The Girl and Her Religion Part 2

The new roommate was a very wise girl, a little older than most girls entering college. She knew that the girl with whom she must live was shy the moment she caught sight of her and felt the dread with which she had waited her coming. From the time she was fourteen until she left for college she had helped her father make strangers in his church and congregation feel "at home." She knew just how.

During the first trying days every one greeted the shy girl cordially and then gave their attention to the wide-awake, interesting roommate.

But the roommate always included her. "How was it, Clara? I don't just remember what was said," she would say, suddenly turning to the girl who blushed but answered and found she could, to her great surprise. Under the warmth of her roommate's confidence in her and pride in her scholars.h.i.+p and the ease with which she conquered the most difficult subjects she learned to forget herself. A great longing to help the girls who found things hard came to her and they gladly accepted her help and loved her for her sympathy. The months wrought a marvelous change and though she found it difficult in the presence of the critical family to talk naturally at first, still the things she had to tell proved so interesting that they forgot to criticize and she forgot herself while they listened. At the High School Seniors' banquet she spoke for her college and her brother declared it the best speech made.

She is a graduate now and all traces of the old awkwardness have left her. She is reserved but easy, simple and gracious in meeting those whom her work calls her to meet and her eye and her heart alike are open for the self-conscious girl wherever she meets her. If she were to try all her life, she tells me, she could never express her grat.i.tude for what that roommate did for her.

What was it that happened to her? She forgot herself. People had told her to do that before but she couldn't, for she felt that they were watching to see her make the attempt. They called attention to her shyness, her roommate ignored it. They bade her take part in conversation and join with others in what they were doing; her roommate gave her a part in the conversation and made a place for her in all that they were doing. Her family and school friends said by their manner and sometimes in words, "The poor girl is so shy, what a pity it is." The roommate expressed calm confidence in her and in manner and words said, "You have no idea how fine she is and how well worth knowing."

If a girl chances to read this page who is herself popular and who finds it easy to meet people and join naturally in whatever her neighbors may be doing, has in her circle of friends a shy, awkward, self-conscious girl, may she see her opportunity and realize her mission. The pure kindliness of heart and the thoughtfulness which prompts a happy girl, free from the pain of self-consciousness, and always at ease with her friends, to shelter, stand by and call out the best in a shy girl suffering from awkwardness deserve a rich reward.

The very opposite of the girl who is misunderstood and undervalued because of her shyness, is the girl who, because of her boldness and independence, her carelessness of speech, hilarity and adventuresomeness is misunderstood.

"She doesn't mean anything by it," said one girl of another whom she was trying to defend in the presence of a critic, "she is good hearted, generous and just fine, but she has been brought up in a large family where they have noisy times together." The critic accepted the explanation but strangers, new people whom she met, men and women upon the street, constantly misunderstood the girl whose unfortunate manners would lead one to believe she was a most undesirable friend. The girl was conscious that she was misjudged and misunderstood and was growing hard and beginning not to care when an older woman who loved her showed her with real tact where the trouble lay. No one could help admiring that girl as she struggled to overcome the things which had been the cause of all the misunderstandings.

I met awhile ago, a girl whom her companions described as _wooden_. I knew that she wanted to talk with me, that she was interested in the people whom the group were discussing. She seemed like a bright girl and I felt sure that she had thoughts of her own worth hearing if she would only express them. That was her trouble. She couldn't find words so she said "yes," and "no" with effort when a remark was addressed directly to her, otherwise she was silent. Later in the day a girl friend who really appreciated her told me how very interesting she was when one knew her well enough to dispel the awful fear that she should say the wrong thing. She read the very best things and was conversant with the history of important events all over the world. "She is a regular encyclopedia,"

said her ardent defender.

This wooden girl is misunderstood simply because she has not learned to express the thoughts she has. She is unhappy, and feels that people do not like her, and do not enjoy her company. In her heart she blames _them_. But one cannot expect everyone to penetrate the exterior and see and appreciate real worth. Most people take us for what we seem to be and if we appear cold, uninteresting and ill at ease, they seek pleasanter companions. The wooden girl _can_ overcome her stiffness and learn to let people see that she thinks. She can cultivate a very rare art--the art of listening with appreciation. There are very few listeners in any group of people and often not one in a group of women.

It is a great thing to be able to listen with that attention and interest which draws out the very best in the one who is talking.

More than that the girl who is termed wooden can learn to express herself in words. She may never become a great talker but she need not regret that. She can take part in conversation and can make it easy for people to talk with her. I know a girl who plans before spending a social evening with friends what she will talk about. Following the advice of her mother who has suffered much through inability to talk, she holds imaginary conversations which often become real when she meets people later. She makes a special effort to remember the names of those whom she meets and some of the things in which they are especially interested. She is learning to remember the names of books and their authors and publishers, she takes special pains to remember worth while magazine articles and last spring people appealed to her again and again for information regarding the Balkan situation. She is making herself an interesting companion and in a few years I believe all traces of the awkward wooden silence will disappear.

