This child is the type of many, who as early as ten years and younger, are so easily led that their natural tendencies toward good are wholly transformed by association with evil companions whose strong personality and power of leadership can so easily turn the weak wills into the wrong pathway.

Parents and teachers cannot be too careful of the companions of a girl of vacillating, easy-going, versatile temperament, for they may ruin or make her.

When Leonora moved from the great manufacturing city, which had been her home for fourteen years, to the home of her aunt, in a quiet suburb, where the children attending the high school were from homes of real culture and refinement, she was disconsolate.  Voices, language, games, manner of recitation, behavior on the school grounds and street, perplexed her.  She seemed lost in her new environment.  She had never been a leader but had followed with all her heart.  Her playground had been the street.  She had enjoyed boisterous good times, had patronized moving pictures of every sort, had entered into the mischief of “the crowd” always close to the leader.  In a pathetic letter to one of her chums she said that at the very first opportunity she should run away and be with them all again.  She characterized the beautiful suburb with its neatly kept lawns and pretty homes as “a dead old hole” from which she could not wait to escape.  Still, her aunt’s home, the new wardrobe containing the lovely dresses, becoming hats and coats, for which she had always longed, tempted her to remain.  One day, early in October, her classmates made the discovery that she could sing.  She had quite a remarkable voice for a girl of her age.  The teacher of music became her interested friend and found she could play unusually well, though mostly “by ear.”  The leader among the girls who “adored” any one who could sing adopted Leonora as her special friend.  The new wardrobe added greatly to her attractiveness, and her aunt’s social position opened many doors for her.  Her new friend’s mother was pleased with her daughter’s choice of a companion despite the lack of good breeding and lapses in English.

Leonora became the obedient and devoted follower of the new girl friend and the influence of the music teacher was indeed remarkable.  Almost as by magic Leonora dropped the coarse slang, loud talking and shouting of her companions, who in the city had been termed “wild” and adopted the ways of the new leader.  At the end of two years it would have been quite impossible to recognize in the pretty, interesting, well-mannered girl of sixteen, who sang so sweetly, the uncultured, ill-mannered, slangy girl of fourteen.

Leonora was so easily led that it was not a difficult task or a great accomplishment to have so transformed her.  If she remains until she is eighteen or twenty in her present environment, the chances are that the good friend, Habit, will have determined the way that she shall go.  If she should now drop back into the old street, the old companionship, the place which until her father’s death he had tried with her help to make a home, the chances are the old voice and manner, the old slang and old interests would return.