, she is more sensitive 
 and deUcate. She is the companion 
 and helpmeet of the mother. A boy is 
 peculiarly adapted to movement and 
 action, out of doors. He is excelled by 
 the Girl in nearly all the higher quali- 
 ties. The Girl is more aesthetic than 
 the boy. Of the two, he is the more 
 practical. Give him a bit of ground, 
 and he will plant corn or melons. The 
 Girl will set out flowering plants es- 
 teemed for their beauty or perfume. 
 
 Although the Girl spends more of 
 her time in the home with the mother 
 than with the father, evidence seems to 
 establish it as a fact, that the character 
 of the development of the Girl is more 
 directly and more fully due to the teach- 
 ing and influence of the father, than 
 to that of the mother. Through the 
 mother come the growth and develop- 
 ment of all those graces and amenities 
 which are native to femininity, and 
 which pertain to home and social life, 
 
24 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 personal adornment, etiquette, and the 
 like; but in the larger field of her 
 studies, her school and college work — 
 in the general sense, the cultivation and 
 development of her powers — the Girl, 
 without any invidious distinction be- 
 tween her father and mother, or any 
 lack of affection for the latter, someway 
 turns to him for help and information 
 and advice in the solution of the prob- 
 lems and difficulties which confront her. 
 This appeal results from her deference 
 to his knowledge, his intellectual 
 strength, and his experience in life. 
 The average American Girl finds great 
 delight in being the chummy companion 
 of her father. Where the delight is 
 mutual, there is the promise of great 
 helpfulness and good in this Girl- 
 building. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE PHYSICAL BASIS IN 
 GIRL-BUILDING 
 
 NOT very long ago, we came to the 
 parting of the ways in this matter 
 of the physical beauty of a Girl. 
 Speaking of the human physique, we 
 had in our thoughts an Apollo of a man 
 garbed in strength and grace; a sym- 
 metrical body, rich in blood, strong in 
 muscle, lithesome; health streaming 
 through every vein and artery. He 
 was a king among men. Men admired 
 him; women loved him; children con- 
 fided in him. Physical perfection was 
 regarded as the highest type of the 
 divine. Physical soundness was con- 
 sidered, not only the prime condition, 
 but the essential of every other essential. 
 It was believed that an ideal humanity 
 was unthinkable until the units making 
 up humanity, were ideal. One of these 
 units was a perfect, or at least a splendid 
 physical condition. With the exception 
 of the old Greeks, this idea of the 
 
 25 
 
26 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 physical perfection differentiated be- 
 tween the male and the female. When 
 the Greek artists set about to produce 
 a masterpiece, they selected for the sub- 
 ject a young girl just at the threshold 
 of womanhood, giving her the thirty 
 points which they held as necessary to 
 the physical perfection of woman. In 
 the Greek thought there was a spiritual 
 beauty blending with the physical. The 
 Greek sought perfect form, not as an 
 end in itself, but as a true expression of 
 spiritual law and reality. 
 
 In those earlier years the phrases 
 " weaker sex " and " gentler sex " were 
 otherwise defined than they are to-day. 
 Men loved the weaknesses of women 
 rather than their strength. It was the 
 myriad-minded Coleridge who said, 
 " Every man would desire rather to have 
 an Ophelia for a wife than a Portia; 
 therefore it is vain to seek to banish 
 feminine weaknesses, for by so doing 
 we are depriving the spider of its 
 thread." But those days, and whatever 
 of theories and practices in relation to 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 27 
 
 the education and the training of the 
 Girl they carried, have passed among 
 the things that were, and may be dis- 
 missed from any consideration here. 
 We are facing new problems, and deal- 
 ing with new solutions. 
 
 Among the first things in the building 
 of a Girl is the duty of giving her, so 
 far as is possible, the foundation of 
 physical perfection. Far more than 
 one-half of the weaknesses of adult 
 women — the whole evil brood of neuro- 
 logical ailments, hysteria, morbidness, 
 and the like — are the penalties imposed 
 by nature for carelessness, indifference, 
 even criminal negligence, with which 
 the claims of health and a sound 
 physical condition were treated in their 
 girlhood years. 
 
 It is your wish and desire, that your 
 Girl shall grow up and develop into a 
 sweet, pure, wholesome, refined, and 
 cultured young woman — one whose 
 very presence radiates an atmosphere 
 of useful, helpful, and sympathetic 
 strength. If so, then you must make 
 
28 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 her physical condition and training in 
 her earlier years your special and con- 
 tinuous study and care. Haphazard 
 and spasmodic effort will not avail. 
 The enemies to health and a sound 
 physical condition are always alert, 
 lying await ; the thousand and one little 
 weavers of shrouds. 
 
 Health is the fulfilment of the law; it 
 is the law. Sickness is the great law- 
 wrecker. Nature, God's executive 
 officer, prefers to develop good souls 
 in good bodies. The Man of Nazareth 
 gave us that great truth, when he went 
 about touching men into the kingdom of 
 perfect health. 
 
 In her administration of her king- 
 dom. Nature knows no higher or lower 
 law than order. Sickness, and the 
 scores of ailments with which men and 
 women are afflicted, come of disorder. 
 In furtherance of her plan and purpose 
 of order (and therefore of health) 
 Nature made ample provision for three 
 of the greatest elements as preventives 
 and curatives — water, air, and light. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 29 
 
 In the proper and intelligent use of 
 these three, and adding a reasonable 
 amount of work and play, with tem- 
 perance of body and mind, we shall 
 have health and, barring accidents, long 
 life. Purposing for your Girl, the 
 best physical proportions, and the best 
 health, these are some of the thoughts 
 and truths which you can and will trans- 
 mute into a practical system of action 
 in her behalf. There is nothing fictional 
 about it, or difficult in it. 
 
 Very true, there must be a systematic 
 and continuous use of these health- 
 giving elements. However good and 
 wholesome an occasional return to these 
 helps to health may be, it will not make 
 a thoroughly healthy Girl. At the out- 
 set there may be occasion for some in- 
 sistence, but the sharp edge of even that 
 can be taken off by pleasantries in 
 reasoning and explanation. In a little 
 while the details of this training become 
 the daily habit, and any interruption a 
 hardship. 
 
 Teach your Girl that it is her first 
 
so BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 duty to make the most and best of her- 
 self in the physical sense, because, in 
 order to make the most and the best of 
 the little moral and ethical world within 
 herself, she must have health, a good 
 physical condition, be wholesome, and 
 vibrant with life and spirits. Teach her 
 that a fine physical development is the 
 greatest gift she can covet; that health 
 is a complement to moral and intellec- 
 tual life; that if she would keep some- 
 thing of natural music in her, something 
 of her native freshness and elasticity of 
 body and mind, to a late hour in life, 
 she must be taught to make the best 
 use of nature's elements — water, and 
 air, and light — and take regular exer- 
 cise, in building and strengthening her 
 physical system. She should be taught 
 that she must do this if she would escape 
 evils to which she is peculiarly suscep-' 
 tible because of her delicately adjusted 
 mechanism. Awaken within her a keen 
 sense of her own responsibility in this 
 matter of physical development. Fos- 
 ter her pride in it. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL SI 
 
 You ought to give the same intelli- 
 gent and discriminating supervision to 
 the matter of the physical culture of 
 your Girl as you give to her moral and 
 mental culture. Exercise as a large 
 part of it is of value only as it is 
 uniform, systematized, and persevered 
 in. With the boy, it is athletics. With 
 your Girl it is physical culture. 
 
 To the Girl, exercise ought to be 
 joyous, taken, not as a medicine, but 
 heartily and spontaneously, with all the 
 eagerness of natural appetite. When 
 possible, it should be in the open air. 
 In the air and sunshine, and with exer- 
 cise adapted to her feminine nature, 
 your Girl will garner physical strength, 
 energy, and a vibrant, joyous spirit, 
 faculties that will help her in winning 
 intellectual prizes, make her a charming 
 companion, and leave no room in the 
 kingdom within her for mawkish senti- 
 ment and morbid hysteria. Her exer- 
 cise — something more than the old- 
 while calisthenics — should be so much 
 a thing of regularity as to time, that 
 
32 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 when it arrives, her nature will make 
 an insistent appeal for it. It will give 
 you a Girl who no more fears an occa- 
 sional wetting by the raindrops than the 
 roses; a Girl to whom a snowdrift is 
 fun, and for whom the sun's rays are 
 forge-fires hardening her muscles. 
 
 You are to teach her that in a large 
 degree the body is built, fashioned, and 
 moulded by thought, by the mind. 
 Although in the strict sense the mind 
 is independent of matter, it is bound 
 to the body by ties which can be sun- 
 dered only with the going out of life. 
 For that reason she must be taught to 
 give the help of her own practical 
 thought to her physical culture, to cul- 
 tivate its obedience and love in this 
 direction. This will keep her from re- 
 sorting to unpractical methods for 
 recuperating the bodily powers, and 
 enable her to live at or above the health 
 mark. 
 
 In the process of physical culture 
 your Girl ought to remain always her 
 own sweet self. The aflfectations, silly 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL S3 
 
 weaknesses, and so-called pretty in- 
 validisms and languorous sentimentali- 
 ties of femininity are, happily, obsolete. ) 
 They have ceased to attract attention 
 or to win sympathy. The actuating 
 cause may not be altogether exorcised, 
 but it will be, finally. The tendency of 
 the modern system swings to the other 
 extreme — making a man of the Girl. 
 Let a young Girl be " made a man of," 
 and she is made that for which she is 
 not intended. It would mean the loss 
 of the sweet and lovable feminine 
 graces ; and in their stead would come a 
 courting of publicity, a striving after 
 bold effects, a nurturing of self-conceit, 
 an undue self-reliance; and the whole 
 would result, logically, in forwardness 
 of character, boisterousness of manner, 
 audacity of mien, and curtness of 
 speech. Such a result is deplorable; 
 an irreparable loss to the Girl ; to those 
 in her home, to society, and to the world. 
 As a Girl, as your Girl in your home, 
 as her own dear self, she is the best and 
 most precious gift you could have or 
 
34 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 desire ; and you can have no higher pur- 
 pose than that of keeping her this Girl. 
 Intimately connected with this matter 
 of exercise in physical culture is the 
 question of sleep. Sleep is the resting- 
 phase of the brain's rhythm. All the 
 organs of the body do their work 
 rhythmically. The heart rests half the 
 time; the lungs, a little more. Sleep 
 not only supplies rest, but during sleep 
 the arteries, veins, all the circulatory 
 organs, do a sort of housecleaning. If 
 you want your Girl to have the vigor 
 that belongs to health, a freshness of 
 energy and spirit, and clear eyesight, 
 you will see to it that she gives sleep a 
 chance, say from nine to ten hours in the 
 twenty-four. She ought to sleep from 
 nine P. M. to six or seven A. M. Ten 
 hours of sleep, with the body warmly 
 wrapped, and some fresh, out-door air 
 coming through an open window; no 
 matter what the weather may be, means 
 restoration, stimulus, nourishment, 
 freedom, and immunity from diseases 
 of the respiratory organs. No disease 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 35 
 
 of these organs can take root where 
 plenty of air is allowed. 
 
 Another typical feminine defect is 
 that of eating too little substantial, 
 nourishing food, and the habit of nib- 
 bling at sweets, pickles, and pastry, 
 thus spoiling a healthful appetite, and 
 forcing her into the habit of falling back 
 on nervous excitement for the lack of 
 natural strength. The blessing will 
 come to the Girl when, like her brother, 
 she becomes sensible of real hunger, 
 fights the disposition to draw on her 
 nervous capital to supply what solid 
 food should supply. She makes this 
 waste of nervous strength always under 
 the foolish notion that if she would have 
 " genteel " physical proportions, she 
 must check her appetite for healthy 
 food. That is a vulgar idiotism. A 
 Girl, like her brother, is first an animal, 
 and if she desires to be the crown of the 
 animal kingdom, she will, like animals, 
 struggle for strong, hearty food for her 
 physical development. She will cer- 
 tainly find some pounds of superfluous 
 
S6 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 adipose flesh a more agreeable burden 
 than a perpetual dyspeptic pain, with 
 a " genteel " physique. She will escape 
 both of these undesirable conditions 
 under your care in her building. It is 
 a good thing for our girls, that our 
 novelistic literature has taken up the 
 matter to the extent of showing that 
 Fielding's Sophia, with her little sack-o' 
 whey, and that very weak, no longer 
 belongs to the race of heroines, and that 
 a good hearty dinner, enjoyed by a 
 young girl, is preferable to nibbles, and 
 is more compatible with physical beauty, 
 even daintiness. In the training and 
 education of your Girl these are vitally 
 important things; they deal directly 
 with her health and general physical 
 culture, and are allied, beyond any 
 divorcement, with her mental and moral 
 development. They should have a 
 goodly share of your thought and care 
 in your work of building your Girl. It 
 would be a sad mistake not to do this. 
 
IV 
 A GIRL AND HER READING 
 
 IN Girl-building, one of the vitally 
 important and more or less perplex- 
 ing problems confronting a wise and 
 deeply concerned parenthood, is that of 
 the proper cultivation of her taste for 
 reading. Involved are the questions of 
 knowing how, when, and what to read ; 
 whether to practise real and mechan- 
 ical reading, with or without reflection; 
 reading for amusement and recreation; 
 reading for intellectual cultivation and 
 mental culture ; reading for help ; read- 
 ing for morals, and half a hundred other 
 questions. So to guide your bright, 
 eager, growing Girl, the modern aver- 
 age Girl of the average American 
 home, through the maze of literature, 
 that her use of it, whatever the purpose 
 and object, shall prove an enrichment, 
 will be a task for your best judgment, 
 your wisest considerateness, your sense 
 of justice and charity, and your tact. 
 
 37 
 
38 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 And withal, it is a pleasant task, about 
 which you should be optimistic. 
 