In the long line of misunderstood girls, are many whose interests and enthusiasms are altogether outside their immediate environment. There are girls at college and sometimes at boarding-school who have seen a larger world and have come to love the real things of life. They find it very hard to waste the days in superficialities. They long to have life mean more than a round of social events, and the family and friends misunderstand. Some girls of this sort have solved the problem by gaining consent to plan their own days. Some have never been able to gain that consent and have gone on for years in unhappiness. Others have learned to inject into the seemingly superficial some real things and have found an outlet for the best that is in them through work for those in need. One must feel real sympathy for the girl who, striving to be her best, to live above the round of pettiness and selfish pleasure, is met with disapproval and misunderstanding.

Many a girl is misunderstood by the one person in the world who ought to understand her best--her mother. Perhaps more bitter tears are shed by girls because their mothers do not understand than for any other reason.

The misunderstanding oftentimes is the result of temperament. It is exceedingly hard for two people of diametrically opposite temperaments to live in close a.s.sociation without clashes. One of the most pitiful things in home life today is seen where mother and daughter have opposite interests and sympathies and lack self-control. The constant criticism and judging of one another, the quick-tempered commands and demands on the part of one and the sullen yielding on the part of the other make one heart-sick.

I am reading over a letter from a girl who says, "I honestly love my mother. I am proud of the things she can do and I admire her beauty.... I am twenty-two years old, very ordinary looking and not a social success.

I am a constant disappointment to mother. Our opinions about everything differ. We cannot agree upon the most trivial things. When father was living he laughed at us and his genial spirit made things easier but the last two years have been dreadful. What can we do? Mother does not need me. When I am away on a visit everything goes smoothly at home and her letters to me are affectionate. I love them and have kept them to read when it does not seem as if she _could_ care for me. My uncle has asked me to come to their home in D---- to be a companion for his seventeen-year-old daughter who is lame. I love her and we get on well together. Ought I leave my mother and go? She says I may do just as I wish and does not seem to mind the thought of my going...."

Here is a clear case of clash of temperaments. Both are to blame, each is misunderstood. In this particular case it seems wise that the daughter should, for a time at least, accept her uncle's offer. She may learn from a distance to understand her mother better and her mother may more fully appreciate her daughter. Often it is far better that two people who constantly clash should learn apart to respect and honor one another than to live in a quarrelsome, fretful atmosphere which is bound to banish deep affection and respect as well. Some daughters cannot be their best at home and some mothers can never reveal their best selves in their daughters' presence. That such can be the case is most unfortunate and wrong. Away back in the daughter's childhood someone was careless, in early girlhood a thin part.i.tion was raised which shut out mutual love and trust. It might then have been destroyed, but was left until it became a barrier almost impossible to break down.

But there are some girls who are misunderstood by their mothers, and who because of circ.u.mstances must accept it and learn, despite misunderstanding, to let love triumph. There is much that every girl owes to her mother even though it be true that she is unfair and unjust.

One of the sweetest home makers I have ever known, in whose family it seems to me no cross or critical word is ever spoken, whose boys and girls trust her absolutely and love her devotedly, learned her patience and forbearance, acquired her fine courtesy and graciousness in the years when she was a misunderstood girl and had to live in an atmosphere of petulance, ill-temper and selfishness.

The misunderstood girl whatever may be the reason for the misunderstanding must cultivate frankness. She must learn to be generous, she must help people to understand her. She must believe that being misunderstood should deepen her sympathy and increase her tact.

One of the most marvelous teachers in our country today, who succeeds in awakening dull hearts and minds, in controlling wayward and wilful childhood, when asked to explain her power said simply, "I was a misunderstood child. How I suffered! My mission is to relieve the suffering of the misunderstood, whatever the cause."

There is a very brief prayer which every misunderstood girl might well pray daily, "Help us to understand as we long to be understood."

VI

THE INDIFFERENT GIRL

Until she has entered upon her teens the att.i.tude of the "don't-care" is rare with the average girl. She either heartily approves or frankly disapproves of those things that cross her path or claim her attention.

But with the coming of the teens those closely a.s.sociated with the girl often become conscious of the loss of that spontaneous response which has made her such a delight. The teacher is puzzled by this change, wonders if she has offended the girl, redoubles her efforts to make the lesson interesting and seeks to win the girl's confidence. Sometimes her efforts are rewarded by renewed interest but often the att.i.tude of indifference persists. The girl's mother feels keenly the change in her once expressive, often demonstrative child, eager to talk and anxious to join in everything, and says in a tone of condemnation that she cannot understand her daughter.

