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.