 Even before your Girl becomes a 
 reader of books, it will be a helpful thing 
 to have occasional talks; not didactic 
 or pedagogic lectures, but pleasant, in- 
 formal, chatty talks with her about 
 literature in general, — the different 
 characters it assumes, its object, its 
 value, and its influence upon the mind 
 and heart and life of the reader. 
 
 The idea that there is but one proper 
 aim in book-reading is an absurdity on 
 the face of it. It is a sort of bigotry, 
 and the outcome of crooked thinking. 
 There are a dozen aims in reading, and 
 all are proper. It is just as proper for] 
 your Girl to read a book that con-| 
 tributes, and solely, to her amusement 
 and recreation, as it is to read books 
 which aim at the formation of character. 
 The sense of humor and amusement and 
 mind relaxation, as well as bodily play, 
 is native and organic and instinctive 
 with us, and was given for a wise and 
 beneficent purpose; and we are just as 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 39 
 
 accountable for its reasonable use and 
 development, as we are for the care of 
 the other, and more serious side of our 
 natures. Books that serve no purpose 
 in the education of the intellect or the 
 heart, are as necessary as those which 
 are written with this last aim. 
 
 It is almost a penchant with too many 
 of us, to forget that childhood is a time 
 for enjoyment, and that the one object 
 of books, as well as toys and similar 
 devices, is to make and keep these 
 youngsters happy. It is an egregious 
 blunder to consider their happiness 
 only as a means to some end; instruc- 
 tion and obedience, for instance. 
 
 Amusement is itself an end, a neces- 
 sity of both the physical and the moral 
 nature; a condition of growth and de- 
 velopment. If your Girl can find it 
 in a book that serves no other purpose, 
 be glad about it. If the humor and 
 amusement in a book are clean and 
 wholesome, it is enough; something 
 valuable will be gained. These simple 
 talks with your Girl about books may, 
 
40 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 with advantage, be made a part of the 
 home life during her earlier school days, 
 before she enters the high school. They 
 will serve to awaken interest in litera- 
 ture, and help her to approach it more 
 or less intelligently. 
 
 How to read is one of the important 
 faculties to be acquired. Unless you 
 are more fortunate than the average 
 parent, you will encounter more or less 
 difficulty in this part of your Girl- 
 building. It is desirable, of course, that 
 there should be a methodical process in 
 reading. But most Girls, in their read- 
 ing, are like Bobby in his eating. He 
 went to spend a vacation with an Aunt 
 who was a stickler for certain breakfast 
 foods. Bobby worried through his 
 breakfast a few mornings, and then, 
 addressing his Aunt very politely but 
 firmly, said, "Aunty, I don't want 
 nutritious food; I want to eat what I'd 
 rather." So, the average Girl, with an 
 awakened taste for reading — and a 
 keen appetite it is at the outset — will 
 not care for nutritious reading, like 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 41 
 
 science, and physics, and geology, and 
 chemistry, and history, and biography 
 even when the subjects are deHghtfuUy 
 treated, and adapted to young girlhood. 
 She wants to read what she'd " rather," 
 and the "rather" gravitates to story 
 books. The wise thing to do is, not to 
 deprive her altogether of this story- 
 reading; for mental entertainment is 
 her inalienable right; but help her in 
 selecting the very best books of the 
 story-telling kind, pleasantly bargain- 
 ing that some of her reading-time shall 
 be given to books of a more "nutri- 
 tious" character. In this way, a 
 methodical course of reading may be 
 attained. It will be well to remember 
 that it is neither necessary, nor a fact, 
 that all your Girl's knowledge should 
 come to her in the shape of knowledge. 
 A duty or a principle may be as vividly 
 illustrated in a story of home life, as in 
 an editorial or a sermon; indeed, is far 
 more likely to make its way into the 
 conscience, in the story, than in the 
 sermon. The greatest art in story- 
 
42 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 writing, is to make the principle to be 
 taught a genuine element in the story. 
 As your Girl comes to the years of 
 real reading, this fact about reading 
 should be a large part of your guidance. 
 Teach your Girl to discover the prin- 
 ciple which the author aims to inculcate, 
 among the first things, and if it appeals 
 to her sense of right, read it, in order 
 to absorb its worth as a principle. That 
 is why the Bible is of real worth as 
 literature. It starts up a principle, then 
 sets up a character — a real one in this 
 ease — to show how it works out in life. 
 In that book of human documents, we 
 see how a good man lived, and how he 
 came out; in other phrasing, how the 
 principle worked in real life. There 
 is a good deal of mechanical reading in 
 our day; reading for the story, getting 
 the husks, and digesting nothing. We 
 read out of proportion to our thinking. 
 We devour a great many books, with- 
 out knowing anything about them. 
 You will find it a good plan to have 
 your Girl talk freely about the book 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 43 
 
 she is reading; to discuss its merits and 
 demerits with her; to discuss its style, 
 diction, aim and characters. In this 
 way she will unconsciously reveal the 
 character of her daily reading, and open 
 the way to your hearty commendation, 
 or to the need of your comment in cor- 
 rection of a fault. 
 
 The share of time which your Girl is 
 to give to reading, and, in some 
 measure, the quality of it, must neces- 
 sarily depend upon circumstances. As 
 a girl at school, she must devote most 
 of her hours to study, and any habit 
 of extensive and various reading will 
 be detrimental. Such a habit will re- 
 sult in unfitness for hard study. That 
 a Girl still in school, even the high 
 school, ought not to read the so-called 
 society novel should go without saying. 
 Even if the books read are in the line 
 of school studies, there should be a 
 reasonable limitation to their number. 
 Play, in the purest sense, will be more 
 to the purpose of development than 
 reading. 
 
44 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 As your Girl reaches the threshold 
 of young womanhood, and her girlhood 
 lies behind her, the question of what to 
 read relates in a larger and a more dis- 
 tinctive sense to the fashioning of her 
 intellectual culture and moral char- 
 acter. Disciplined and trained, she is 
 more thinkingly and reflectively read- 
 ing with more concentration of thought. 
 With her, the influence of books is 
 greater; their inspiration more impel- 
 ling. For these very reasons, you are 
 still to be her censor and mentor. There 
 is no dearth of books, and books of the 
 proper kind for your Girl's reading. 
 Books published nowadays are not one 
 whit less valuable than the books of 
 former years. There are books that are 
 of a questionable character, plenty of 
 them; but there are good books, plenty 
 of them. As Bacon says, " Some books 
 are to be tasted ; others to be swallowed, 
 and some few to be chewed and 
 digested." If there are books of a 
 questionable character, it is simply be- 
 cause there is a demand for them. 
 
 Now and then somebody takes fright, 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 45 
 
 and has a good deal to say concerning 
 the extent and importance of the in- 
 fluence of literary people upon the 
 masses. They never say anything 
 about the reflex influence. Literary 
 people are under the conscious necessity 
 of adjusting themselves and their work 
 to the customs, notions, and demands 
 of those among whom they live. There 
 is always this silent attraction which 
 everywhere assimilates men, uncon- 
 sciously. It is inevitable that these men 
 should adapt their work to the minds 
 that demand it. What the people who 
 read books desire to read, that thing, 
 some writer who divines the popular 
 heart or fancy, will endeavor to put on 
 the bridge of print. Literary men, 
 good and bad, will be prompted to pro- 
 duce just what they think will be read 
 and applauded. If there are books of a 
 questionable character on the market, it 
 is simply and only because of the de- 
 mand for them. It is the reflex influ- 
 ence of which we speak. Stop the de- 
 mand, and the supply will cease. 
 
 No one is under obligations even to 
 
46 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 taste a book of questionable character, 
 much less chew and digest it. But in 
 building your Girl it is well to remem- 
 ber, that simply to teach her to avoid 
 books of a questionable character is not 
 enough. It is evident that what she 
 reads largely determines her intellectual . 
 culture, the character of her education. 
 Hence, there is an imperative demand j 
 for a careful selection of what we term ? 
 good books. These she should read with 
 discretion, if through their influence she 
 is to grow in intellect and morals. 
 
 Necessarily, while your Girl should 
 not become an omnivorous novel-reader, 
 the novel is a marked and characteristic 
 form of modern literary activity. Here, 
 then, is an acreage for the exercise 
 of your intelligent discretion. Clearly, 
 your Girl is entitled to the enjoyment 
 and the profit there is in the use of im- 
 aginative literature — whether romance, 
 the purpose novel, the historical novel, 
 the novel of manners, or the sentimental 
 novel. 
 
 It remains for you to see that she has 
 the very best of novelistic literature — a 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 47 
 
 reasonable share of it — to guard against 
 indiscriminate reading, and the cultiva- 
 tion of a taste that is confined to novel- 
 reading only. 
 
 Many otherwise intelligent people 
 have the notion that the imagination is 
 a faculty which necessarily manifests in 
 its operation a certain falseness. That 
 is an error. One man has common sense ; 
 another has imagination. The one sees 
 things as they are ; the other sees things 
 as they are not. The truth is, that the 
 man whose imagination is the most in- 
 tense and exalted, is the man whose im- 
 pressions of things are in general the 
 most truthful and exact. It is under- 
 stood, of course, that while the imagina- 
 tion in different people works under 
 different laws, it must be kept in such 
 subjection that it neither unduly vital- 
 izes or exalts, nor in the other case, dis- 
 colors or exaggerates. Among writers, 
 George Eliot stands sponsor for the first 
 class, and Hawthorne for the second. 
 A man whose intellectual culture has 
 been of the proper kind, enjoys a good 
 novel, simply because it is a novel, and, 
 
48 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 like the highest poetry, does not deal 
 with the mere truth of fact. This is 
 the mental sustenance your Girl should 
 have. Her books of study have already 
 told her what is ; a good class of imagi- 
 native literature will tell her what might 
 be, or at least, lead her to think of what 
 ought to be. And she will delight in it. 
 It will do her a great service. It will 
 refresh and strengthen her, even if it 
 helps her to put into words but a 
 single proposition which her judgment 
 accepts. It will stir, and set afoot, per- 
 haps, her observant and reflective facul- 
 ties. She will be carried out from her- 
 self, and come to a larger vision of life. 
 The real novelist is a teacher. Take 
 Dickens to illustrate the point. It may 
 be doubted if you will find in the writ- 
 ings of any author, in any language, so 
 many beautiful and various picturings 
 of marriage and the domestic life 
 springing from it, as in Dickens' works. 
 The wonderful fidelity, subtle delicacy, 
 and accurate helpfulness of these pic- 
 turings, are something precious. Neither 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 49 
 
 heart nor memory will ever give them 
 up, once they are lodged. These char- 
 acters are our friends, and will evermore 
 influence us for our good. Dickens, 
 with his subtle knowledge of the needs 
 of his kind, goes still further in his pic- 
 turings, and by the most accurate yet 
 tender and loving analysis, shows us the 
 cardinal principle of true consideration 
 for children. Nothing finer, or truer, 
 or more fascinating in this direction, 
 was ever put into a book, than the vivid 
 dramatic showing of the temptations, 
 frailties, ambitions, and entire emotions 
 of a child's nature, that is depicted in 
 the history of the beginning of Pip's 
 life, in the opening chapters of " Great 
 Expectation." 
 
 In thinking of this characteristic 
 power and charm of Dickens, in rela- 
 tion to some of our more modern 
 authors, it may be questioned whether 
 any of them shares it more largely than 
 the author of " The Deliverance," " The 
 Ancient Law," and other books. She 
 has accurate analysis. She knows where 
 
50 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 to find the hidden springs of action in 
 human nature, and she has the artist-' 
 faculty of language, to make it visible 
 to the reader. It is a great fact that 
 the novel, as well as other literature, is 
 the great white way for tens of thou- 
 sands, who often long to get away from 
 themselves, and have a larger outlook 
 on life, and a more diversified compan- 
 ionship. Books satisfy this longing, 
 and they prove inspirational. The in- 
 spiration of a good book has made great 
 men and noble women. And your Girl 
 cannot have a better incentive toward 
 good reading than your interest in what 
 she reads; an interest that discusses it 
 with her, that encourages her without 
 any flattery ; that never makes her prig- 
 gish, nor laughs at her rtiistakes; con- 
 triving in a genial fashion to show 
 appreciation of her progress in this fea- 
 ture of her development. 
 
 A while ago making out a list of 
 books of the right sort may have been 
 possible. To attempt it now is to invite 
 an unmerciful quizzing. It is unthink- 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 51 
 
 able that any list made should escape 
 the prejudice of the maker. We all 
 know a few books that are indescribably- 
 delicious. To read them is like eating 
 honey on good sweet bread. 
 
 Assuming that you have tactfully 
 used your parental privilege, in this 
 reading portion of Girl-building, she 
 will have neither the opportunity nor the 
 disposition for reading trashy, or other- 
 wise objectionable literature. There 
 will be simply no question of it. 
 
 These harmful books are plentiful, — 
 books that are apologetic for a loosen- 
 ing of the strenuous curb which pru- 
 dence puts upon immoralities; preten- 
 tious books, in the blue of the sky and 
 the gold of the mint, the society adven- 
 tures of a low, debasing philosophy am- 
 bushed in brilliant diction, every chapter 
 filled with wild, unnatural craving, and 
 glowing with frenzied passion. The 
 whole teaching of such a book, is, that 
 society shall cut loose from the safe 
 anchorage of a moral conscience, and be 
 
52 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 fast and free in living and thinking. 
 About all this falseness, the author 
 throws a mantle of rose-hued light, so 
 that the weak are misled, and even the 
 thoughtful are sometimes blinded. The 
 banquet is attractively spread, and the 
 evil forms look persuasively out from 
 the tessellated halls and through the 
 richly embroidered curtains of this lit- 
 erature. It is the literature of the new 
 school of vice now in vogue, skilfully 
 draped. It is termed morality, because 
 the vogue calls it realism. Your rightly 
 guided Girl will have little or no dispo- 
 sition to feed her mind upon this kind 
 of literature. Much of it is printed 
 poison. The good are even more plen- 
 tiful; novels that are clean and pure 
 and wholesome; full of mental and 
 moral nutrition; feeding bountifully in 
 true and harmless and beautiful ways; 
 novels with all the graces of language, 
 pure and clear, their theme blending 
 culture and entertainment, strengthen- 
 ing, enriching; novels that will not set 
 the nerves a-tingling or the heart beat- 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 53 
 
 ing out of the normal; novels that ap- 
 peal to the deepest feelings, and to our 
 moral sensibilities. 
 
