now deeply offended if friends forget to call her Eleanor. She is an
ardent worshiper of the Idols. When she was twelve and fourteen she was
a frank, contented, happy girl, simple in her tastes and able to have a
good time in most inexpensive ways. A trolley ride to a park and supper
under the trees she looked forward to for days and enjoyed in
retrospect, until a trip to the lake, a concert, a visit to the picture
galleries, or a shopping tour down town where she spent the twenty-five
cents she had earned and saved, gave her another happy day to remember.
Eleanor is now eighteen and she has been at work for two years. She
needs plain becoming dresses, plenty of shirt waists, sensible, pretty
shoes, rubbers, a rain-coat, a suit, two becoming hats, for it is the
beginning of winter. But she has none of these things. She has just
been kneeling before the altar and has laid her costly sacrifice of
common sense and comfort, perhaps of health, there in the presence of
Fashion and Pleasure. Her face is troubled as she sits there in her room
for the memory of her mother's reproof and her brother's disapproval
stings a little. But in a moment she looks toward the bed. Lying upon
it, smoothed out carefully, is the result of the sacrifice--a thin silk
gown of palest blue draped with a fragile chiffon, trimmed and caught up
with crystal drops and tiny rosebuds. It is a pretty thing. Besides it
is a spotless white outing coat, rough, and to quote the words of the
clerk who helped her select it, "exceedingly modish." There are pale
blue stockings and pumps. She did hesitate about the pumps but they were
there. The hat was there too. She hoped to go perhaps to two dances, she
knew she should go to the theater, for she already had an invitation and
there might be another. Besides that she intended to go herself and
invite one of the girls if she were able to get all the things paid for
before the theater season was over. Last year everything got shabby so
quickly and "looked like a rag," before the season was over but she
hoped for better luck this time. She rose and put her new possessions
away very carefully in the little closet and boxes and turned to the
mirror. The hair dresser had shown her a new way to dress her hair and
she tried it now herself. After a long time she met with fair success.
She did not call the family to see the result, for there might be more
words of disapproval and though they would not influence her in the
least still it was a bore to listen to them. The new arrangement was
very uncomfortable and it did seem strange to be apparently without ears
but she was an earnest devotee and what it pleased the idol to dictate,
that she did. Next she tried the new concoctions for cheeks and
eyebrows. The result pleased her. She called to her mother to ask the
time and exclaiming at the lateness of the hour called back that she was
dead tired and would go to bed. When she hung up her skirt she was
dismayed to see how worn it was. She had paid for the style in it, not
for the material. She did not go to sleep directly though she had a
right to be tired, for she had to get up very early each morning and she
was obliged to stand all day at her work. But she was troubled. Even
the pleasure of possessing the clothes so carefully protected in the
closet could not take away the anxiety produced by the conscious need of
rubbers and a winter suit. But at last the poor little devotee, the
ardent worshiper of the twin idols, worn out by thinking of it all fell
asleep.
Over on Blank Street, in another part of town that day, another
worshiper and her devoted mother had been talking over plans for the
future. Both were "climbers," at least they thought it was climbing.
They had social ambitions and it was whispered by their enemies that
they intended, at whatever cost to enter the inner circle of those who
worshiped the idols. Last year the young girl who wanted to go to
college had "come out." It had been a wonderful season but it had left
her with a pale face and dark circles under her lovely eyes. The rest
cure had done much for her but her physician had said another season in
town would undo all that had been done. Her mother was loath to believe
it. She had always been able to dismiss her husband's arguments and had
done so successfully the night before when he plead for a year of
roughing it in the west, society forgotten and the things of nature for
amusement and fun. "If we drop out now," she told her daughter, "all is
lost." And so they made their plans. The daughter was not an adept in
learning the rapid succession of combination dances wherein orientalism,
the harem, the submerged tenth, and the various beasts of the field and
fowls of the barnyard figured, so the first step was to secure a teacher
who would correct her errors and give her skill in the performances
which had robbed so many of her friends of all reserve and had taught
them the abandonment of motion.
She had tried to take a nap that afternoon but sleep would not come
though she obeyed all the rules for capturing it. Her father's blood was
in her veins and even her training had failed to obliterate all of the
hard sense which had helped him pass his neighbors in the race for money
which should win the coveted title "A Success."
She did not like the dances, she knew she was not equal to the round of
varied functions that lay before her. But she was a worshiper--she
blindly followed Fashion--she bowed in the presence of Pleasure--and at
last sighing wearily, murmured softly, "Well, there is no way out.
Mother has set her heart on it and one might as well die as to be out of
everything"--she laid her sacrifice upon the altar, took up a book and
stopped thinking.
