I shall never forget my visit that Sunday afternoon to a detention school for delinquent girls.  Over in the corner of the room where the afternoon service was to be held was the piano, the orchestra, made up of members of the school, was gathering.  There was a cornetist, two or three violins followed, then a banjo and guitar.  The service that day was to be a great event, for the wonderful woman in charge of that school who had done away with the cells, taken down the great spiked iron fence and planted flowers in its stead had persuaded board, committee and municipality to permit her to follow out the one great desire of her heart.  The girls were to wear on Sundays and other dress occasions white Peter Thompson suits, big bows of ribbon in their hair and shining, well-fitted shoes.

Soon she entered the room.  One could hardly take her eyes from that sweet, sympathetic, calm, face.  A glance told one she might trust her with her soul’s secrets without fear and might tell her anything and she would understand.  After her came the girls and quietly, with an attractive self-consciousness because of their new glory raiment, they took their seats.  Who could fail to forgive them if they fingered lovingly the great soft silk Peter Thompson ties and patted the bows on their hair.  Some of them seemed scarcely more than children though some were in their later teens.  No one of the group present that afternoon will ever forget how they sang, nor how they listened with eager responsive faces.  No one can tell what new hopes and ambitions were born as they sat in their new finery, some of them for the first time in their lives becomingly dressed.

After the service they filed out, put on their long checked aprons and got supper.  We saw the beds in the wards where all the new comers must sleep, then the smaller rooms with six and four beds, the still smaller with two and the honor rooms which a girl might occupy alone and might arrange as she chose.  There were flowers in all the single rooms and pictures on the walls.

It almost seemed as we walked along the edge of the drive over the walk the girls had laid, that we were leaving a boarding school where girls were being taught household economics and the arts and crafts.

The woman who had wrought the miracle which had been wrought in that school stood at the end of the drive as we left and in response to the exclamation, “It seems impossible that these girls could ever have been guilty of the deeds the records show!” she answered, “These girls are not vicious.  It is after all a question of leadership and they followed the wrong leaders.”  She paused a moment, looked back at the buildings, and then said softly, “God pity the girl who is easily led.”  And in our hearts we echoed her prayer.

V

THE GIRL WHO IS MISUNDERSTOOD