 In her acquirement of a taste for his- 
 tory, and biography, and poetry, and 
 travel, your Girl must necessarily spend 
 a considerable portion of the time al- 
 lotted to reading, and something like 
 thirty or forty books of the novel char- 
 acter will be the limit of her achieve- 
 ment for the year. It is said that thirty 
 thousand new books are published an- 
 nually. If your Girl has had some; 
 training in the art of reading books 
 skippingly, she may get the best out of, ^ 
 a book in an hour or two. In this w^ay, 
 she may increase the number read. But 
 she cannot at best, keep up with the 
 procession of even the best books. 
 Besides, she must, necessarily, reach 
 back and become familiar with such 
 literary work as that of authors like 
 Tennyson, Whittier, Scott, Dickens, 
 Goldsmith, Mulock, Thackeray, Gas- 
 kell, Macaulay, Bryant, Eliot, Goethe, 
 and others of their class, and still make 
 
f 
 
 54 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 choice of reading from among writers 
 of a more recent day and of the present : 
 Thoreau, Roberts, Cooper, Jewett, Cur- 
 tis, Cable, Chambers, Gilbert, Glasgow, 
 Craddock, Sowells, Freeman, Wiggins, 
 Mitchell, Hawthorne, Ward, Van Dyke, 
 Johnson, Allen, Fox, Riley, Thompson, 
 Rice, Wister, Reed, Miller, Churchill, 
 and perhaps half as many more. 
 
 From among the books of these 
 authors, and with your help, your Girl 
 is to make choice of her reading-matter, 
 — matter that will stimulate the brain, 
 impart an appreciation of what is beau- 
 tiful and of real worth, inspire to the 
 higher purposes of life, be a means of 
 culture and refinement. 
 
V 
 
 YOUR GIRL AND HER 
 ETHICAL TRAINING 
 
 IN building your Girl, keep ready in 
 your mind the fact that if there ever 
 has been in the life of woman a super- 
 imposed inability to make use of her 
 power in practical and normal activities 
 in life and living, it has ceased to be. 
 Your Girl is coming on to take a much 
 larger share in these world and life 
 activities, than the girl of a score of 
 years ago, and it is your great privilege 
 to accept the fact, and to give her the 
 fullest benefit of your knowledge and 
 experience in her education and train- 
 ing for it. Our age is busy making a 
 new power for service to humanity and 
 the world, out of this feminine material ; 
 and the new exaltation of the sentiment, 
 not only dooms to obscurity a great col- 
 lection of false notions with relation to 
 the inferiority of woman, but presages 
 a great good in the world. That old 
 
 55 
 
56 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 idea of the man's exclusiveness in the 
 acreages of reason and ethics and intel- 
 lectual strength, is rapidly passing, as 
 man advances in knowledge and wis- 
 dom. Not only the man, but the woman 
 as well, came with a mind that can work 
 its way upward. Woman, as well as 
 man, carries within her a kingdom of 
 ethical and spiritual wealth and power ; 
 a travelling soul. This is the age of 
 mankind, and when an age is making 
 great character, it uses all manhood and 
 womanhood, young and old. Your 
 Girl is included. Our years can say to 
 the old years, "My ways are higher 
 than your ways, my thoughts are higher 
 than your thoughts." 
 
 Bear in mind, and teach your Girl to 
 bear in mind, that it is the use to which 
 we put our possessions that tells in the 
 history of life. Teach her that the best 
 morals are the morals which do the best 
 in service, just as the best religion is 
 that whose creed and code are practical, 
 helpful service for humanity. It is the 
 only religion of real worth. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 57 
 
 Girl-building must have a firmly set 
 ethical basis. Character is moulded by 
 thought and association. Your Girl 
 has not come into the world, to move 
 through her life alone. That would 
 make of her an oddity. The Creator 
 never made an odd man or woman. 
 Not any more, than He made an ear of 
 corn, with an odd number of rows for 
 the grains. No field or crib ever held 
 such an ear of corn. At some point in 
 life every human being touches the 
 world and life of humanity, and for 
 that touch, it either rises or falls. The 
 conscious or the unconscious influence 
 of every human being is always at work, 
 mayhap setting the concert pitch of 
 other lives, for all time. 
 
 By culture we mean training all the 
 powers and capacities of the being to 
 the highest pitch, and directing them to 
 their true ends; in ethical culture, car- 
 rying the best there is in us, to the high- 
 est plane of moral energy. It is not so 
 much the pouring in of knowledge, as 
 it is the leading forth into a larger de- 
 
58 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 velopment, of powers already possessed 
 but latent. 
 
 Nature has conferred upon your Girl 
 physical, mental and moral possibilities. 
 These are capable of growth in train- 
 ing. It is one province of education, 
 to unfold them ; not one, but all of them. 
 But education must embrace the cul- 
 ture of the affections, no less than of the 
 mind. That is one phase on the moral 
 side. It ought to lead to an enlarged 
 sympathy for service to humanity. 
 Many people who are ignorant in other 
 directions have a genius for the best use 
 of the affections. It makes good, help- 
 ful personalities. Sympathy, by an 
 appeal to it, may grow as fine as the 
 intellect. 
 
 The beginning of this, for your Girl, 
 means her possession of an ideal. And 
 the aim which rules the life of your Girl 
 should be ideal. To this end, her train- 
 ing must bring her into contact with 
 what is best and greatest in the thoughts, 
 the sentiments, and the deeds of men 
 and women of the past and present gen- 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 59 
 
 erations. She must have, as well, a 
 social basis; intercourse with living 
 hearts, as well as with dead books ; with 
 people whose minds and characters are 
 fitted to instruct, elevate, and sweeten 
 her own. This she must have besides 
 the discipline which she must carry on 
 with herself in learning self-control, 
 self-possession, and self-reliance, and 
 the formation of habits, to strengthen 
 what is good in her own nature. She 
 must starve whatever of evil there is in 
 her nature, bv feeding the good there is 
 in it. 
 
 Whatever the difference between 
 the ideal and the real, we must seek the 
 ideal. We cannot safely shut out the 
 vision. An invisible attraction draws 
 us toward the perfect in every depart- 
 ment of life. 
 
 Most of us are actuated by the ideal ; 
 some of us are quite wholly governed 
 by it. Even if our sordid self swings 
 us into the last ditch of a paltry inde- 
 cision, we never altogether lose the 
 vision of the ideal that beckoned us to 
 
60 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 the higher, richer, better things. The 
 memory of it may swim to us in tears 
 of contrition, but the vision haunts us 
 — a shame-spot in our lives. It is that 
 instinctive passion for perfection which 
 went into the Edenic clay temple as a 
 part of life. 
 
 The idealistic must be the chief factor 
 in the successful life. Indifference to 
 it means failure. Your Girl desires to 
 be a strong, wholesome, useful, and 
 helpful personality, an individuality 
 with a definite purpose; giving some- 
 thing of her faith to the faithless ; some- 
 thing of her own vibrant joy to the 
 joyless; something of her strength to 
 the strengthless. These graces in action 
 are to be no mere incident in her life, 
 but a characteristic feature, an abiding 
 law. It is an ideal worth every effort. 
 
 In training your Girl, and showing 
 her the importance of the ideal as a fac- 
 tor in her life, you will be fortunate if, 
 in her case, you escape one danger, and 
 the work of overcoming it. It is this: 
 The tendency of young girls, and young 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 61 
 
 men, to consider themselves as so insig- 
 nificant that it matters little what they 
 do, or how they do it. The contrast 
 between the greatness of what there is 
 to be done and the minuteness of what 
 each one is able to do, is apt to strike 
 almost any one with a discouraging 
 effect. And so comes the self-ques- 
 tioning, Is it worth while to try? Such 
 a question is like a sad refrain, rather 
 than a hopeful, earnest tone that would 
 summon effort and promise success. 
 
 This will be especially manifest after 
 the first flush of youthful enthusiasm is 
 over, and before the realities and actu- 
 alities of life come to be fathomed. At 
 this point you will find exercise for your 
 ripest judgment, your patient, genial 
 guidance. As yoiu* Girl discovers how 
 vast are the fields of knowledge ; as she 
 becomes acquainted with the men and 
 women who are held as leaders in liter- 
 ature and science and music, the phi- 
 lanthropic and sociological work of the 
 world, and realizes how much they have 
 accomplished, how deeply they have 
 
62 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 delved into the secrets of nature and 
 human nature, and with what power 
 they have worked and are still working, 
 she will be sorely tempted to contrast 
 her own small abilities with theirs, and 
 to conclude that it is hardly worthwhile 
 to set so insignificant a factor to work 
 upon such great problems. Right there 
 lies your opportunity; your opportun- 
 ity to reveal to your Girl the earlier 
 lives of these men and women, the toil 
 and effort, the stress and strain with 
 their own once insignificant lives and 
 abilities, on their way up to leadership ; 
 your opportunity to keep your Girl so 
 heartened and hopeful that she will not 
 lose her ideal. 
 
 This " Is it worth while? " is the con- 
 clusion and the grave of many bright 
 ambitions, many high hopes, many rich 
 promises. It is the cause, too, of much 
 of the inefficiency of the work of the 
 world. You can show your Girl that, 
 if every person of small or moderate 
 ability should shrink from endeavor 
 because he can do so little, the world 
 would soon become bankrupt. You 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 63 
 
 can make it clear to your Girl, that she 
 cannot tell how much power she can 
 develop by effort, while it is quite cer- 
 tain that without effort she can develop 
 none worth thinking of twice. Power 
 of any kind grows by exercise; so with 
 skill. It is often the case that the 
 rarest genius has dwindled into ineffi- 
 ciency, while moderate talent has be- 
 come, through perseverance, a great 
 force in the world's activities. And 
 you should urge the point that, whether 
 or not she becomes a factor in the 
 world's work, her own work is marked 
 out for her; and if she neglects it, no 
 one else can do it, and the world becomes 
 the loser; to what extent, no one can 
 tell. Whatever you do for your Girl, 
 fight tactfully the self-depreciation 
 which prompts her to question the 
 "worth while" of effort. Lead her 
 away from self, and into thinking of 
 the work to be done in the betterment 
 of the world. 
 
 Genially, tactfully, guide your Girl 
 beyond the point of indecision as to 
 whether she will carry her life up to 
 
64 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 where it will be a force for practical 
 good, or let it drift with the tide of 
 commonplaces. Like others, your Girl 
 will ask herself that question; you can 
 help her in the right answering. You 
 can point out that the goodward motive 
 is below the ideal. The motive is born 
 in the conscience, in the instinct, in our 
 consciousness. 
 
 The world would be utterly bankrupt 
 without the goodward motive, which 
 binds together the tens of thousands of 
 splendid men and noble women who are 
 at work in the fields of philanthropy, 
 and science, and sociology, and humani- 
 tarianism, for the good and the better- 
 ment of the race ; but their efforts make 
 life easier, more joyous, purer, cleaner, 
 more wholesome. These workers with 
 the goodward motive are always taking 
 the next step upward. Behind it there 
 are integrity, conscientiousness, sincer- 
 ity, fairness, justice, benevolence, char- 
 ity, and helpfulness. These are the 
 inspirers of moral, social, and. intellec- 
 tual life. Even in the imperfect de- 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 65 
 
 gree in which they have been found; 
 even in the face of many blunders and 
 errors, they are the salt of the earth, the 
 sunshine of human existence. 
 
 Nothing imaginable could for an 
 hour take the place of these graces and 
 virtues, which are carried into Ufe by 
 these workers. It is unthinkable that 
 any inventiveness or mental brilliancy 
 could ever take the place of integrity, 
 or honesty, or moral cleanness, or faith- 
 fulness and good will, in the homes and 
 lives of men. 
 
 All this had but one origin and 
 source. Not in any religion, but in the 
 life, conduct, and character of the Man 
 of Galilee, who, first of all and above 
 all, was the pattern ethical man. He 
 was ethically perfect, intellectually per- 
 fect. His intellect for the discovery 
 and verification of truth, which was 
 quick to detect error, sophistry, or 
 fraud, and His affectional and ethiqal 
 nature, standing for rightness, were the 
 two sides of a character that was ideal- 
 istic. That which evinces the personal 
 
66 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 grandeur of this teacher is not so much 
 the gospel He set afoot and astir among 
 men, as the fact of these human and 
 ethical graces, which He taught and 
 lived, and which we can teach and live. 
 In that truth our hopes centre. There 
 our fears die, there our weaknesses fall. 
 We can get these good things into the 
 iron of the blood, where they will be- 
 come vital and organic. There never 
 was an end to the Incarnation; there 
 never will be. In our doing these help- 
 ful things, these philanthropic, these 
 sociological, humanitarian things, little 
 or great, there is still an intermingling, 
 an interweaving, interlacing, and inter- 
 threading, a blending of His nature and 
 ours. When you stand in the presence 
 of one of these men or women, busy 
 working out this goodward motive, you 
 stand in the presence, not of an ecclesi- 
 astic, so much, as in the presence of the 
 preeminent ethical Man and Teacher. 
 The hope of the world lies in the 
 number and character of the recruits 
 coming from our schools and colleges 
 to take the place of the veterans who 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 67 
 
 fall by the way. Havoc smokes all 
 along the lines of life and living, and 
 the great work of physical, mental, 
 and moral rejuvenation must go on. 
 Largely, and hopefully, too, it will fall 
 into the hands of young womanhood 
 coming across the threshold of our insti- 
 tutions, where the ethical training is 
 dominant in the curriculum; young 
 women, strong and rich in their culture, 
 looking upon life and this helpful work 
 for its betterment as a privilege, coming 
 to profit by the errors of those who have 
 gone before, and to make better that 
 which was good. There will never be 
 any dramatic coming of the millen- 
 nium; no swift curtain-raising amid 
 garish light. If it comes, it will come 
 out of the quiet, forceful translation of 
 this new faith, into the practical facts of 
 life; merging these principles of life 
 and living into the commoner affairs of 
 the world. With womankind it is 
 easier than with men; for to them it is 
 especially given to merge the ideal into 
 the belongings of every-day life. 
 