The presence, in a cla.s.s of ten or twelve girls, of even one indifferent girl, or the presence in the schoolroom of three or four such girls, chills the enthusiasm of the teacher and the cla.s.s. Such a girl is a "wet blanket," she is a cloud steal-in across the sun on a glorious morning. Her indifference is contagious. She changes the atmosphere. If the cla.s.s is planning an entertainment she "does not care" what they have, she does not care whether she has any part in it or not, she has no choice as to the way the cla.s.s funds are spent, she does not want to look up any a.s.signed topics, do any special work, or take part in any debate or discussion.

She is a very real problem to teacher, parents and friends. To be able to diagnose her trouble correctly and find a remedy for it is well worth every effort of those who have her present and future in charge. Before one can hope to help her he must discover the cause of her trouble.

Reprimanding her is of little avail, and discussing her indifference with her is useless.

Some years ago a young teacher in the eighth grade in a public school consulted me regarding a girl of fourteen whose indifference was a great source of trial. The girl came to school with fair regularity. At ten and eleven she had been considered a very bright pupil but was now below the average in all her work. She often expressed the wish that she need not go to school but when allowed to remain at home was restless and unhappy.

Observation of the girl in cla.s.s showed all that the young teacher had said to be true. The girl took no voluntary part in the recitation and when called upon her usual answer was "I don't know." I talked with her and she said she liked the teacher, she liked the school and her cla.s.smates. She did not care about them especially. She did not know whether she would go to high school or not; she "didn't care either way." She did not know what she wanted to do when she grew older. Her excuse for falling so far behind her record of other years and her unwillingness to recite was that she did not feel like studying and that she could not seem to remember what she read. She said she felt well but she was growing very rapidly and did not seem strong.

I called upon her mother and learned that she was greatly concerned because of the changes in her daughter. I was surprised to find, however, that she stated quite calmly that the girl's appet.i.te was not good and that she complained of being unable to sleep and of having "dreadful dreams." The mother had not consulted a physician. She scolded the girl for being lazy and indifferent; at school the teacher reprimanded her constantly. I urged the mother by all the arguments I knew to see a physician at once. She said her husband seriously objected to one's "running to the doctor all the time," and that he thought the girl would come out all right. If she did not "brace up pretty soon,"

she added, they might "take her out of school and put her to work."

During the winter the girl contracted a heavy cold and her indifference and apparent laziness increased. The mother was finally enough impressed by our concern for the girl to take her to a good physician. He found her to be in a very run-down state, in bad condition nervously, and really ill.

A year out of school, spent in a country town with her aunt, where she had the best of food, fresh air and exercise, cured this indifferent girl entirely.

Continual headache is often the cause of indifference, and eye strain or improper food the cause of the headache. The first duty of those in charge of the indifferent girl, before pa.s.sing judgment upon her, is to make sure that the physical condition is not at the bottom of the trouble. Many a case of indifference and loss of spontaneous interest, which cannot be cured by punishment, by persuasion, by prayers or exhortation, _can_ be cured by a wise physician.

Sometimes a girl becomes indifferent from lack of a sympathetic environment. She feels that others do not care about her and that what she does makes no real difference to any one. She may be surrounded by poverty, where the struggle to exist is so keen that there is no time to think of the girl and her needs, or she may have every luxury yet be denied the companions.h.i.+p of one who understands.

I am thinking now of a girl of fifteen, who does not seem in any way to belong in the family where she was born. Her sisters are at work in the factory and content. They are sweet, attractive and good. But she does not want to work in the factory. She would "give the world to have a room alone, that could be all fixed up," as she would like it. The family cannot understand her. She can have none of the things for which she longs, she is not able to be with the sort of people she loves and admires. She wants good books, she enjoys music and longs to be permitted to finish her high school course. She is willing to work out of school hours, to do anything if only she may continue to study.

Because the family consider all her notions ridiculous, and all she longs for seems impossible, the don't-care, reckless spirit and the indifferent "what's the use anyway" are gradually enveloping her whole life.

Surrounded by much that money can buy, a most interesting girl whom I met recently is surrendering all her interests to the "don't-care"

spirit because the one great desire of her heart is not to be gratified.

She has been urged to enter upon the duties of the social world but says she has tried it and "despises society." She does not care about travel, she wants to be trained as a nurse, enter a school of philanthropy and then become a district worker among the poor. Her father will not listen to the plan, her aunt opposes it, her brother laughs at it.

She says that now since all her most earnest desires can never be fulfilled she doesn't care about anything. It was a long time before the teacher of the Bible cla.s.s of which she was a member could believe that this indifferent girl whose silence had annoyed her each Sunday was longing to serve her fellowmen and had lost heart because the way was blocked. It was only when she had made a special and earnest attempt to really know the girl that she learned the truth.

