Andrea Ball, Steve Schulze, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
"'Handsome is that handsome does,—hold up your heads, girls!' wasthe language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters."WHITTIER
COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY D. LOTHROP & Co.
To My Girls Everywhere.
When we make an object with our hands, we frequently notice that themost care is needed as we near its completion. A false stroke of thebrush will change an angel into a demon, a misguided blow of the malletwill shiver the statue into fragments: so, in the work which attemptsto form a noble womanhood, all the efforts of years of training willbe marred or rendered ineffectual, if the right influence, properoccupation, and wholesome encouragement are not given to a girl inthe period which borders on womanhood. We wait for the rose to open;but if we allow the atmosphere to become impure, or otherwise preventits development, its life will stagnate, it will refuse to give outodor, and the world will lose that beauty it might have enjoyed.
Susceptible as girls are, vigorous, affectionate, cheerful and aspiring,if they are deprived suddenly of good influence and encouragement,the very conditions of their growth will be removed, and they, likethe rose, will shut their lives within their lives.
There is no time in a girl's life so neglected, and yet so dependentupon sympathy, as that when she is first thrown upon her own efforts.Too old to be any longer led, she is not old enough to be left withoutguidance. This time usually comes when she has finished the ordinaryschool course and finds herself, all at once, waiting, either for anentrance into what is called society, or for an opportunity to earnher living.
There is a certain lightness of heart, carelessness, abandon,maybe, about girls while they are still in school, which is bothdelightful and natural, however provoking to teachers. Every thingis very bright now; and if the girl learns her lessons, is obedient,and tries to think, she believes that somehow things will all comearound right with time. All at once she is confounded. She awakes inthe morning, and finds that school does not keep to-day,—no, norto-morrow! What is to be done? Going and coming, which get to be moregoing and coming; dish-washing, which daily increases into dish-washing;or ennui, which degenerates into melancholy, ensue. Life is not whatthe school-girl supposed. Six months of it make her older than a wholeschool-year.
Girls look upon graduation day as a grand portal through which theyare to enter into a palace glistening with splendor; but, lo! whenthey reach that portal, they see only a very low gate-way, while ahedge, thorny and high, shuts out the palace. How to get through?Rather, how are their elders to make them see that, with the patienceand energy of the prince in the story, they can cau