The Girl in Her Teens Part 1

The Girl in Her Teens.

by Margaret Slattery.

CHAPTER I-THE TEEN PERIOD

She was a beautiful, well-developed girl of thirteen. Her bright, eager face, with its changing expression, was a fascination at all times. It seemed unusually earnest and serious that particular morning as she stood waiting the opportunity to speak to me. She had asked to wait until the others had gone, and her manner as she hesitated even then to speak made me ask, "Are you in trouble, Edith?"

"No, not exactly trouble,-I don't know whether we ought to ask you, but all of us girls think,-well, we wish we could have a mirror in the locker-room. Couldn't we? It's dreadful to go into school without knowing how your hair looks or anything!"

I couldn't help laughing. Her manner was so tragic that the mirror seemed the most important thing in the educational system just then. I said I would see what could be done about it, and felt sure that what "all the girls" wanted could be supplied. She thanked me heartily, and when she entered her own room nodded her head in answer to inquiring glances from the other girls.

As I made a note of the request, I remembered the Edith of a year or more ago. Edith, whose mother found her a great trial; she didn't "care _how_ she looked." It was true. She wore her hat hanging down over her black braids, held on by the elastic band around her neck; she lost hair ribbons continually, and never seemed to miss them. She was a good scholar, wide-awake, alert, always ready for the next thing. She loved to recite, and volunteered information generously. In games she was the leader, and on the playground always the unanimous choice for the coveted "it" of the game. She was never in the least self-conscious, and, as her mother had said, how she looked never seemed to occur to her.

And now she came asking for a mirror! Her hair ribbons are always present and her hat securely fastened by hat pins of hammered bra.s.s.

She spends a good deal of time in school "arranging" her hair.

Sometimes spelling suffers, sometimes algebra. Before standing to recite, she carefully arranges her belt. Contrary to her previous custom, she rarely volunteers, although her scholarship is very good.

If unable to give the correct answer, or when obliged to face the school, she blushes painfully. One day recently, when the cla.s.s were reading "As You Like It," she sat with a dreamy look upon her sweet face, far, far away from the eighth-grade cla.s.s-room; could not find her place when called upon to read, and, although confused and ashamed, lost it again within ten minutes.

What has happened to Edith, the child of a year ago? She has gone. The door has opened. Edith is thirteen. The door opened slowly, and those who knew her best were perhaps least conscious of the changes, so gradual had they been. But a new Edith is here. One by one the chief characteristics of the childhood of the race have been left behind, and the dawn of the new life has brought to her the dim consciousness of universal womanhood. Womanhood means many things, but always three-dreaming, longing, loving. All three have come to her, and though unconscious of their meaning, she feels their power. Edith has seen herself, is interested in herself, has become self-conscious, and for the next few years self will be the center and every act will be weighed and measured in relation to this new self. Fifty other girls, her friends and companions all just entering their teens, share the same feelings, and manifest development along the same general lines.

More than one of those fifty mothers looks at her daughter growing so rapidly and awkwardly tall, and says, "I don't know what to do with her, she has changed so." And more than one teacher summons all her powers to active service as she realizes that for the next two years she is to instruct one of the most difficult of pupils, the girl who is neither child nor woman.

But the awkward years of early adolescence, filled with the struggle to get adjusted to the new order of things, with dreams, with ardent worship of ideals embodied in teachers, parents, older girls, imaginary characters, quickly pa.s.s.

If they have been years of careful training, if the eager, impetuous day-dreamer and castle-builder has been guarded and shielded, if she has been instructed by mother, teacher, or some wise sympathetic woman in all the knowledge that will help keep her safe and pure and fine, then she is ready for the wealth of emotion, the increase of the intellectual and spiritual power to be developed within her these next few years.

But if not-if the earliest years have been filled with questions for which no satisfactory answers were given, if great mysteries that puzzle are solved for her only by what schoolmates, patent medicine advertis.e.m.e.nts, and imagination can teach, then she does not have a fair chance. She is not well equipped for life, and if in some moment of trial which we fondly dream will never, never come to _her_, to others perhaps, but not to _her_, she is overwhelmed, then we who have left her unguarded are to blame.

If at thirteen she was awkward and sometimes disagreeable, at sixteen we forget all about it, for now she is charming. The floodtide of life is upon her,-it is June, and all the world is her lover. To be alive is glorious; she shows it in all that she says and does. She laughs at everything and at nothing, and she dearly loves "a good time." She makes use of all the adjectives in her mother tongue, and yet they are not enough to express all that she feels. Superlatives abound, and a simple p.r.o.noun, third person, singular number, masculine gender, is introduced so often into her conversation with her girl friends that it reveals at least one prominent "line of interest."