It is easy to think that she is but one, and perhaps the great
exception, that because she is not physically strong she shrinks from
the long gay season. But she is only one of many, some very young and
strong, and some in the twenties who have hearts and find them
unsatisfied, who long to be free but held in the grip of the twin idols
at last bow down and worship.
In the home of a shoemaker where food was coarse but plentiful and where
the loose casements and cracks in walls and doors defied all efforts to
keep out the air, grew up a little rosy-cheeked, black-haired girl. When
she was fourteen she was tall for her age, her black hair was abundant
and beautiful, her large, dark eyes snapped and sparkled in laughter or
in anger. She went to work. As yet she had thought little about the twin
idols. Before the year had passed, she knelt before them. At the end of
the second year she had offered in their name, truth and honesty in
exchange for furs, a silver purse and a beautiful necklace. Her parents
unable to speak English, ready to believe that anything was possible in
the new land suspected nothing. Before the close of the third year, when
she was but seventeen, in mad devotion to Fashion and Pleasure, she had
laid herself, a living sacrifice upon the altar.
In the same city where she had followed so madly in pursuit of pleasure
and dress, in a comfortable home upon one of the new avenues where young
shade trees, modern houses, neatly trimmed lawns, all spoke of the young
people just starting out for themselves, there lived a family trying in
vain to find happiness. Both were young, she only twenty, he twenty-two.
She worshiped the idols. He worshiped her. She had social ambitions. She
needed money to carry them out. He got it as fast as he could and he was
doing pretty well. But it was not enough. That night they had said
bitter words to each other, then had repented and he had begged her to
be careful, to try for a while to do without unnecessary things for his
sake and said that she was more beautiful than any of the more richly
dressed women he knew and that she ought to be content. She promised to
try. But it was of no use. She heard the call of the idols. She could
not resist and bowed down and worshiped them. Before the year had passed
she had plunged into hopeless debt and in her mad devotion sacrificed
her husband with all his hopes and honest ambitions upon the altar. The
music, the lights, the dresses, the compliments, the promise of opening
doors into the society in which she wanted to shine, for a time drowned
the sight of his suffering and pain. Then suddenly he yielded to
temptation, was discovered taking money that was not his and the gods of
fashion and pleasure forgot them both; the doors of society closed and
she was left with nothing but her bitter thoughts. It was a costly
sacrifice but a common one which the Idols accept again and again.
Hardly two blocks below was another home with its lawn, its flowers, its
neat window boxes and its young trees. There in his nursery was a little
two-year-old. He stretched out his hand to his mother and cried when she
passed through the hall and down stairs. He had not been well for some
days and missed his old nurse who had been dismissed for a slight
offense the week before. He did not like the new nurse. His mother did
not know much about her. She seemed kind and she was very courteous in
her manner. The mother was going in her friend's machine, out to the
club-house for bridge. She was a little late and could not stop though
the child had looked very pitiful and rather pale. He still cried
despite the nurse's warnings, coaxings and threats. At last she grew
impatient, seized him and shook him until there was no breath left to
scream, laid him on his little bed and left the room. After a while
soft, heart-broken baby sobs came from the tired child and he lay still
as she had bidden him.
At the club women dressed in all the extremes of fashion, laughed and
chatted or grew tense and strained as they exchanged their cards. Over
in one corner some of the younger women blew curls of smoke into the
air. The baby's mother sat there.
It seemed very lonely to the little boy lying in his nursery. The sobs
ceased, the baby grew interested in life once more, climbed over the
side of the bed, slipped to the floor, softly opened the door into the
hall. His eyes were swollen and he was weak from the shaking and the
strain of the day and when he reached the shining staircase, his foot
slipped.
The nurse's face grew pale when she picked up the unconscious child. The
doctor said he would live but the spine seemed to be injured and the
full result of the fall he could not predict.
While they were bending anxiously over him, he opened his eyes and said
"Muvver." Just then she entered the hall and they could hear the
congratulatory words of her friend. She had won. Then she started up the
stairs. Let us draw the curtain, for on the altar of Fashion and
Pleasure _a mother_ has offered as a sacrifice, _her child_.
You who have read this chapter have been looking with me upon a series
of rapidly moving pictures. Perhaps they have seemed too dramatic as
they have passed. But they are not fiction--they picture facts. They are
not in the past. The same scenes are being repeated now all over our
country and across the sea. No one can number the worshipers of the Twin
Idols and no one can estimate the awful cost of the devotion of their
followers.
It is right that a girl should enjoy pretty clothes and desire them. It
is right that she should spend a fair part of her income on the
necessary gowns for parties and pleasures. It is right that girls should
seek pleasure and enjoy life to the full. It is right that young mothers
keep their youth and enjoy the society of their friends. But when
girlhood erects an altar and in the presence of Fashion and Pleasure
sacrifices time and strength, money, honesty, thrift and virtue, then it
is _sin_ and the individual and society must suffer. At this present
moment in our country, as in the ages past in nations and with peoples
that are now being forgotten, girlhood is worshiping the Twin Idols and
one is compelled to ask himself if the final result will be the same.