 Your Girl ought to be one of these 
 
68 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 recruits, doing, in her place and with 
 her abilities (be they great or small) 
 her share, little or much, of what re- 
 mains to be done. So build your Girl 
 that she shall see and realize the beauty 
 and strength of little things. Her field 
 of work may be a small one, and yet 
 her ministry of the little things lying 
 within her environment (home, the 
 neighborhood, her social place) may be, 
 can be, of infinite worth: little sympa- 
 thies, little compassions, little deeds of 
 kindliness and help just adding them- 
 selves together in unbroken, unwearied 
 succession. The completed beauty of 
 a life is often only the added beauty 
 of little inconspicuous acts. Existence 
 here may be far too short for great acts, 
 but long enough each day to string 
 good deeds on the line of life like pearls 
 on the necklace of eternity. In this 
 field your Girl can work easily, and do 
 her share in the world's upbuilding. It 
 is her privilege, and a great one. So 
 guide and build her. that she will realize 
 and appreciate it. 
 
VI 
 YOUR GIRL AND THE ELE- 
 MENTS OF TRUE WOMAN- 
 HOOD 
 
 HERE we touch the elements of 
 true womanhood in your Girl- 
 building. We have sought to empha- 
 size the importance of ethical culture in 
 this training of your Girl for a large 
 and definite place in the world's work, 
 — that culture which has for its aim not 
 only intellectuality, but practical prep- 
 aration for practical work. Not merely 
 the projection of your Girl's life in some 
 one particular direction, but the en- 
 nobling and enrichment of her whole 
 being. It will send her to the work 
 with a trained mind, a well-stored brain, 
 and a heart attuned to purity and 
 righteousness and love. No culture is 
 worth anything, if these virtues and 
 graces are not foundational. One may 
 not have money; one may not have 
 power; one may not have cleverness; 
 
 69 
 
70 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 but one must have character, and behind 
 it a cultivated will, if one is to get on in 
 life and to be of service. 
 
 At this point in your building, you 
 should impress upon your Girl the truth 
 that there is an element of danger in 
 self-reliance, and self-assertion, which 
 she ought to guard against. Naturally, 
 we like self-reliance in a girl; we like 
 an independency of spirit; we like self- 
 assertion; we like an independent, fear- 
 less way of looking at things. A Girl 
 of such a character goes her own way, 
 shapes her own course; she speaks, 
 reads, and thinks, after her own fashion. 
 Without it the sense of the individual's 
 worth and place is lost, and we think 
 of humanity in the bulk, not as inde- 
 pendent entities. Likable as it is, it 
 has its dangers. Like energy without 
 judgment, it may prove an element of 
 self-destruction. Like imagination, it 
 must be under curb and restraint. It 
 is among young people that the repre- 
 sentatives of self-reliance or independ- 
 ence are found, especially among young 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 71 
 
 women and girls. The opening up of 
 the new order for woman accentuates 
 this element, makes it more conspicu- 
 ous. There may be an overestimate and 
 abuse of it ; an undue self-reliance. To 
 be of downright good, self-reliance must 
 be the handmaid of an honest humility. 
 Your Girl should not have any doubt 
 of her power, nor any hesitation in giv- 
 ing her opinions ; nor any timidity either. 
 Both timidity and fear, in these rela- 
 tions, are deformities, they are abnor- 
 malities. Your Girl can have, ought 
 to have, must have, a correct under- 
 standing of the relation between what 
 she can do and say, and the rest of the 
 world's doings and sayings. Any self- 
 reliance that snubs, ignores, or is indif- 
 ferent toward what the rest of the 
 world is doing or saying, is foolish, or 
 ludicrous, or both. 
 
 That sort of self-reliance overesti- 
 mates one's own value and degenerates 
 rapidly into narrowness and conceit. 
 If we would learn anything, we must 
 be content to remain ignorant of many 
 
72 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 things, and gratefully accept the con- 
 clusions other minds have reached 
 through laborious effort. In a world 
 like this, it is not possible for your Girl 
 to be as independent as she might wish 
 to be. It is a splendid thing to map 
 out, as far as possible, the life-path; to 
 learn to swim without help; to be as 
 independent as we can; but it is a blun- 
 der to repudiate or ignore the ideas, 
 notions or conclusions of others about 
 us, under the impression, perhaps, that 
 they are all wrong and common. It 
 contracts the mental vision, and feeds 
 the prejudices. Correct these ideas, 
 notions and conclusions, if you will or 
 can, but do not curtly repudiate or 
 ignore them. In your struggle with 
 evil, you drive out a strong man who 
 has taken possession, by inviting in a 
 stronger man than he. So you must 
 deal with these other phases of life. 
 Teach your Girl to be self-reliant and 
 conscious of the power that has come to 
 her through culture and training, but 
 teach her to be reasonably modest in 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 73 
 
 the use of it, not antagonistic. Unhap- 
 piness and failure wait in the path of 
 one who is always deriding others in a 
 rude, supercilious way. There is noth- 
 ing in justification of this kind of self- 
 reliance, or this misuse of it, in the fact 
 that your Girl is beginning her life 
 upon an advanced plan; that in this 
 electrical age, we are handling the mys- 
 teries of the old years as the science of 
 familiar things; that our possibilities 
 are greatly enlarged. Our vantage- 
 ground is a debt to past achievement. 
 Let us pay it with gratitude, not with 
 the snub of a rash and boastful spirit. 
 As was said introductorily, this is an 
 age of the precocious, an age of pre- 
 maturity, an age in which the Girl is 
 already the woman. Even in her early 
 teens she is ready to assume direction of 
 things in household belongings, and in 
 social life. She apes her mother's ways, 
 and is anxious to wield the responsibili- 
 ties of life. Even where there is no 
 necessity to urge her, she leaves school 
 oftentimes just when she should be be- 
 
74 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 ginning her education, and thrusts her- 
 self into the world, more than willing 
 to shake off the habiliments of youth 
 and assume the place and duties of 
 those who have reached maturity. 
 
 She has had no adequate prepara- 
 tion. Her powers of mind and heart 
 are but partially developed. Intellec- 
 tually and morally, she has hardly en- 
 tered upon the work of development. 
 She has no proper conceptions of life 
 in its reality; knows little, if anything, 
 of the dangers which lie in ambush 
 along the way. For want of training 
 she falls into blunders, and very soon 
 becomes a disheartened, discouraged 
 misfit, and an easy victim for those who 
 prey upon the credulity of others. It 
 may not mean a tragedy for this girl, 
 but it does mean a small, incompetent, 
 fitful life. 
 
 The haste is not good. Whatever is 
 worth doing, is worth doing well. There 
 is neither a short nor a royal road to 
 either learning, success, or the proper 
 equipment for life-work. There is 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 75 
 
 nothing spontaneous about it. The 
 element of time must be a factor in the 
 calculation. Real achievements have 
 always been the outcome of long con- 
 tinued exertion. If your Girl is to 
 take a place in the world where she will 
 be a force and a power for service, she 
 must be taught to toil at her culturing; 
 to persevere, until her equipment is all 
 that it can be made, as she touches her 
 real work in life. 
 
 In her anxiety to reach the point of 
 equipment for life-work, a Girl is quite 
 apt to overstudy, and to do that is 
 to study unwisely. Wise study gives 
 proper heed to the limitations which 
 are termed mental digestion and assimi- 
 lation. You should have a care that 
 the brain of your Girl is neither over- 
 loaded nor made to go too fast. She 
 must be taught to give it both time and 
 freedom not only to select what is best, 
 but to digest that which is best. She 
 should be taught that, at the first feel- 
 ing of real fatigue or genuine weariness 
 from study, she must quit it, and use the 
 
76 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 brain in some sort of play. You must 
 not let her ambition for study drive her 
 bodily and mental powers beyond the 
 safety line. Nature draws the line, and 
 puts a sentinel there — fatigue. 
 
 So to build your Girl that she shall 
 possess, and in her life manifest, the 
 traits and elements of true womanli- 
 ness, is the aim and end of your privi- 
 lege. So to build her that her passions 
 shall be under the control of a strong 
 will, that will being the handmaid of a 
 tender, sensitive, ethically enlightened 
 conscience, is your privilege. She will 
 love beauty, beauty everywhere, — in 
 nature, and human nature; love it in 
 books and pictures ; love it in music and 
 in art; love it in imagination and in 
 reality. She will hate ugliness wher- 
 ever it reveals itself, and shrink from 
 vileness of whatever character. 
 
 Her whole nature will be in harmony 
 with that which is good and true and 
 enriching. She will respect others as 
 herself. She will recognize the divine 
 right of difference in men and women, 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 77 
 
 and be tolerant and charitable toward 
 them. She will so cultivate her dispo- 
 sition that its sweetness will become a 
 proverb. She will be as ready to serve 
 as to be served. Ideally educated, she 
 will see and feel the havoc that is made 
 along the lines of human life by poor 
 environment, ignorance, discourage- 
 ment, doubt, degeneracy, and positive 
 evil. But she will not be hysterically 
 alarmed about it, bewailing it, and idly 
 wishing that it were not so, or saying 
 that these maladies of body and soul 
 are inevitable and beyond remedy. 
 
 She will believe that these evils can 
 be eliminated, not by any crusade that 
 expends its force and power in vituper- 
 ative platform or pulpit speeches; not 
 by statutes which seek to make people 
 good by law; not by sentimentally dilet- 
 tantish and rose-scented essays, tied 
 with blue ribbons, and simperingly read 
 on platforms; not even by any appeal 
 to the religious instincts, but by hold- 
 ing firmly to the belief, that there is in 
 every human being some good, some 
 
78 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 element of right; that in every man and 
 woman and child, there is some discon- 
 tent with what is wrong and physically 
 as well as morally degrading; some 
 groping and striving to realize some- 
 thing better, something good. She will 
 believe that this good thing will be re- 
 sponsive to the personal, individual in- 
 fluence and touch of one who, in the 
 spirit of charity and tolerance and con- 
 siderateness, is a sympathetic helper. 
 If the world is to be made clean and 
 wholesome, it will be by this work on 
 the atoms; the individual entities. 
 
 The greatest philanthropist, the 
 greatest sociologist, the greatest psy- 
 chologist, the most intellectual and the 
 most manly, as well as the purest man 
 that the annals of the centuries reveal 
 to us, worked personally upon the indi- 
 vidual man, for his betterment. He 
 met the man's most obtrusive need, in 
 the spirit of sympathetic helpfulness; 
 and doing that, He found his way into 
 the man's life, for any greater influence 
 he might choose to exert. By His own 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 79 
 
 way of living, He told others how to live. 
 It was all personal work with the indi- 
 vidual. He was always compassionate, 
 helpful; never patronizing. The ideal 
 of the Master was a better civilization, 
 ethically; better environment; better 
 homes and home life; better brotherli- 
 ness, hence a better humanity. 
 
 Ideally educated and carefully 
 trained, your Girl will see all this, real- 
 ize it. She will not be either appalled 
 by the vastness of these maladies afflict- 
 ing the world, or discouraged by the 
 contrast of what there is to be done and 
 the minuteness of individual effort. In 
 the spirit of true womanliness she will 
 accept her share of the world's work, 
 with a purpose, and a determination to 
 carry out that purpose. 
 
 It is purpose, and then the suprem- 
 acy of the will, the resolution to carry 
 out that purpose, that gives a woman 
 much of what we call womanliness. 
 Once firmly settled in the mind and 
 heart of your Girl, it will give her the 
 power to resist any outward changes 
 
80 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 that threaten to defeat the purpose. 
 The purpose, with her determination to 
 live it out, is the chief thing. Unless 
 she has this, once she is in the current 
 of society and the world, all that is posi- 
 tive will be drawn out of her. What 
 she has of sentiments, opinions, preju- 
 dices, and tastes, will be merged into 
 those about her. If she has been edu- 
 cated and trained as you have planned, 
 she will not be merged into the current, 
 she will never lose her individuality, or 
 be disintegrated. While she will be 
 necessarily a part of the social life of 
 her place and environment, she will still 
 have her ideal before her, and live it, 
 and influence those about her, rather 
 than be influenced by them. She is 
 bound to impress her selfhood upon 
 others. She has more than the power 
 to resist outward changes ; she can make 
 changes, she can modify existing things, 
 and in this way bring to her aid the help 
 of those who, before they felt her power 
 and influence, were wholly indifferent 
 toward the work or service in which she 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 81 
 
 is engaged. She may do this partly by 
 her sweetness of disposition, her earn- 
 estness, her affectionateness, her mod- 
 esty and conscientiousness, her quick 
 apprehension, and her briUiant intui- 
 tion, — her pecuhar gifts; but most of 
 it will come from her self- determining 
 power. Once the purpose is fixed, it 
 can do almost anjrthing within the pos- 
 sibilities of achievement. No accom- 
 plishments, talents, opportunities, or 
 circumstances will take its place. 
 There must be the strength of mind to 
 formulate the purpose, and to carry it 
 on to the end, if any worthy work is to 
 be done. The real difference between 
 the feeble and the strong, the great and 
 those who are insignificant in the world, 
 is this invincible determination to carry 
 out the purpose, and live up to the ideal 
 that lies behind it. It is the irresolute, 
 vacillating, and yielding Girl who gives 
 up a noble contest, and sinks into pretty 
 and complacent idleness, acquiring the 
 character of a young lady of desultory 
 habits. She soon becomes bigoted, in- 
 
82 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 tolerant, and superficial. She becomes 
 run down, not only intellectually, but 
 physically. There is no such thing as 
 perfectly idle health, and the sooner a 
 Girl learns that truth, the better. Lives 
 which have no aim beyond the amuse- 
 ment of the hour, are inevitably, after 
 the first few years of youth, valetudi- 
 narian lives. An idle dawdler occupies 
 herself with her own sensations, and 
 soon becomes a tippler of medicines, 
 generally of the quack sort, fixing her 
 thoughts on one organ or another, until 
 she brings disease into the soundest part 
 of her body, and this because she is a 
 mere dawdler. There must be work, 
 there must be purpose, an ideal in life, 
 if a girl is to be a healthful being. It 
 is easy enough for the idle, dawdling 
 young woman to get into a condition 
 where, dogged by ennui, she adopts 
 forms of excitement that utterly de- 
 stroy, or at least obscure, the finer and 
 higher impulses of life. It is a difiicult 
 thing for her to recover from it. No 
 young girl can afford to give even the 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 83 
 
 slightest hospitality of thought to such 
 a future as that. It is a pitiful artifi- 
 ciality, and if persisted in, leads to 
 moral bankruptcy. 
 