But she is a dreamer still of new, deeper dreams in which self plays a large part, but a different and more altruistic one; and the longings that dawned on her soul with adolescence have grown in power. She not only longs for the concrete hats and gowns and beautiful things, to sing and play, to be admired, to be popular, but she longs to be good and to do good. Now, when all her powers have awakened, obeying instincts of her womanhood, she is ready to give herself in loving service to some great cause, to serve the _world_.

All teachers of English composition can testify to the desire to serve which stands out so clearly in the essay work of girls at this period.

Hazel is a type of hundreds. She attended a lecture a while ago and saw pictures of the tenements; the crowded conditions, wretched poverty and suffering children stirred her soul. Every composition since has been a record of her dreams and longings. In every written sketch or story a wretched child of the tenements appears. A girl of means, "about sixteen years of age," with plenty of spending money, seeks out the child, often crippled or blind, gives it food, clothing, a wheel chair, or takes it to a great physician who makes it well.

Sometimes the heroine finds work for father and mother, and they move to a cottage in the country and are happy. Always in the story misery is relieved and hearts are made glad. Always the heroine is self-sacrificing and those helped are touched with deepest grat.i.tude.

In the last story, "Little Elsie sat comfortably back in her wheel chair too happy even to move it about. Her mother tried to find words to express her grat.i.tude, but could only murmur her thanks. The child looked up into the face of her kind friend with a celestial smile that paid for all the sacrifice."

This desire to give all in altruistic service, this longing to make the whole world happy, this worship of the _Good_ reveals itself too in the girl's effort "to find her Lord and worship Him." The religious sense, so strong in the heart of the race that man must bow down and worship something, some one, be it fire, the moon, the stars, the river, ancestors, idols of wood or stone, is strong in the heart of the girl in her teens. And if rightly taught and presented, the Christ unfailingly becomes her great ideal. All the qualities she most admires she finds in him. Bravery, courage, purity and strength, patience and sympathy, all are there and she worships him. For him she can perform deeds of quiet heroism of which no one dreams,-struggle desperately to overcome her faults, and sacrifice many a pleasure willingly. Her prayers are ardent and sincere, and must rise to heaven as an acceptable offering. I saw such a girl bow her head in prayer in the crowded church on Easter morning. Her face was good to see. Death and the grave meant nothing to her, but oh, _LIFE_-it was so good.

Sixteen found her hard at work in the cotton factory. But looking at her in her new suit and hat and gloves, and at the one bright yellow jonquil she wore so proudly, you would never have guessed that a week of toil lay behind her and another awaited her. That night she sang a brief solo in the chorus choir, and did it well; one of the boys in the church walked home with her, they talked a few moments, and Easter was over. At five-thirty next morning she rose, ate her hasty, meager breakfast, and went to work in the rain. A week later, when we were talking after Sunday-school, she said, "I don't know as I ever had such a happy Easter. It was such a beautiful day." And then hesitatingly, "I made up my mind I ought to be better than I have been, and I'm not going to let my sister go to work in the mill, no matter what it costs me. I'm going to send her to high school next year instead of taking singing lessons. I decided Easter night."

I could see her sitting in her bare, hopeless little room, with the memory of the sunshine, the new suit and the jonquil, the solo, and the Risen Lord filling her soul as she made her sacrifice, letting the cherished plan of singing lessons go.

"What made you want to do it?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said, "I felt that I ought to, and Easter makes you think of those things. I think Christians ought to be more like Christ, as Dr. -- said in his sermon."

That was the explanation. She was following, the best she knew how, the pathway of the Christ-her ideal. G.o.d bless her,-the sacrifice will pay.

Failing to find the Christ, the religious sense satisfies itself with lower ideals. Intensified longings, dissatisfaction, and a restlessness not found in the girl who truly gives her allegiance to the Christ and feels his steadying power, are very evident in the girl who has not yet found the one whom she can call Master and Lord.

Keeping pace with the deepening and broadening of the religious sense and the physical growth and development, the intellectual powers have been busy grasping new truths, eagerly seizing new facts that relate to life, comparing, rejecting, reasoning, indeed for the first time _independently_ thinking.

Before her friends realize it, the years have hurried past and the time has come when only one more "teen" remains. She is eighteen.

Eighteen may find her plunged into life as a wage-earner, one of the procession of thousands of girls facing realities that are hard. It may find her already in the whirl of social life, struggling to meet its demands, or in college facing its problems. Wherever it finds her, two things are true of her. She thinks for herself,-and she is critical.

Many of the theories of life and religion which she accepted unquestioningly she questions now. Doubts a.s.sail her, and she is perplexed by the evidence of wrong and evil resulting not only from weakness, but from deliberate planning. If all her ideals fail her, if the men and women she has trusted disappoint her, she grows cynical, and tells you that "no one is what he seems."

Now, more than at any time in her life, she needs to meet fine men and women, that they may overbalance those whom she thinks have failed.

