This is most encouraging, for it means that if the girl can be lead to express the right impression and leave the others to fade away into the recesses of consciousness where it will be hard to awaken them, the determination of her character will be a possible task.  It means that in the years of habit formation and character making those who share the task of the girl’s training have the opportunity to lead her to repeatedly express in positive action the high ideal, the noble self-sacrifice, the great deed or ambition, the generous impulse slumbering in her thoughts and appearing in her day dreams.  The material which is furnished her for thought creates her day dreams, what she sees in her day dream effects character, what she does makes it.

It is for this reason that parents and teachers who are seriously concerned with the problem of making a girl’s religion a real and vital thing seek ways and means by which she may be led to express both in words and actions the thoughts and desires which their teaching has awakened.

A successful teacher had been studying with her class for some weeks the lessons founded upon “Unto the least of these, my brethren”—­“A cup of cold water even,” “Ye have done it unto me,” and kindred texts.  She taught well and the girls were thinking.  Some attempted as individuals to express what they thought.  In the minds of most, the stories, illustrations and facts slumbered.  One Saturday three of the more thoughtless girls were asked to accompany the teacher on a visit to a children’s hospital.  They were much impressed by what they saw.  The convalescent ward proved of great interest and the babies fighting for their lives against pneumonia brought tears to their eyes.  On their way home they expressed the wish that the class might make some of the bonnets and gowns which the sweet-faced young nurse had said the hospital needed so much for its baby patients.  “Perhaps the other girls will not be interested,” said the teacher.  Immediately the most thoughtless girl in the class replied, “Oh, Miss D——­, they cannot help it.  We will tell them what we saw!  We have been studying long enough about what we ought to do.  We haven’t done a thing!  At least—­I haven’t—­” she added.

[Illustration:  HER HEART IS FILLED WITH A DEEP DESIRE TO SERVE]

Two dozen bonnets and gowns, well made after the pattern furnished by the hospital, were the result of the interest of that class.  While the girls sewed they talked.  They discussed in simple girlish fashion the problems of poverty and illness and the duty of one part of society to the other.  In this sort of informal discussion they expressed themselves far more freely than in their Sunday-school class or their classroom at school.  By the expression of high and generous thoughts they strengthened their own ideals and placed themselves in the presence of their friends and companions on the side of Christ-like living.