 The true, strong woman will be not 
 only a resolute woman, but one with 
 her resoluteness and determination set 
 to an aim in life, an aim worthy of all 
 that is deepest and best in her nature, 
 and which she will work out, with all a 
 girl's fresh enthusiasm, and with the 
 matured power of a woman. She will 
 not drift into true womanliness. No 
 one ever did. Life is an earnest thing. 
 This you should get safely lodged in 
 the mind and heart of your Girl in her 
 building. Teach her that she will miss 
 all its excellence, as well as its reward, 
 unless she meets life with this concep- 
 tion of what she ought to be and do, as 
 an educated and cultured Girl. 
 
 As the average Girl of the average 
 American home, she will be quite free 
 from care ; the future of one of the bread- 
 winners. This will be a great gain. 
 While it will leave her freedom, it will 
 
84 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 increase her responsibility for her share 
 of the world's work, since it is upon this 
 class of Girls and women, commanding 
 their own time and means, that the 
 great bulk of this work must fall. If 
 it is to be done, they must do it. 
 
 In the face of what is to be done, 
 teach your Girl that her life must be 
 one of ministry, service, helpfulness, 
 doing good to all she can reach; not 
 giving money, but giving self, in a sym- 
 pathetic way. Out of her culture she 
 must show the way to make life easier, 
 less hard, less harsh. Not only must 
 she make some organized effort, but 
 come into personal contact with those 
 who need help and sympathy, and give 
 some of her own hopeful, vibrant spirit, 
 to the spirit that is breaking through 
 disheartenment. The sweetest expe- 
 riences of her life will come to her in 
 this way — this individual service. She 
 can in this way make her years golden, 
 radiant with blessings to others, and 
 honor and sweetness for herself. The 
 true aim of the culture of your Girl, if 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 85 
 
 you have builded aright, is not only to 
 fit her for her place in society, but for a 
 broad, helpful, unselfish life. 
 
 Your Girl must have her share in the 
 social life of her place. It is her right. 
 A part of her education and training 
 has been carried out with this in view. 
 It must not be denied her. She is not 
 to deny it to herself. It is a part of 
 her true womanliness. She must have 
 social companionships, literary employ- 
 ments, and her pleasures ; she must have 
 them to keep her health; to keep her 
 own spirit bright and buoyant. But 
 this must not be forgotten : that her pur- 
 pose of living a useful, helpful life shall 
 govern her in her distribution of time 
 for these companionships, readings, and 
 pleasures. If sacrifice must be made, 
 let it be toward these other things, not 
 toward her purpose to be helpful. Do 
 not sacrifice sincerity in this purpose 
 and work. 
 
 It is neither a simple nor an easy 
 thing to take up and accomplish this 
 work. Do not think it. It will make 
 
86 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 a constant demand on tact, patience, 
 forbearance, the power to repress the 
 feelings and to curb the impulses to 
 open-handed benevolence; it will de- 
 mand a careful study of conditions and 
 of the individual. There will be some 
 weariness in it, some loss of vital force. 
 The helper will be fretted by the fret- 
 fulness of the helped, depressed by their 
 depression. But to do this service is 
 to make life worth living. 
 
 It is in fulfilment of the spirit that 
 is actuating, not only the great institu- 
 tions where our young women are get- 
 ting their ethical culture, but the spirit 
 of the world at large, a world rejuve- 
 nated, made better, uplifted and 
 strengthened by individual service. 
 The field is not across the seas, but in 
 the homes within our reach ; homes that 
 are wretched through ignorance, dis- 
 couragement, helplessness, hopeless- 
 ness, and the customs and systems that 
 grind both soul and body. Some- 
 where, there is to be a better social and 
 economic condition, one that will make 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 87 
 
 a better manhood and womanhood pos- 
 sible, and increase the bulk of human 
 happinesss. It will be the result of this 
 wide-reaching ethical culture, this spe- 
 cial training of our Girls and young 
 women for a larger share in the service 
 of humanity. With their tact, their 
 finer intuition, their deeper sympathies, 
 their better qualities of persuasion, they 
 can achieve larger and better results 
 than men. Be grateful that you have 
 the inestimable privilege of building 
 one of these helpers, in the person of 
 your Girl. It only remains for you to 
 encourage her at the outset by your 
 sympathetic helpfulness and interest, 
 manifested by genial companionship, 
 tiding her over the first difficulties 
 which confront her. 
 
VII 
 
 YOUR GIRL IN RELATION TO 
 
 DOMESTIC SCIENCE AND 
 
 CHARM 
 
 IT ought to cause your heart to throb 
 with pride to have a Girl like yours 
 in your home; your Girl, physically 
 fine, handsome, charming, mentally 
 clear, forceful, and unspoiled ; your Girl 
 who is pure and wholesome-minded; 
 given, not to "isms," but to straight, 
 common-sense thinking; without any of 
 the sharp intensities, but with an honest 
 and sincere purpose to make the best 
 and most of life. It is a splendid thing. 
 
 And, yet, there are other things, — 
 things which cannot be separated from 
 her life, first as a Girl, then as a woman, 
 — commoner things, yet important in 
 their relation. There is domestic sci- 
 ence, for one. 
 
 No matter how much wealth, present 
 and prospective, a Girl may have, it is 
 a great mistake that she should come 
 
 88 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 89 
 
 to the age of young womanhood with- 
 out any practical experience in the do- 
 mestic science. that concerns itself with 
 household affairs from the attic to the 
 dining-room and the kitchen. 
 
 Half a dozen of the most efficient and 
 capable railway presidents in this coun- 
 try know the business of railroading 
 from an experience which began in 
 spike-driving and included every prac- 
 tical feature of it, from that to the pres- 
 idency. The most efficient manager of 
 one of the largest manufacturing estab- 
 lishments in America can go to the 
 bench and do a finer bit of work than 
 any man in the factory. 
 
 The hospitality of the old South has 
 been a proverb time out of mind. We 
 still remember the beautifully arranged 
 and appointed tables, in the big houses; 
 the quantity and quality of the food, 
 and the excellence of the cooking. 
 Many of these homes had "mammy" 
 cooks, whose fame was widely heralded. 
 But it was, and is still, the pride of the 
 Southern Girl, the beautiful and cul- 
 
90 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 tured daughter of the aristocratic fam- 
 ily, not only, that she could arrange 
 and appoint the table, but, in an emer- 
 gency, take "mammy's" place in the 
 kitchen, and from it send dishes of food 
 that would do credit to the most famous 
 cooks of the countryside. No matter 
 how many acres stretched away from 
 the old homestead, no matter what the 
 wealth or social position of the family, 
 the daughter and heiress had her train- 
 ing in domestic science, and a practical 
 knowledge of it. It was considered, 
 and spoken of, as a fine accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 The plea that your Girl may never 
 have occasion to use this knowledge in 
 the personal, working sense, is a lame 
 one. That she will always have wealth 
 with which to pay for domestic service, is 
 problematical. Changes from aflfluence 
 to poverty are common. Admitting 
 that she will never have this experience, 
 she will have need of the knowledge in 
 the management of others in her service. 
 The most helpless creature in the world 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 91 
 
 is the woman who, ignorant of domestic 
 science, is at the mercy of incompetent, 
 wasteful, extravagant, and dishonest 
 servants. 
 
 The home, to be the one place in all 
 the world where abide peace and content 
 and rest, must be a place of order, and 
 harmony, and cleanliness, and hygiene, 
 and comfort, and beauty. This is 
 applied domestic economy or science, in 
 relation to the general appointments of 
 the home. But it must be more widely 
 applied. It must include the service of 
 the kitchen — food, and its preparation 
 for the table. 
 
 Your Girl ought to know how to cook 
 and prepare food properly, hygienic- 
 ally. In the matter of health, longevity, 
 and the pleasures of the table, we are as 
 a people, giving much and long-needed 
 attention to the question of food. The 
 purity of food and the potentiality of 
 the different kinds of food, in relation 
 to the different employments of men 
 and women, is receiving the attention 
 and care of the best students of hygiene. 
 
92 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 The latest ascertained facts, descending 
 to minute details, are placed within the 
 reach of all. There is no excuse for 
 either ignorance or inefficiency in the 
 choice and preparation of food. Your 
 Girl ought to have this training. Social 
 environment may polish, and a liberal 
 education may enlarge, but neither can 
 save your Girl from being an unhappy, 
 discontented misfit, if she does not add a 
 knowledge of domestic science, and get 
 it practically by some experience. It 
 is well, just here, to be reminded that 
 education and learning are different 
 things, yet often confused. Education, 
 as usually conducted in schools, aims 
 to impart knowledge; learning is the 
 result of absorbing, digesting, verify- 
 ing, and arranging that knowledge. 
 
 There is no conflict between educa- 
 tion, learning, and culture on the one 
 hand, and fine, anti-dyspeptic cooking 
 on the other. The many-sidedness of 
 culture makes the vision clearer and 
 keener in details and particulars. Your 
 Girl may be able to dig up Sanskrit 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 93 
 
 roots, or get the tangles out of Greek 
 verbs, and yet understand and enjoy the 
 scraping of vegetables, the beating of 
 eggs, the weighing of sugar, and the 
 browning of beans ; and she may be able 
 to create dishes of such daintiness, 
 aroma, and taste, that the very thought 
 of her achievements in cookery, makes 
 the appetite ravenous long before the 
 table hour. She may have all that in- 
 tellectual culture can give her, and yet 
 not manifest banality in mixing the in- 
 gredients that result in angel cake. 
 Learning does not necessarily disturb 
 a woman in womanliness. Add good 
 cooking and a well-ordered house and 
 table, and she is angelic. 
 
 It is odd, to say the least, that the 
 things which seem most needful are 
 the things most poorly done. That is 
 the reason, perhaps, why we are now 
 giving so much attention to food and 
 its preparation. We can spare nearly 
 everything but good food and good 
 cooks. We cry out with Jed Towle in 
 "Rose o' the River," "By the great 
 
94 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 seleckman, I'd like to hev a wife, two 
 daughters, and four sisters, like them 
 Wileys, and jist set still on the bank of 
 the river and hev 'em cook victuals for 
 me; I'd hev nothin' to wish for but a 
 mouth as big as the Saco's.'* 
 
 No one in the world is so well 
 qualified and equipped to lift the home 
 to the highest plane, as the educated, 
 cultured young Girl whose training and 
 education and culture are reflected and 
 felt in parlor, library, nursery, kitchen, 
 and pantry. This desirable result can 
 be attained through her practical 
 knowledge of a domestic science of 
 which she is justly proud. It makes a 
 home in the truest sense of the good old 
 Saxon word — the vox humani of all 
 words — Home. 
 
 Closely related to this matter of 
 domestic science, is that of being charm* 
 ing amid it all. Charming as a hostess, 
 as a friend, and as a companion. It in- 
 cludes manners, tactfulness, the art of 
 talking well and genially, the science of 
 getting along agreeably with people. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 95 
 
 To be beautiful is one thing; to be 
 charming is quite another. "What a 
 delightfully charming young woman 
 she is!" This was said of a young 
 woman of whose facial lines one would 
 be compelled to use the adjective "very 
 plain" if one described them. Indeed 
 she would make a splendid foil for a 
 beautiful woman. And yet she is 
 notable for great benevolences, and for 
 what we may term Nature's fine magic; 
 only, not like magic transferable. A 
 charm not of the senses wholly or 
 chiefly, but a thing of manner and ex- 
 pression. And she will hold her gift of 
 charming to the last, though the plain- 
 ness of face may become even plainer, 
 as her dark hair whitens with age. She 
 will be, as this man says, delightfully 
 charming, for a fine soul gives her face 
 its life. 
 
 Beauty is common enough; charm is 
 far more rare. While beautiful faces 
 have exerted an influence in human 
 affairs that eludes all computation, it is 
 charm whose influence is strongest and 
 
96 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 most permanent. The magic girdle of 
 Venus was her gift of charming. With 
 it, she was supreme; without it, she 
 was merely a pretty woman. One of 
 America's gifted writers has said that 
 any man of culture would weary of the 
 most beautiful woman in the world, 
 sitting opposite at table for half a year, 
 if physical beauty of face, cuticle-deep, 
 were all she possessed. He longs for 
 that which is more composite — charm. 
 The classics bear a lesson to young 
 women. Helen possessed the fatal face ; 
 Cleopatra, the baleful gleam of eyes. 
 Still, we owe the Iliad to the beauty of 
 the first, as we owe the beautiful things 
 in literature to Petrarch and Dante to 
 the loveliness of Laura, and the beauty 
 of Beatrice. 
 