No one can act wisely in the dark, and before pa.s.sing judgment upon the indifferent girl who may try one's soul, he should know whether in the thwarting of all her desires, the denial of the right to follow her natural inclination for work and service, lies the explanation of her indifference.

Many times the girl who _seems_ indifferent, is so only on the outside.

She has developed more as a boy develops and does not wish to reveal her best self, nor even in the least degree her deeper feelings. She hides.

When things are very serious or pathetic she sometimes laughs half nervously. She looks out of the window, at the ceiling, whispers to her neighbor or a.s.sumes the most disinterested, superior air possible if she is at all impressed. When one sees her alone, it is a great surprise to discover a new girl who is by no means indifferent, who has thoughts and can express them when other girls are not there to listen. Her indifference is not a serious matter, is usually of short duration and is explained by the att.i.tude of self-sufficiency which manifests itself in the teens.

The girl really indifferent to _everything_, unless she be ill, does not exist. There is a point of contact, a line of interest. The girl indifferent to religion, to the work of the church, to her studies, may be keenly alive to the call of other things--her friends, plans for her future, all lines of social life. Last summer I met a girl of seventeen, indifferent to all interests save nature study. She had failed in the languages, was defeated by mathematics, but could sit hours in the woods waiting for a tiny bird, or a squirrel to pose for her. She had made some remarkable photographs and tinted them beautifully.

The usual social interests of the girls of her age bored her. Her mother stated to sympathetic friends that the girl was hopeless, indifferent to every plan for her future. The girl in turn said half defiantly, that she did not care, and it made no difference to her what people thought of her. It would have been so easy had the right guidance been given, to help the girl see the great need a real naturalist would one day feel for the languages, to show her that she had some social duties and to let them be as few as possible, giving her every opportunity to develop her special talents and interests. But the wise guiding hand was not present and so the girl grew hard, indifferent, and created an atmosphere of constant friction.

Into a night court in one of the cities there was brought an exceedingly pretty girl just out of her teens. She seemed wholly indifferent to any moral appeal and conscience was evidently dead. She would make no promises for future good-behavior, she showed no evidence of shame. She was unmoved by the matron's words of appeal. When she found that she was to be detained through the day she begged the woman probation officer to go with her to her home saying that her mother was ill and she feared the result if she did not return as usual. With a great desire to befriend the girl the officer went. She found a sweet pale-faced woman suffering from incurable heart trouble, a bright beautiful girl of sixteen who was taking the business course in the high school and a ten-year-old boy. The flat was airy, neatly furnished and seemed a very happy home. The girl told her mother that she had had breakfast and must be away that day on business but would return for supper. The love of that mother for the daughter who bade her good-by so tenderly, the evident affection of the younger sister and the admiration of the boy greatly impressed the officer.

The girl walked in silence back to the station, then she broke down.

"Now, you see why I chose the street to make a living," she said. "We used father's life insurance and mother had to have things. She will not live a month now, the doctor says. My sister can soon earn her own living and I can help Fred until he is old enough to help himself, by working in my old position. But for a while I _must_ have money! I hate myself, you understand, but I had to have the money. Oh, mother, mother, it is the last thing you would have me do, but I did it for you and the children," she sobbed. This was the hard, indifferent girl who didn't care for anything. The matron and officer looking at the sobbing girl recorded one more tragedy upon the annals of their experience and set about helping one more girl back into the straight way.

In how many types we find her, the indifferent girl and the girl who does not care, and for what varied reasons indifference and the don't care spirit have fallen upon her. Whatever the cause of her indifference she is a problem. One of the High School girls in a group discussing another girl put it quite forcefully when she said, "Yes, I'd like to help Alice, but she doesn't want to be helped. She just doesn't care about anything. If you don't invite her she doesn't seem to mind, if you do she doesn't care whether she goes or not. I'd rather die than not care about _anything_." "Such people are so uncomfortable to have around, I'd rather have a girl who gets mad," was the opinion of another in the group. Young people feel naturally that there is something vitally wrong about the girl who has no enthusiasm, whom all the interesting life of every day fails to arouse. And there _is_ something wrong. The problem facing those who have to do with the indifferent, don't care girl is to find _what is wrong_. Indifference is merely a symptom--there is always a cause. One may discover if he will the things to which the girl is _not_ indifferent, her real interests. Knowing these, he sees the door through which he must go to awaken other interests. Sympathy and friends.h.i.+p are the foes of indifference. If one "feels with" the girl who does not care, he may help to awaken her interests. Friends.h.i.+p can discover causes which nothing else can find.