Occasionally she scolded her for faults that happened at the moment to annoy.  Her father talked boastfully of his successes and ambitions, criticized the men for whom he did business, found fault with those whom he employed, occasionally talked of politics in a vain attempt to interest his wife and daughter.  There were few books in the home.  The newspapers and one or more popular magazines represented the only reading of the family.  The daughter played a little, sang a little, sewed a very little and studied as much as she must to insure the certificate for entrance to college.  But she attended matinees, dancing parties in large numbers, and belonged to a whist club.  A whist club, poor girl, at sixteen!  Her parents were blind and deaf to the fact that in their daughter’s life there was nothing, save now and then a desperate attempt on the part of an earnest high school teacher, or a word from a teacher who occasionally found her in the Sunday-school class, which might inspire her soul with high ideals, pure, noble thoughts expressed in action which makes life sweeter.  Of nature’s beauties, of her countless miracles, of the dramatic acts of current history, of the lives and needs of other girls she knew almost nothing.  In her pitiful little world she lived, her best self dying for want of pure air with the oxygen of power in it.

Can she find in the social life and amusements of the day the inspiration needed to fill her soul with life that it may develop as her normal healthy body develops?  No, the girls of our country do not find our social life a help to the higher expression of self.  Only here and there do wise parents make social life simple, free from show and sham, from false standards and appeals to the senses.  But few know how to center the social life in the home, in the out-of-doors, in clean sports, instead of letting it center about exotic conditions, unreasonable hours, and deadly refreshments.  Only now and then does the present social life demand any exercise of mental power.

It is wonderfully encouraging to find, here and there, groups of girls of sixteen and their boy friends having their simple good times in each other’s homes, enjoying the picnic and the skating party; or the girls by themselves enjoying camp life, the tramp in the woods, the gymnasium class; or with their parents or chaperones enjoying the moving pictures of high standard, without vaudeville.  These girls are such a contrast to the usual groups of sophisticated, bored, blase girls who at eighteen have tired of the ordinary means of recreation and amusement.  Our social life suffers from too rapid growth.  It does not offer the tonic for healthy social nature.  It needs pruning.  Some of it needs to be torn up by the roots.

And what of the schools?  Can she find there the atmosphere that will stir her soul to noble, unselfish joyous living?  Yes, in some schools.  Many are engaged in merely continuing the “system,” following a curriculum strangely deficient in those things which touch life directly, to inspire it and kindle it with ambition.