It is not alone the rich girl who bows the knee in the presence of
Fashion and offers her best to Pleasure, the poor girl also worships. In
the multitude that bow are all sorts and conditions of girls.
We wait for a prophet. A prophet that shall awaken womanhood and
girlhood and show them that to be well dressed means to be
appropriately dressed, that extravagant overdressing is clear evidence
of the lack of good breeding and good taste; that those who indulge in
clothes which they cannot afford and those who make of themselves living
models for the exhibition of the latest extravagances, both proclaim the
unworthy station in life where they _truly_ belong.
We need a prophet who shall awaken womanhood and girlhood to see that
the wild rush for sensational and unhealthful pleasures has always meant
one thing--final inability to enjoy, the day when all pleasures pall.
Would that the prophet might come, and speedily, that our girls might
stand up on their feet free, no more slaves to Fashion or servants of
Pleasure. Free--their faces clear, tinted and rosy with the keen joy of
living. Free--their eyes bright with health and energy. Free from the
lines of worry that stamp the faces of all those who yield to the
demands of the Twin Idols.
It will be a great day when the leaders and worshipers of Fashion and
the devotees of Pleasure blow the trumpets and cry aloud, "Bow down,"
and the mass of girlhood and womanhood, beautiful, strong, healthful,
loving life, answer and say, "We will not bow down, nor worship." When
that day comes--and it will come--the reign of the Twin Idols shall
cease.
VIII
THE GIRL WHO DRIFTS
More than two years have passed since I met one of the girls returning
from a girls' conference where the depths of her nature, unstirred
before had been touched and quickened into life. A passion to serve had
been awakened in her and as she told me of her new visions and desires I
confess that I feared for her. Here she was, the embodiment of all the
charm and power of youth with a soul on fire to accomplish great things,
and the temperament which does _not_ accomplish great things. When the
train stopped she was met by her father, a keen, common sense, average
business man who often expressed the wish that his daughter would "get
busy and do something." She went home to a mother large hearted and
self-sacrificing, proud of her attractive daughter and doing so much for
her that little remained for her to do for herself. On Sunday she went
to a formal, dignified, self-satisfied church; she attended a
Sunday-school where the teacher made the lesson interesting without
requiring much from the girls; she spent the afternoon with a book, the
piano, and the relatives and friends who came to call. Church, home,
friends, seemed content with her just as she was. She meant to do so
much and to some of her friends she told with great enthusiasm her plans
for future work. But the days passed as other days had passed. What
became of her passion to serve, to share in the work of making life
easier and happier? What became of the cry in her heart for something to
do to express the new life which had fired her soul? They died. Slowly
the fire was quenched by inaction, the embers grew cold, the longings
were quieted, life went on as before--so easy it is to _drift_.
She has the sympathy of every one of us, the girl who "_means to_," for
we also intend to do, and fail. Perhaps she learns from our vocabularies
the words and phrases which so often appear in her own. "Tomorrow," she
says, and "I am going to," "I intend" and "I mean some day to." She
enjoys the present but all that she hopes to _do_ she puts into the
future. She does not realize at first that the future always has a day
of reckoning and that suddenly when one least expects it, the future
meets her in the present and says, "How about this and this and this
which you were going to do? The time is past. What now?" Sometimes with
bitter tears, often with deep regret, always in half guilty fashion the
girl answers, "Well, I really meant to do it, only--"
If the drifting girl who "meant to" is to be strengthened in character
she must be helped to substitute "I have done it" for "I really meant to
do it."
The girl who continually "means to" and seldom "does," is usually
emotional, responsive, lovable and irresponsible. I remember a most
interesting teacher in the last year of the grammar school who had just
such a girl in her room. The girl admired her teacher greatly, and
whenever she expressed the desire to read a new book, to have the class
see a fine picture, to use certain material for the lesson in drawing or
painting, the girl promised that the book should be brought, the picture
would gladly be loaned by her father, the poppies or tulips she would
get from her garden. Almost never was the promise fulfilled, still she
continued to promise. One afternoon her teacher talked with her after
school and showed her a list of twenty-one things she had promised to do
and had not done. "I know you do not mean to be untruthful, but you
are," the teacher told her. "Whenever you promise now to do a thing, the
other girls smile. You wanted to be chairman of the luncheon committee
the other day and did not receive a single vote, not because the girls
dislike you, but because they cannot depend upon you. You always intend
to do things but they are not done. You--" The girl interrupted:
"Twenty-one promises to you, broken!" she exclaimed. "Twenty-one! I
shall keep every one of them. Let me see them." Then she burst into
tears and the old excuse fell almost unconsciously from her lips, "I
meant to, I really meant to."