 Beauty and charm have their illus- 
 trations in society of to-day. You see 
 the self-centred woman of beauty, self- 
 ishly eager to please, simply for her own 
 ends. Over against her, the woman of 
 charm, less careful as to complexion, 
 toilet, and air, by nature, finds and uses 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 97 
 
 the magic and virtue of good humored 
 and graceful things, and sets those 
 about her playing in harmony, leaving a 
 delightfully pleasant impression with 
 them, as she moves about. Charm radi- 
 ates from her, as the glint from a gem. 
 It comes of a kind of warmth and gen- 
 erosity of soul. To it is added a little 
 native humility, which — not thinking 
 more of self than one ought to think — 
 offers of its best to make the hour go 
 by pleasantly for others. She is modest 
 and unselfish in order to be agreeable. 
 That is charm; and it stays long after 
 mere beauty has been forgotten. 
 
 This young woman is never super- 
 cilious, automatic, or dull. She has no 
 selfish motive in being charming. She 
 has no selfish end in view. She is not 
 charming because she wants you to do 
 something for a friend, or because she 
 wants to borrow something, or because 
 she wants to lure you into her church, 
 or because it is creditable to know you. 
 She is simply charming because it is in 
 her soul to be charming, to move along 
 
98 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 through life on the principle of making 
 things pleasant; she sees the bright, 
 optimistic side of things, and endeavors 
 to persuade others to gain her point of 
 view. 
 
 Because the world is full of the 
 maladies of body and soul, full of pain- 
 ful things, she rejoices that she can, 
 perhaps, withdraw the sting of some of 
 it, and make life more bright, and sunny 
 and thankful. She is charming in her 
 delicacy and consideration shown in 
 little things; never is brusque in look 
 or manner, no matter who the person in 
 contact may be. She never fidgets. If 
 she has a funny tooth, she never calls 
 attention to it by working playfully at 
 it with her tongue. She never sits and 
 munches emptiness. She is busy look- 
 ing after the comfort and pleasure of 
 those about her, and is charming in all 
 things pertaining to that. She is 
 genuinely a woman, and genuinely 
 womanly in her charm. Her charming- 
 ness is the instinct of a true woman's 
 sympathy and psychological power. It 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 99 
 
 is the power to hold. It is an inborn 
 gift, or be it the fruit of simple goodness 
 of heart, or be it a cultivated art, this 
 art of pleasing is one of the finest 
 elements of true womanliness. 
 
 The rhetoric of conversation is one of 
 the essential elements of charm. It is 
 the essential factor in entertaining, to 
 use a conventional vogue. Train your 
 Girl to talk well — to talk genially, with 
 propriety and good sense ; not to adopt 
 the stilted phraseology of the society 
 novel, but so to talk that the listener 
 may be edified as well as charmed. 
 
 Scores of persons can write an 
 eloquent speech or an admirable essay, 
 but cannot talk. Largely, it is because 
 they have not cultivated the art of talk- 
 ing. They have the gift of language, 
 even the artist-faculty and craft of 
 speech. They know words, their places, 
 weight, and uses. They put them into 
 writing rhetorically, forcefully, pictur- 
 esquely, charmingly; but in conversa- 
 tion they cannot say a thing worth the 
 explosive power of words to say. In 
 
100 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 either business or society, this lack of 
 abihty to talk lames them. It is a 
 crippling disability. 
 
 In your building, give your Girl this 
 training. Wherever she may move in 
 society, there will be a traffic in ideas 
 and views and opinions, some discussion 
 into which she will be drawn. She will 
 be thrown into the society of bright, 
 clever talkers, people who say something 
 besides the commonplaces. To main- 
 tain her place, your Girl should cultivate 
 and develop her conversational powers, 
 learn how to use her voice, learn to talk 
 entertainingly. She ought to study the 
 felicities of speech, the artist-faculty of 
 it, and its craft; make it genial and 
 pleasant ; cultivate it, until it becomes a 
 habit to use accurate language, until 
 there is a smooth flow of sentences, 
 giving the full quality of perfectly pro- 
 nounced words. Your Girl cannot 
 know beforehand what turn the conver- 
 sation may take, so there must be a 
 general and a wide cultivation. Much 
 of this is self -culture. Reading aloud 
 
B u I L D I N G T:o o B, e!); j&>;i-i ,>,oi 
 
 when alone is one way to train the voice 
 and make it winsome. Make a great 
 deal of pronunciation. People measure 
 one another by what they hear in each 
 other's speech. We all know the 
 measure when some one talks of the 
 " hee-ro-ine," and "Lady Pen-e-lope," 
 and " eti-quette," and " a-preciate," and 
 " di-plomat." Dictionaries and little 
 books of words commonly mispro- 
 nounced are abundant. Say the word 
 a dozen, twenty times, until you are sure 
 of it on your lips. The ability to talk 
 well is a rare accomplishment. To say 
 a word in a pleasant, graceful, accurate 
 way, about the latest item in the news- 
 paper, or the latest fact in science, or 
 about the last book, or even some 
 commoner topic ; to say it without arro- 
 gance, to say it with an inquiring tone, 
 sends people away with pleasant 
 thoughts. It is genuine currency. 
 
 Conversation is often spoiled by some 
 one asking a large question that has 
 but slight relation to what is being dis- 
 cussed; another is verbose; another is 
 
lOS BUI J. D I N G YOU R G I R L 
 
 parenthetical; another is so self-con- 
 tained that his talk is monologic. He 
 never builds conversation by adding 
 something to the remark of another by 
 saying something which the observations 
 of another suggests. 
 
 Persuade your Girl to cultivate her 
 conversational powers, since the ability 
 to talk well adds greatly to her charm 
 and to her influence with others. To be 
 able to take part in conversation, be it 
 light, merry, witty or serious, and yet 
 not go beyond the bounds of due respect 
 and reverence, as well as considerate 
 kindness and propriety, is a gift and 
 accomplishment you should covet for 
 your Girl. By cultivation she may be- 
 come bright in repartee, swift in intel- 
 lectual rejoinder and terse in statement, 
 adding conversational power to her 
 other charming qualities. 
 
VIII 
 YOUR GIRL AND HER RELA- 
 TION TO MARRIAGE 
 
 IN the building of your Girl, it is 
 taken for granted that you cannot 
 say very much to her about her marriage 
 until she reaches the marriageable age 
 and has her love affair. But as it is 
 natural and instinctive and peculiarly 
 feminine that your Girl should have her 
 thoughts about it, read about it, perhaps 
 talk about it to companions, it is parent- 
 ally consistent that you should be con- 
 cerned enough to see that her thinking, 
 and reading, and talking of it, shall 
 reflect your own views. 
 
 Undoubtedly, through her reading of 
 novelistic literature, other books, and 
 the newspapers, your Girl will have pre- 
 sented to her mind many different views 
 of marriage — a perfect maze of views 
 — some of them proper, scores of them 
 false and improper and dangerous in 
 
 103 
 
104 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 their influence. It is clearly unfair, if 
 not criminally negligent, that your Girl 
 should be left to make her own unaided 
 way through this maze. That her mind 
 will debate this question of marriage, 
 and her thoughts be colored by the views 
 she has read, is very certain. In her 
 own home she may have an illustration 
 of what true marriage means. If so, 
 she is indeed fortunate. But even in 
 that case, she is clearly entitled to, and 
 ought to have, some such guidance as 
 you have already given her with re- 
 gard to literature, and ethical matters 
 generally. 
 
 No question has been so universally 
 discussed as this question of marriage; 
 no question about which there has been 
 such a diversity of views and opinions ; 
 no question over which so much printer's 
 ink has been spread. And the discus- 
 sion is still going on. Certainly it would 
 be a dereliction on your part not to see 
 that your Girl has access to such read- 
 ing matter treating this vitally impor- 
 tant subject as is proper, and in accord 
 with your own views. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 105 
 
 Besides, in a casual, impersonal way, 
 the question should be talked about in 
 your family circle, and proper views of 
 it impressed. It is a false modesty that 
 will keep your lips closed, and your 
 views and opinions unexpressed. 
 
 In building this Girl, uppermost in 
 your mind has been the thought that the 
 work which the world is placing in the 
 hands of the young womanhood of this 
 century demands the broadest develop- 
 ment of the intellectual powers, and the 
 finest training of the ethical nature. 
 More and more must there come into 
 these delicate yet strong feminine hands 
 the creation and care of a new and 
 sweeter and safer and saner type of 
 home and social life. Our civilization 
 makes perpetually new and precious 
 demands. Even the so-called " society " 
 people have become disgusted with the 
 emptiness, and the froth, and the sham, 
 and the pretence of the life they lead, 
 and are yearning, in a human way, for 
 something that^is more human. These 
 young Girls will count in this work of 
 rehabilitation and rejuvenation, but 
 
106 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 they must be trained to realize that the 
 best there is to know and do, is none too 
 good to be carried into the complex and 
 ever-multiplying problems. Marriage 
 does not end this work for them. On 
 the contrary, marriage widens their field 
 of work. 
 
 With these thoughts before you, help 
 your Girl to right conceptions and con- 
 clusions, in the matter of marriage. 
 You ought to teach her to consider it 
 as the most sacred relation that exists 
 between man and woman; one of 
 the holiest of holy ties, not to be 
 lightly taken or lightly thrown away. 
 Rightly considered and rightly entered 
 upon, it means a companionship, a help- 
 meetness and intimate friendship, not 
 for a few months or a few years, but 
 for a lifetime, be it long or brief. No 
 true marriage is a temporary arrange- 
 ment; indeed, in one aspect of it, we 
 may say that it is a long, gradual, inter- 
 growth. Where it is begun in all the 
 purity, honesty, and sincerity of true 
 love and true respect, there will be a 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 107 
 
 gradual intergrowth, interweaving and 
 interlacing of the spiritual natures. 
 Sometimes this is visible in the physical. 
 Not seldom has it occurred that two 
 young persons, with scarcely any 
 physical resemblance of face, have be- 
 come husband and wife, and, after 
 twenty or thirty years of happy married 
 life — loving each other, loving the same 
 ways of life, thinking the same thoughts, 
 and doing the same things — have come 
 to have a strong resemblance in facial 
 lines. There is no contention that this 
 visibility always follows in a true mar- 
 riage, or that it is the only proof of such 
 a marriage ; but where it does follow, it 
 may be accepted as such proof. That 
 it does not follow a loveless marriage, 
 is clear enough. It is a psychological 
 truth, that we become like the character 
 we gaze at and study, first admiringly, 
 then absorbingly. 
 
 True marriage is the ideal partner- ^ 
 ship of husband and wife, in which each 
 helps the other to all that is highest 
 and finest and richest in character and 
 
108 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 life. The husband is not independent 
 of the wife ; the wife is not independent 
 of the husband. Neither has usurped 
 the place of the other, nor striven for 
 precedence. They work together, and 
 are equally responsible in the belong- 
 ings of the home life, and in the work 
 of creating a sentiment of social whole- 
 someness, sincerity, and faithfulness. 
 In this relation, it is a more or less per- 
 nicious doctrine, that the wife alone is 
 to be charged and held responsible for 
 the social part of the life of the two. It 
 would be just as reasonable and logical 
 to say that she is responsible for the 
 religious side of the two lives. 
 
 Strong moral support is an absolute 
 essential in the success of any good 
 cause. If, in the spirit of true woman- 
 liness, the wife is using her intellectual 
 and ethical powers, and the purifying 
 influences of the graces of her character, 
 in social uplifting and betterment, she 
 lias the right to all the moral support 
 her husband can give her, in private and 
 in public. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 109 
 
 Notwithstanding the surface indica- 
 tions to the contrary, and the flippant 
 pertness with which a certain kind of 
 literature treats the matter of love and 
 marriage, we are, as a people, coming 
 into a better and finer realizing sense 
 of what true marriage means ; what the 
 virtues in relation to it really mean. 
 There is a finer moral note in our dis- 
 cussion of these virtues. There is a 
 disposition to make the adoption and 
 exercise of these virtues fashionable. 
 We are coming to see that these virtues 
 stand for sound sense, and this is the 
 true basis of ethical and sound taste. 
 The part taken by the affections in 
 making human happiness has grown 
 enormously in the last decade, and now 
 holds the chief place in the whole. In 
 true marriage, the whole affectional 
 nature must be engaged. The basis is 
 not merely husband — wife. There is 
 little behind that, beyond the marriage 
 ceremony. True marriage means the 
 founding of a home. The foundation 
 of that home must be true respect, true 
 
no BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 love, and common sense. Upon these 
 virtues only, and what grows out of 
 them, can the home of lasting, enduring 
 happiness be founded. 
 
 These are some of the things you 
 should endeavor to get well lodged in 
 the mind and heart of your Girl. They 
 ought to be there as a part of her early 
 training. As a being of conscience, 
 with the higher sensibilities of her 
 nature developed under your care and 
 training, she should have this cultivation 
 in appreciation of what goes to make a 
 true marriage. 
 
 Ideals are the moving forces in the 
 world. They are mind pictures of what 
 is desirable, of what may be attained; 
 they are mind pictures of what we 
 should like to be or to have. In spite ot 
 all obstacles, in spite of foolish criticism, 
 in spite of luxury, in spite of false 
 standards, there has been an advance 
 toward holding higher ideals of home 
 life and of marriage. The idea of mar- 
 riage for maintenance (yet that must be 
 considered), or for a social status (yet 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL HI 
 
 that, too, must be considered) , is giving 
 way to the higher ideal, where the union 
 is true, and where it is based on the 
 virtues that make for a more perfect 
 harmony. 
 
