you do not mean to be untruthful, but you are,” the teacher told her.  “Whenever you promise now to do a thing, the other girls smile.  You wanted to be chairman of the luncheon committee the other day and did not receive a single vote, not because the girls dislike you, but because they cannot depend upon you.  You always intend to do things but they are not done.  You—­” The girl interrupted: 

“Twenty-one promises to you, broken!” she exclaimed.  “Twenty-one!  I shall keep every one of them.  Let me see them.”  Then she burst into tears and the old excuse fell almost unconsciously from her lips, “I meant to, I really meant to.”

Sympathetically, but without being spared, the girl was shown that the promises could not be kept now; the time had passed and the things had been done by others.  The inconvenience and unhappiness caused by many of these unkept promises were explained to her and the teacher asked that for one week she should make her no promises and that she should not volunteer to do anything for her.

“Oh, but I want to do things for you.  I must!” she cried with all the passion of her emotional nature.

“What I want most,” the teacher responded, “is that you do things, but say nothing.”

The girl tried faithfully.  Her love and admiration for the teacher furnished a strong motive, and the week showed a real gain.  One day her mother called at the school.  She said that her daughter had made a strange request of her.  “She asked me,” said the mother, “to compel her to do everything she promised to do, or said she was going to do and to punish her if she failed.  I asked her to explain her strange request and learned of the struggle she has been making.  It seems to me she is too young to assume responsibility to the extent of actually doing everything she just casually says she is willing to do or intends to do.  We all fail to carry out our intentions.”

The teacher helped that mother to see that a girl of fourteen is old enough to begin the struggle to establish the habit of doing what one means to do, and she realized her mistake.  Together they decided to encourage the girl to refrain for the time being from making promises.  Meanwhile they made requests for such services as seemed perfectly possible for her to render, being careful that but little time need elapse between the request and its required fulfilment, in order that action might follow rapidly the resolution to act.  In the months that followed, the girl’s effort to do what she said she would do, furnished many a scene of both tragedy and comedy, but slowly she gained and in two years the result was marvelous.  A girl who because of her dependableness will be of great value in home, school and community is being made by the sane, wise sympathy of mother and teacher.

The girl who drifts because she “means to” and fails, is easy to love and easy to pardon for things left undone.  But those interested in her welfare will spare neither time nor thought in the effort to help her gain the power to make connection between the intention to do and the actual doing.