The same girls may be classified again with regard to activities outside the school.  They may help at home much or little or not at all.  They may have absorbing social interests or practically none.  They may be in normal health or may already be nervous wrecks from causes over which the school has no control.

There is no question about the value of definite information on all of these points gathered by home and school acting together for the best understanding of the child.  The modern physician keeps a carefully tabulated record of his patient’s history and condition.  The school should do the same thing and should prescribe with due reference to such record.

It frequently happens, however, that the schoolgirl’s health is menaced less by her hours of school work than by misuse of the remaining portion of the twenty-four hours.  No mother has a right to accuse the school of breaking down her daughter’s health unless she is duly careful that the girl has a proper amount of sleep, exercise in the open air, and hygienic clothing, and that her life outside the school is not of the sort that we describe in these days as “strenuous.”

It is this strenuous life which our girls must be taught to avoid.  Any daily or weekly program which is crowded with activities is a dangerous program for developing girlhood.  The very atmosphere of many modern homes is charged with the spirit of haste, and parents scarcely realize that the daughter’s time is too full, because their own is too full also.  They have no time to stop and realize anything.  A quiet home is an essential help in preserving a girl’s health and well-being.

[Illustration:  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood A mountain camp.  Good health is conserved by outdoor games and exercise]

It need scarcely be said that the children of a family should be troubled as little as possible with the worries of their elders.  Parents are often unaware how much of the family burden their sons and daughters are secretly bearing, or how long sometimes they continue to struggle under the burden after it has mercifully slipped from father’s or mother’s shoulders.

Good health means buoyancy, a springing to meet the future with a tingle of joy in facing the unknown.  The adolescent period is essentially an unfolding time, in which probably for the first time choice seems to present itself in a large way in ordering the girl’s life.  In school she is confronted with a choice of studies or of courses.  To make these choices she must look farther ahead and ask herself many questions as to the future.  What is she to be?  Nor is she loath to face this question.  Some of the very happiest of the girl’s dreams at this time are concerned with that problematical future.  There was a day when girls dreamed only of husbands, children, and homes.  Then, as the pendulum swung, they dreamed of careers, a hand in the “world’s work.”  Now they dream of either or both, or they halt confused by the wide outlook.  But of one thing we may be sure—­our girl is dreaming, and she seldom tells her dreams.