One day a little four year old told a lie in my presence.  Her mother looking the child straight in the eyes, said, “Did Esther tell true?” For a moment the child wavered then nodded her head and said, “Yes, Esther tell true.”  The mother simply said, “Very well” in the coldest of tones.  After a moment the little girl turned to her dolls.  She took them to a party, brought them safely back and carefully tucked them into bed.  Then she sat quietly looking at them.  Finally she took one from the group, placed it in the little chair, very straight and said “Look at me!  Did ’oo tell true?  ’Oo didn’t tell true.  Naughty girl.”  A sigh followed.  Then slowly Esther came over to her mother, ignoring my presence.  Her lips quivered and smoothing her mother’s hand she said sadly, “Esther didn’t tell true.  Naughty, naughty girl.”  The little girl at four years of age had her ideal of a good girl and she acted according to its dictation.  She must “tell true.”  At fourteen she is a remarkably truthful girl and very accurate in her statements.  Through fear, that mother as a child had become untruthful and in later years had a bitter struggle with the temptation to sacrifice the truth to save herself any annoyance.  She determined to give to her own little daughter an ideal of the beauty of truth which should save her, and she succeeded.

Many a little ten-year-old girl has fine ideals of truth, unselfishness and honor and they steady her through the teen years when temptations press hard.

The twelve-year-old girl on the edge of the African jungle arranges her hair in “mop” fashion because that headdress represents her ideal of beauty.  Rings in the nose, wonderful decorations of ankles and toes, represent ideals of fashion and beauty.  The girl in Japan, China or the Philippines thinks she has made herself beautiful when she has arrayed herself in accordance with her ideals.  We often term her “awful” and “ridiculous,” shrinking even from her picture and she makes sarcastic remarks, laughs heartily and never fails to express her curiosity regarding us and our strange fancies and fashions.

It is our ideals which act as a great commander-in-chief and we follow in obedience to their commands.  Our country needs today more than ever before, the girl with high ideals, for it is when ideals are lowered that character is weakened and sin and evil have their opportunity.

There are many things in the life and surroundings of the girls of today that tend to lower and dim their ideals which did not enter at all into the lives of the girls in our grandmother’s and great grandmother’s time, and the girls of today must be stronger if they are able to resist them.  Our great-grandmothers lived in the home and did not enter into business life.  It is hard for the wide awake business girl of today to imagine how that girl of long ago managed to enjoy life.  But monotonous as her life often was, she was spared many things.  She never rode