 ('^nd so there is need of teaching and 
 training in overcoming the common 
 habit of giving no reflection, or not 
 enough; the result of which is misery, 
 the breaking up of so many lives, 
 and the production of so many real 
 tragedies. True love is not only the 
 basis of the home, but the great factor 
 in the education of the human spirit. 
 The twin spirit whom we choose as the 
 object of our affection will either mar 
 or make us and the home ;) and the 
 choice should be something more than a 
 fancy, a look, a smile, a touch, a 
 moment's talk in a crowded room, amid 
 the excitement of an evening's gayety. 
 There are safe, and there are unsafe 
 marriages ; marriages that are sane, and 
 those that are thoughtlessly and heed- 
 lessly entered into. It is only common 
 sense, in this relation that the two per- 
 
112 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 sons who are most vitally concerned 
 should become intimately acquainted 
 with each other, to ascertain the temper, 
 temperament, disposition, principles, 
 and habits of each other — so far, at 
 least, as these can be ascertained during 
 courtship. If there are no false pre- 
 tences on either side, the man will know 
 the woman thoroughly enough to enable 
 him to decide whether or not she is the 
 woman with whom he can live happily ; 
 and she will know him thoroughly 
 enough to enable her to decide whether 
 or not he is the man with whom she can 
 live happily. 
 
 One of the safeguards is that of being 
 honest and straightforward in the re- 
 vealment of qualities, characteristics, 
 tastes, likes, and dislikes, in the days of 
 courtship. Only unhappiness can come 
 of a marriage, where two young persons, 
 falling in love, set themselves to sum- 
 mary deception by putting on an 
 appearance which is not true of either 
 of them; or deliberately hiding defects. 
 If, on the contrary, there has been the 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 113 
 
 real honesty and reality of a sincere 
 friendship, a certain sweet and simple 
 and wholesome intimacy, in which both 
 have been frank, and candid, showing 
 themselves as they really are, then, if 
 marriage follow, the chances for happi- 
 ness are among the best. At least, the 
 opportunities for recriminations have 
 passed, and those for the self-sacrifice 
 and concession required of love have 
 come. It is well enough to appear at 
 our best, at these times, but our best is 
 the good, true, honest average. 
 
 While a Girl may not entertain the 
 idea of a marriage for maintenance, the 
 question is a matter for consideration 
 and honest dealing. While mental and 
 temperamental considerations ( which 
 are intricate and numberless) should, in 
 relation to marriage, have the serious 
 thought of the two young persons, the 
 pecuniary matters are not to be either 
 overlooked or minimized. Marriage 
 has a material and practical side, and 
 it is the part of wisdom to remember 
 this, before undertaking it. There are 
 
114 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 people who do not reflect, and who are 
 more or less indifferent to responsi- 
 bility, who plunge heedlessly into mar- 
 riage, regardless of the future, or of the 
 adaptation of means to ends. They 
 may not be romantic exactly, may not 
 believe in the " love in a cottage " theory, 
 or in that idiotic proverb, " Two can live 
 as cheaply as one," but they are simply 
 heedless and constitutionally hopeful, 
 with no good grounds for hope. They 
 take to the connubial field without 
 proper equipment, and are likely to re- 
 pent of it. The proper equipment in 
 the material sense, is a fair and, as far 
 as anything can be known, a certain in- 
 come. Hundreds of causes may make 
 wreck and ruin of matrimony, but no 
 one cause is so greatly to be dreaded as 
 inadequate pecuniary means. Love in 
 a cottage is a theory. Love in adversity, 
 is, now and then, a fact. Since they are 
 equal partners in building their home 
 and the life connected with it, the wife 
 ought to know the exact income and the 
 condition of the husband's resources. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 115 
 
 There should be no deception about it, 
 either before or after marriage. An- 
 other source of trouble and unhappiness 
 is the doctrine that the wife should be, 
 where she can be, pecuniarily inde- 
 pendent of her husband. Fathers con- 
 tribute to this by so dowering their 
 daughters on the wedding day, that the 
 husband has no share in the money. It 
 is quite likely to be regarded by him 
 as an evidence of distrust on the part 
 of the wife's father, and to create in her 
 the feeling that she has an independence, 
 an existence, and an identity apart from 
 her husband. 
 
 A young man, decent enough to be a 
 husband, with right views of marriage, 
 and properly equipped for it, will feel 
 that his wife and himself are partners, 
 with an equal and common interest in 
 these, as in all matters pertaining to 
 their life work; and that she is entitled 
 to an equal share in their surplus in- 
 come, and that it ought never to be 
 necessary for her to ask it. No woman 
 wants to feel that she is a beneficiary. 
 
116 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 While the question of maintenance 
 may not be the chief one in view of a 
 marriage, common sense dictates that it 
 should be considered as a very impor- 
 tant one. 
 
 And it should not be forgotten that 
 there is a social side to marriage. Argue 
 as we may, the fact remains, and will 
 always remain, that in this country, as 
 in all civilized countries, there is a class 
 social status, to which people must give 
 or at least do give, attention. Society 
 resents any indifference or contuma- 
 ciousness toward it by young people of 
 either sex. Society does not either for- 
 give this breach, or pour oil on the water 
 of the infelicities of these unaveraged 
 marriages. On the contrary, society 
 finds pleasure in adding fuel. In the 
 divorce courts the term most in use is 
 " incompatibility." The phrase, " so- 
 cially ill-assorted," would be nearer the 
 truth as to the source of the trouble. 
 
 For the average Girl of the average 
 American family, the average young 
 man of her own social class promises to 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 117 
 
 be the sanest and safest choice for a 
 husband. This is better than attempt- 
 ing to find the ideal young man in an 
 environment above or below her own. 
 He should not be below the average in 
 good looks, the average in mental capa- 
 bilities, the average in attention to dress 
 and manners, the average in domes- 
 ticity, love of home comforts and 
 luxuries, the average in moral qualities, 
 the average in respect for himself and 
 for his fellowmen; above all, he should 
 not be below the average in goodness. 
 A marriage where these conditions 
 are honestly thought out and heeded is 
 more than likely to bring happiness and 
 content. The relations between these 
 two are of a natural and comfortable 
 equality. There is no tension to keep 
 up. By reason of their constitution, 
 men and women are unable to keep up 
 an unnatural tension in any one direc- 
 tion, for any length of time. A young 
 girl who, with an ecstasy of passion, 
 or some sentimental notion, marries a 
 young man below her own social status. 
 
118 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 is more than likely to repent it. Where 
 one woman succeeds in lifting this man 
 to her level, ninety and nine fail. And 
 it is just as true on the other side. As 
 a dream, it is fascinating; as a reality, 
 it entails unhappiness. Actualities that 
 are necessary to the girl of a good social 
 class, and those that are necessary for 
 the man who is either below or above 
 her social class, dissipate the charm. 
 The fact of social inequality remains as 
 a friction, mentally at least. Philoso- 
 phers tell us that the thing to do with 
 matrimonial friction is to transform it 
 into character, power. The philosophy 
 of transforming the friction that comes 
 of social inequality in married life into 
 beauty and strength of character, is one 
 thing; doing it is quite another and a 
 difficult thing. In ninety-nine cases in 
 a hundred, it is an impossible thing. 
 Even in marriages of social equality, 
 and in the matter of money, there are 
 bound to be some sudden surprises of 
 unknown traits of character. There is 
 an element of matrimonial friction in 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 119 
 
 these things. And they will be inten- 
 sified and aggravated if there is the con- 
 sciousness of social inequality. The 
 safer, saner philosophy is to choose from 
 among social equals. 
 
 With some show of seriousness, we 
 are told that dissimilarity is an advan- 
 tage in marriage. That is a fallacy, 
 and proven such in ten thousand times 
 ten thousand cases. If two walk to- 
 gether, they must be agreed. If there 
 is to be happiness, there must be an 
 agreement in characteristics and tastes. 
 
 Beyond all question, the marriage be- 
 tween social and these other averages 
 promises most for happiness and home. 
 The average girl, average in personal 
 beauty, love of dress, desire for pleas- 
 ure, pride of home comforts and luxu- 
 ries, will, as a wife, have an orderly 
 and well-kept home, a well-appointed 
 table, be loving and tactful and cheerful 
 in her reign there. And the average 
 young man, given such a home, will find 
 rich content in these domestic relations. 
 Together, with social equality and simi- 
 
120 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 larity of taste, they will build their home 
 safely and permanently. To her he is 
 not the ideal young man, only an aver- 
 age man. There are no false pretences 
 between them. She knows that he, an 
 average man, has chosen her as an aver- 
 age young woman. He does not call 
 her an angel, nor does he forget that 
 she, like other women, has her peculiari- 
 ties of feminine temperament, and 
 needs, here and there, touches of the 
 sentiment that was common enough 
 when he was winning her. He will be 
 the average lover still. Their love will 
 be of the average kind ; not the sort that 
 is cheapened and vulgarized by over- 
 manifestation. Hers the love that finds 
 in the matchless words of Ruth's vow, 
 the speech that fits it best; his the love 
 that regards her as queen-consort, en- 
 titled to manly chivalry and deferential 
 consideration. She will not look upon 
 marriage as a mere conventionality, but 
 something sweeter, richer, better — a 
 home-making, where her husband shall 
 find comfort, quiet, order, peace, love. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 121 
 
 and inspiration ; find her in the practice 
 of her charming ways that made her 
 such a winsome personality in the 
 halcyon days when he came a-wooing. 
 Together these two will enjoy and build 
 their home. There will be the average 
 gayety, average physical and mental 
 charm. Together they toil, and to both 
 their bread tastes sweet. Out from this 
 home will go the influences that enrich 
 society and the world of men and 
 women and affairs about them. They 
 are average people, the power and hope 
 of the country. 
 
 There is truth in the saying that for 
 the man there is a woman; and for the 
 woman there is a man, who will be true 
 counterparts. But it is precisely as 
 true, that for every man of a certain in- 
 tellectual, social, and moral standing, 
 there exists a woman of that certain in- 
 tellectual, social, and moral standing. 
 Vice versa for the woman. Love there, 
 and marry there, if you would invite 
 happiness. Certainly a man with these 
 qualities discounts his judgment if he 
 
122 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 marries a woman incapable of sympathy 
 with, or comprehension of, these quaH- 
 ties. It is just as true of the woman 
 who commits the same folly. 
 
 Some will say that true love does not 
 consider ways and means; that it does 
 not stop to argue; that it finds in itself 
 its own reason, and the assurance of the 
 future; that it does not weigh this and 
 that; does not care to scrutinize its 
 emotions. It is a great deal saner and 
 safer to begin married life with a simi- 
 larity of characteristics and an accord 
 of tastes, with a fair social equality and 
 an absence of all pretence and deception 
 as regards financial matters, than to 
 enter it with faith in these theories, or 
 with the belief that love will adjust and 
 cure any evil that threatens from dis- 
 similarities. 
 
IX 
 
 YOUR GIRL AND A COL- 
 
 LEGE CAREER 
 
 A SSUMING that in building your 
 XjLGirl you have had before you the 
 thought that she is a creature of con- 
 science, of many and varied faculties 
 susceptible of development; that the 
 very best training is her birthright, and 
 that she is developing in an age when 
 character, brains, and a deeper, better 
 faith are to accomplish the work of the 
 betterment of the world, this question 
 of a college career for her is an apposite 
 one. 
 
 A while ago, it was college for the 
 boys; practical knowledge of life for 
 the girls. But we have come to see 
 that in order that the girls may be fitted 
 to use wisely and well this practical 
 knowledge of life, they must have the 
 highest possible development of the in- 
 tellectual and ethical powers. In this 
 
 123 
 
124 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 way only will they know how to appro- 
 priate, and how best to apply, this prac- 
 tical knowledge. 
 
 The farthest use of education and 
 learning is to apply it intelligently to 
 the commoner interests of life. The 
 learned ignoramus is always in evidence. 
 
 If you desire that your Girl shall have 
 her womanliness developed, her sympa^ 
 thetic nature enlarged, and her uncon- 
 sciousness trained to meet bravely and 
 sweetly the duties of a life which she is 
 content shall be one of reasonable service 
 in her place in life, then a college career 
 should be considered as one of the 
 essentials in her building. For this 
 Girl, nothing can be substituted for the 
 intellectual and ethical training and 
 discipline of the college. As the best, 
 this is her rightful heritage. All true 
 culture must have an intellectual and 
 ethical basis, not that which becomes 
 absorbed by a single study; for our 
 moral and social, as well as our political 
 questions, demand a broad and broaden- 
 ing view. 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 125 
 
 Every young woman, as well as every 
 young man, ought to be so educated and 
 trained, that she will be able to add 
 something of good to the bulk of work 
 that is being done along social and 
 ethical lines. She will get this equip- 
 ment in the study of the ancient and 
 modern languages, economics, history, 
 logic, ethics, and the humanities gener- 
 ally. In our best modern institutions, 
 she will get the needed teaching in the 
 physical sciences, and practical training 
 in sociological affairs. This Girl of 
 yours has an end in view; the college is 
 in sympathy with it, and the training is 
 toward it. This knowledge of history, 
 literature, and economics, is valuable, 
 not more for the drill there is in the 
 study, than for the fact that her mind 
 is stored with the greatest of treasures. 
 The things that discipline her, stay with 
 her, and are a continual inspiration. 
 Your Girl may forget her Greek, but 
 she will never forget the spirit of the 
 Greek civilization, or the beauty of that 
 literature. 
 
126 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 Education is not merely the impart- 
 ing of knowledge, but the formation of 
 character through knowledge, as its aid 
 in the development of the whole nature 
 of the pupil. The wider the scope of 
 education, the better the equipment for 
 work in the world. At college, your 
 Girl is taught how to concentrate, how 
 to think hard and straight, to think per- 
 sistently, and, of course, to think of 
 something worth while. 
 