She needs to know definitely the good being done everywhere in the world, to study great sociological movements, to see the efforts being made to meet the special needs of the day, the problems of the cities, and the salvation of the individual. Biography is good for her, and sketches of real men and women living and working for and with their fellows strengthen her faith and steady her.

Now is the time when she so easily develops into a gossip, and she needs anything and everything that will help her despise it, and provide her with something to talk about beside her neighbors and a.s.sociates.

She is keenly critical, because she is comparing theories and life-because her ideals are high and her requirements match her ideals. She is scornful, because she has not lived long enough to realize how easy it is to fail, and she has not learned to let mercy temper justice. She doubts because she is not able to adjust things which seem to conflict, and experience has not yet helped her find harmony in seeming discord.

She still loves a good time, and has it. Her ability as leader, manager, or organizer reveals itself quickly if opportunity is given.

Her tendency toward introspection and self a.n.a.lysis often makes her unhappy, dissatisfied and restless. She longs unspeakably to find her work, to be sure she is in the right place in the great world. She needs patience, real sympathy, and understanding from those with whom she lives; to be led, not driven, by those who control her; positive teaching on the part of all who instruct her, concrete interests, social opportunities, and some one to love.

"What does the girl in her teens need?" has been asked these past few years, by fathers, mothers, and teachers of girls, with increasing desire to find a real answer. As yet, not enough thoughtful people have even attempted to meet the question to make us sure that we have a safe and universal answer. Yet we may be reasonably sure of a few things.

She needs love. But, comes the reply, we do love her. From the time when she "lengthens" her dresses and "does up" her hair, to twenty when we greet her as an equal and consult her about all things, we _love_ her. Who could help it?

But she needs _intelligent_ love, which is really sympathetic understanding and keen appreciation wisely expressed. And she needs, from thirteen to twenty, to be taught two things: to _work_ and to _play_. The girl in her teens needs to be helped to realize her dreams in action.

_She_ has the dreams, the hopes, desires and longings. _We_ must furnish the opportunity to work them out into reality. Real, healthful, natural enthusiasms for all phases of life, she can furnish if she be a normally developed girl. The opportunity to express that enthusiastic abundance of life _legitimately_ is ours to supply.

It sometimes seems as if Shakespeare must have been thinking of the adolescent period of life when he said:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries."

The teen age is the period where the battle for an honest, clean, pure, righteous type of manhood and womanhood must be waged and won.

Having realized this, it now remains for us to bend all our energies and summon all our skill to meet the task.

CHAPTER II-THE PHYSICAL SIDE

That mankind has a spiritual, mental and _physical_ side to his nature has been acknowledged for many centuries. That they are of equal importance has been accepted but for a comparatively short time. Time was when the spiritual nature was developed, the mental side cultivated, and the physical scorned and abused. The pale face and emaciated form were indications of the pure heart. The starved body meant the well nourished soul. When men were most deeply concerned with the future beyond the grave, and this life was but a penance, a period to be endured, a terrible battle to win, having little joy, and almost no pleasure not labeled _wicked_, it was natural that they should treat with a measure of scorn or ignore altogether the physical body in which dwelt so much of evil. But when man realized that eternity begins here and now, he turned his thoughts to the present welfare of his fellows, and the physical side a.s.sumed a new importance.

In some cases the importance attached to physical welfare is out of proportion. It is always difficult to keep a sense of proportion when new light on any line of truth bursts upon men's minds. But in the main the place of the physical side is not exaggerated. Every teacher in the public school realizes it as she sees what a tremendous difference has been made in the spiritual and intellectual development of a child who after years of ineffectual struggle to _see_ has been given gla.s.ses that make it possible for him to do the same work as his cla.s.smates. She realizes it as with astonishment she sees a boy transformed before her eyes, changed into an entirely different child as the weeks and months pa.s.s, because the troublesome and deadening adenoids have been removed. She realizes it as she sees a poor, weak little girl, undersized and underfed, changed into a new being under treatment, with plenty of nourishing food and fresh air. The experience of the past ten years alone, in the public schools, will convince one of the value of the physical.

Certain it is that the physical side exists, and is to be reckoned with in the development of human life to the highest possible point.

The more we know about the physical side, the more we stand in awe of ourselves, and the more we appreciate the wonderful machine with which we are to do our work in the world.

I saw recently two locomotives that taught me again what it all means.

One had been in a wreck and lay pitched over on its side, its splendid power gone. Its size and its powerful strength made its ruin more pitiful, and its utter helplessness appealed strongly to all who looked at it. Near it on the second track, all hot and panting, ready and waiting to pull its heavy load up the steep grade, was a fellow engine, in full possession of its powers: how strong, how complete, how perfectly able to perform its task it seemed as it stood there on the track beside its helpless brother. For days I could not forget the picture, and when I looked into the faces of my girls in their teens all it suggested impressed me anew.