Sympathetically, but without being spared, the girl was shown that the
promises could not be kept now; the time had passed and the things had
been done by others. The inconvenience and unhappiness caused by many of
these unkept promises were explained to her and the teacher asked that
for one week she should make her no promises and that she should not
volunteer to do anything for her.
"Oh, but I want to do things for you. I must!" she cried with all the
passion of her emotional nature.
"What I want most," the teacher responded, "is that you _do_ things, but
say nothing."
The girl tried faithfully. Her love and admiration for the teacher
furnished a strong motive, and the week showed a real gain. One day her
mother called at the school. She said that her daughter had made a
strange request of her. "She asked me," said the mother, "to compel her
to do everything she promised to do, or said she was going to do and to
punish her if she failed. I asked her to explain her strange request and
learned of the struggle she has been making. It seems to me she is too
young to assume responsibility to the extent of actually doing
everything she just casually says she is willing to do or intends to do.
We all fail to carry out our intentions."
The teacher helped that mother to see that a girl of fourteen is old
enough to begin the struggle to establish the habit of _doing_ what one
_means_ to do, and she realized her mistake. Together they decided to
encourage the girl to refrain for the time being from making promises.
Meanwhile they made requests for such services as seemed perfectly
possible for her to render, being careful that but little time need
elapse between the request and its required fulfilment, in order that
action might follow rapidly the resolution to act. In the months that
followed, the girl's effort to do what she said she would do, furnished
many a scene of both tragedy and comedy, but slowly she gained and in
two years the result was marvelous. A girl who because of her
dependableness will be of great value in home, school and community is
being made by the sane, wise sympathy of mother and teacher.
The girl who drifts because she "means to" and fails, is easy to love
and easy to pardon for things left undone. But those interested in her
welfare will spare neither time nor thought in the effort to help her
gain the power to make connection between the intention to do and the
actual doing.
When one observes carefully any large cosmopolitan group of young
women, she sees some with hard faces, some marked by suffering, many
marked by selfishness and fretfulness and many more showing
dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and her mind goes back involuntarily to
the fairy story with the mirror which showed "the girl you meant to be."
The contrast between what many a girl meant to be and what she is,
reveals a real tragedy.
Many a girl drifts through life always meaning to do--to be, yet missing
the joy of accomplishment because she does not summon her will to her
aid, and often because friends are too lenient and parents too
thoughtless to make her see to what failure and unhappiness, meaning to
do and never doing will invariably lead one. If a girl who some day
"means to" should read this chapter let her seize at once the only life
line which can ever save her. It is made up of three short words which
are relentless, but if she obeys they will prove her salvation. _Do it
now_, they read and for the girl who "intends to," there is no other way
of escape.
There is another type of girl who drifts. She is explained by the
phrase, "aimlessly drifting about." She is the girl who does not know
where she is going. She has no objective. Often parents, teachers and
friends have neglected to help her centralize her thought upon one thing
which she desires to do and she has not seen for herself that while
trying to do everything one accomplishes nothing. Many times she is a
girl of varied talents and puts all her effort first upon this thing
then upon that but never works long enough to complete anything or learn
to do it well. In school she changes her courses just as often as it is
permitted, in business she changes her position never remaining long
enough in any one place to qualify for a better. If at home she drifts
from settlement work to domestic science, from domestic science to a
dancing club and the golf links. She gives herself to the current and
the wind and _drifts_. She needs an anchor. She needs the strong will of
another to steady her while she is developing her own. She needs a great
ideal to guide her and hold her with the magnetic power of some North
Star. She needs to have her ambition aroused and to be made to believe
that she, as truly as any one in the world has a "call to serve." She
needs to have great things expected and demanded of her.
The power which rescues the drifting girl is a power outside herself. It
may be a call from the bank of the stream which causes her to pick up
her oars and leave the current, at the call of danger, in answer to a
cry for help; in times of sorrow and illness, many a drifting girl has
come ashore and rendered noble service. Those who thought they knew her
looked on with unconcealed surprise and said to one another, "I didn't
think she had it in her." Yes, it was in her. There, undreamed of by
those who saw her drifting. The drifting girl has within her all the
possibilities. That is the pity of it. As she drifts she may lose oars,
chart and compass and in the stress of the storm that is bound to come
be carried out into the sea of darkness, or be wrecked upon the shoals
or sandbars that line the stream of life.
A wise teacher, awakened parents, a good friend, a live church, a great
book, these have the opportunity of pulling the girl out of the current,
and steadying her until she fastens her life to the Ideal which can hold
her.