 This intellectual development and 
 this intellectual discipline are not only 
 just as good for a girl as for a boy, but, 
 in view of the work that is to be done 
 in the world, really more necessary for 
 her than for him. She will have just 
 as much use for the power of observa- 
 tion, the faculty of reflection, the 
 science of relations, a clear vision, 
 mental steadiness, and sobriety of judg- 
 ment as the boy. At college your Girl 
 will get what we may call the habit of 
 knowing. That which both the boy and 
 the girl can and do acquire, is good to 
 have. The college is not good for a 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 127 
 
 boy because he is a boy, or for a girl 
 because she is a girl, but in the way of 
 intellectual and ethical training and 
 stimulant, it is good for the human 
 mind. That the college life for your 
 Girl diminishes the distance that has 
 heretofore widened between her and her 
 brother is a good thing for both of them, 
 and for the race. It leads him to drop 
 his lordly and superior ways, and she 
 recovers from her adoring ignorance. 
 It puts them on an intellectual equality 
 and good comradeship. 
 
 What is good for one brain is good for 
 another, even if it is the female brain. 
 Science, common sense, and other things 
 have exploded the idea that the weight 
 of the brain in woman established her 
 inferiority. It is admitted that the 
 intuition of a woman is better than a 
 man's judgment; that she displays 
 superior quickness and more certainty 
 and directness of perception than man 
 generally. It has been clearly demon- 
 strated, by recent tests of tens of thou- 
 sands of boys and girls, made by the 
 
128 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 Bureau of Education that the boy is 
 excelled by the girl and the man by the 
 woman, in all the higher qualities. Girls 
 have a higher average for brightness in 
 school than boys. Girls can absorb and 
 remember more than boys. The asser- 
 tion that a woman cannot reason is no 
 longer taken seriously. When we talk 
 of reasoning in womankind, that old 
 book of human documents is in evidence. 
 The first appearance of woman on the 
 earth shows her arguing and reasoning 
 as to the suitability and advisability of 
 eating a certain fruit. Very true, we 
 have been told that Eve's conclusions 
 were all wrong, but as nobody seems to 
 be able to say just what would have 
 happened, if she had declined to eat this 
 particular fruit, it is easy enough to 
 assert that Eve was in error. It was 
 the first bit of reported reasoning on 
 earth, and by a woman; and the man 
 accepted it as logical and final; he en- 
 tered no demur, and he ate his share. 
 Theologically, we should be glad that 
 he had the manliness to do it. Then 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 129 
 
 Rebecca reasoned. So did Tamar, and 
 Jael, and Deborah, and Vashti. It is 
 axiomatic that woman reasons, and that 
 she is preeminently tactful. Intuition 
 is her other name. 
 
 If it be said that one of the functions 
 of your Girl's life is to help her brother 
 or, later, her husband, to develop the 
 finest possible manhood, then certainly 
 the nearer she is intellectually and eth- 
 ically his equal; therefore, the more 
 intimately she is acquainted with the 
 processes of his intellectual and ethical 
 life, the better. Common knowledge 
 makes common helpfulness and common 
 interest between the sexes. 
 
 There is no single energy of the 
 human heart and mind, without an 
 essential function. The faculties that 
 lie latent or dormant in the child are the 
 ones essential to manhood and woman- 
 hood. We have physical, intellectual, 
 and moral possibilities. These are 
 capable of expansion and growth; and 
 the province of the school and college 
 is to see that they do expand and grow, 
 
130 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 whether they are possessed by a boy 
 or by his sister. 
 
 If this liberal education and feminine 
 culture are needed, primarily, for the 
 home, they certainly are needed for the 
 varied interests that touch the general 
 welfare. While the men of the present 
 day are doing much to stay the progress 
 of ignorance and pauperism, the work 
 calls loudly for the women that have 
 courage, sincerity and the truth in 
 themselves. These services will not be 
 done by wealth, nor by generosity and 
 benevolence, but by the personal, help- 
 ful, sympathetic devotion of the women 
 of the land who have been equipped for 
 it by ethical culture, and who, to do it, 
 will go out of homes where purity and 
 love and sincerity prevail. The atmos- 
 phere of these homes will be carried into 
 homes where ignorance and wretched- 
 ness are the burdens borne. Your Girl, 
 and these other young women, will not 
 merely talk of ideals, or speculate over 
 them, but live them in daily life ; almost 
 unconsciously perhaps. In that way 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 131 
 
 they will find their reward in the silent 
 spread of achievement. Your Girl's 
 college training will give her keenness 
 of perception, the alertness of wit, the 
 power of discrimination, the sound 
 judgment, the practical common sense, 
 and the ability to adapt herself to cir- 
 cumstances, and to work easily and 
 efficiently. 
 
 Your Girl should have this training, 
 in order that she may make the most and 
 best of her life, and be fully equipped 
 to take her rightful place in society, the 
 society of the average American Girl 
 and woman. Whatever the prejudiced 
 detractors of the society girls may say, 
 the fact remains, that the young girls 
 in our average modern society are more 
 richly endowed with the intellectualities, 
 the charm, and all the feminine virtues 
 and graces, than the girls and young 
 women of any of the preceding cen- 
 turies; just as richly endowed, just as 
 capable, on occasion, of feminine hero- 
 isms in and out of the home, as the 
 Priscilla Mullens or the Mary Chillions, 
 
132 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 and as much so as if their wardrobe were 
 limited to homespun. All the substan- 
 tial advances of our civilization have 
 been based on the finesse of the average 
 modern society girls. They are, to-day, 
 doing the larger share of the best and 
 most helpful and elevating work of the 
 world. They are creatures of solid 
 quality and of weight and influence. If 
 the women of Puritan and Pilgrim days 
 were the makers of America in their 
 century, the society girls of to-day are 
 just as much the makers of America in 
 this century. They are the logical and 
 ethical descendants of these other fore- 
 mothers. The society girl is to be, from 
 now on, a more efficient and essential 
 factor, not only in the home, but in the 
 uplifting of the world. The age of this 
 society Girl is due; she has come. She 
 is neither a doll nor a butterfly ; neither 
 a drone nor a parasite; neither a mas- 
 querader nor a swaggerer. She does 
 not court publicity or strive after bold 
 effects in dress or manner. She does 
 not spend her time seeking some new 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 133 
 
 form of pleasure, with which to cure 
 ennui. She is a well-educated, well- 
 trained, pure-thoughted Girl — whole- 
 some, refined, delicate, radiating an 
 atmosphere of brightness and purity 
 and sympathetic strength, and yet, a 
 society Girl. Her college career has 
 fitted and equipped her for this. She 
 reflects and graces it. 
 
X 
 
 YOUR GIRL ON THE THRESH- 
 OLD OF REAL LIFE 
 
 GRATEFUL, and proud of the 
 privilege of parenthood, coveting 
 its responsibilities, using intelligently, 
 tactfully, and genially, all the advan- 
 tages and influences in your possession, 
 you have builded your Girl, until now, 
 she is at the threshold of real life. 
 You have abundant reason for self- 
 gratulation. You have so educated, 
 trained and equipped her, that her life 
 must be a significant figure, expressing 
 a genuine value. Wherever she takes 
 her place, she is fitted and qualified to 
 fill it and to do her work well, not only 
 for herself, but so that it shall be helpful 
 to others. Hers will be a true, strong, 
 honorable womanhood. Physically, 
 mentally, and ethically she has been 
 educated and trained for this. She be- 
 longs to the order of thinking woman- 
 hood. She has more than education, 
 
 134 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 135 
 
 more than genius, more than social 
 gifts. In her heart she has a deep sense 
 of her obHgation to be of service in the 
 world, where so much of service is 
 needed. Out of this there goes into her 
 will a power which will enable her to 
 bring good resolutions to their birth, and 
 give to her purpose an earnestness and 
 sincerity that shall be free from all 
 frivolity. She will realize the possi- 
 bilities of her developed womanhood and 
 womanliness, and will bring to the world 
 the helpfulness it so sorely needs. She 
 may feel assured that in no place can 
 this womanliness be thrown away. 
 Wherever it may be manifested — in a 
 humble home or in the average home, 
 in elegant mansion, in the centre of a 
 happy domestic circle, in the lonely 
 walks of a solitary life, in the midst of a 
 refined and cultured company, at the 
 bedside of the sick, or in the hovel of the 
 poor — humanity will be the better for 
 her presence, the wiser for her counsel, 
 the stronger for her sympathy. The 
 world will be the brighter, the purer. 
 
136 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 and the better for her passing through 
 it. If her life is this, her name will be 
 embalmed in sweetest memories, her 
 image will be enshrined in the heart with 
 the highest reverence and richest love. 
 Such are some of the early rewards for a 
 broad, helpful, and unselfish life. 
 
 Your Girl may feel assured that there 
 are these and many other rewards. She 
 may feel assured that so much of her 
 time, and love, and labor, and thought 
 as she coins into knowledge, and truth, 
 and sympathy, for the good of others — 
 even the impulse she gives to a good 
 cause — will never be either wasted or 
 lost. 
 
 Whoever opens to another, a clearer 
 and better view of the beauty of moral 
 integrity, whoever helps another to lift 
 his life to a higher level of thought and 
 feeling, has wrought a work that is 
 imperishable. 
 
 There was a time, and not long ago, 
 especially in the matter of religion, 
 when the man who had a new idea of an 
 old truth was a hated man. They were 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 137 
 
 ready to crucify him. They said, 
 "Nothing must be changed. What is 
 new is bad; what is old is good." All 
 that sort of thing is past. Nowadays, 
 scientists, philosophers, artists, poets, 
 investigators, discoverers, inventors — 
 all teachers of ethical truth — become 
 immortal. They have not only in- 
 creased the volume of life, but given us 
 a better kind of life. If we bring truth 
 to any heart, or a better understanding 
 of the world, our lives become an essen- 
 tial and a permanent force in the world. 
 If we can, with a book, or a poem, 
 or a play, or by personal work, put into 
 life a helpful sympathy for others, we 
 make life permanently useful. There 
 are poems that become hymns in deso- 
 late homes; giving songs in the night. 
 There are thoughts put into literature, 
 which give a new and beneficent inter- 
 pretation to pain and loss, to those who 
 suffer, and the writer receives their 
 gratitude and benediction. There are 
 deeds of kindliness which star into holy 
 beauty the darkest night. Every 
 
138 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 worthy life is a spring, the flowings of 
 which are refreshments and benedic- 
 tions to the world of humanity. Selfish 
 lives are the Dead Seas of humanity: 
 they have no outlet of good deeds ; they 
 are fig trees, offering the hungry 
 traveller nothing but leaves. 
 
 A little way back in this book, there 
 is the hint that your Girl will find dis- 
 appointing things as she takes up her 
 life work. It would be wise to point 
 out some of the errors into which so 
 many good people — aggressively good 
 people — fall. One is, that the whole 
 world can be lifted, the whole structure 
 and character of society elevated, at 
 once. That is mere theory, and vision- 
 ary. Archimedes never found the 
 fulcrum for his lever, and nobody else 
 will ever find it. It is the woman who 
 makes the personal duties the chief busi- 
 ness of life, who will be modestly, and 
 perhaps unconsciously, doing good, and 
 " elevating himianity " all the while. 
 
 Utopias are hardly among the proba- 
 bilities. That which follows disappoint- 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 139 
 
 merit is experience. Experience is 
 what we go through; it is what goes 
 through us. The next thing is wisdom ; 
 and wisdom ought to teach us that what 
 we think the world should be, we must 
 make ourselves. We must try to live up 
 to our own ideal. If we find that diffi- 
 cult, we are the better prepared to 
 estimate the greater difficulty of bring- 
 ing others up to our standard. We are 
 not masters of the wills, or regulators 
 of the conduct of any but ourselves. 
 But unquestionably personal influence 
 is a mighty factor for good; and if we 
 live as we should, we shall in that way 
 persuade and induce others to follow. 
 In this way we can show that it does 
 pay to live a decent, clean, wholesome 
 life ; that virtue is its own reward. 
 
 We are prone to consider character as 
 a bundle of qualities, varying in degrees 
 of good and evil, and requiring to be 
 fostered or restrained, as the case may 
 be. In our efforts to do this, whether 
 for ourselves or others, we forget that 
 there is a fundamental disposition lying 
 
140 BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 at the root of all these qualities influenc- 
 ing and determining them; and that is 
 the point of whatever work we are to do 
 for them. The word character ^ in the 
 Greek signifies stamp; and this disposi- 
 tion within a man sets its stamp upon all 
 his actions. 
 
 The reason why so much of what we 
 call reformation work fails utterly is, 
 that we direct our attention to the con- 
 duct, instead of trying to strengthen 
 the powers. We attempt to compel or 
 persuade people to adopt a certain line 
 of action, instead of quickening a love 
 for it, by imparting a sense of its beauty 
 and fitness. 
 
 Make it plain to your Girl that each 
 person's share of the world, though it 
 may be a small one, is enough for his 
 work. Make it clear to her that her 
 entrance did make a difference, that 
 her presence was not unnoted. In her 
 place she can sow the seeds of affection 
 and good-will. She can do much to 
 make her home attractive. She can 
 carry into other homes a joyous, buoy- 
 
BUILDING YOUR GIRL 
 
 ant spirit, dispelling ignorance and as- 
 suaging suffering. She will reap what 
 she has sown. Many will rise up and 
 bless her; she will have their love, and 
 confidence, and gratitude, and good- 
 will. She will have the peace, and con- 
 tent, and happiness of those who live 
 the larger life of service. There are 
 two rocks on which we may wreck our 
 lives, — the rock of conceit, or egotism, 
 and the rock of self-depreciation, or 
 false humility. The latter is quite as 
 perilous to our usefulness, as the for- 
 mer. We must be honest with our own 
 nature ; we must not value ourselves too 
 highly, nor place too low an estimate 
 upon our capabilities. If what we do 
 in the world is our best work, if it is sin- 
 cere effort, it is enough. Be happy in 
 it. Life is life, and equally honorable, 
 equally responsible, wheresoever lived. 
 No one has a right to live carelessly in 
 any life. 
 
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