"Given a Camp-fire, a group of friendly girls and a good story-teller who
knows and loves the girls, and the ideals of a whole community may be
lifted in a night."
The teen age girl is a great problem and at the same time a great
opportunity. Her ideals seem low, yet there is no time in her life when
she will more gladly follow a great ideal. She seems fickle, yet she is
putting her friends to a test that is most worth while. She is
misunderstood and she can not understand herself. She is searching for
something, yet she does not know what it is.
Her problems are many, and most of them she must solve alone. If she
follows the crowd and goes in the way of least resistance, there is a big
chance that she will fall by the way. If she does not follow the crowd, it
is because somewhere, some time, she has found a compelling ideal and is
following it. Sometimes that ideal comes to her in the form of a friend.
Sometimes she is fortunate enough to have found that ideal in her mother.
But often and often it comes to her through a little story that lives with
her, and works for her, and helps her to hold to the best, in spite of the
manifold temptations to do otherwise.
Recently I met a young woman whom I had seen only once and that was twelve
years ago. She came to me after a service and said, "Will you tell Van
Dyke's 'Lump of Clay' to-night? Twelve years ago I heard you tell it. I
was so discouraged at the time, for everything seemed going wrong and life
seemed so useless. But I dropped into a church and heard you tell the
story. You have no idea what it has done for me. I am teaching in the
college near by and I should like to have my girls hear the story. Perhaps
they need it as I did."
Many of the workers with girls have seen this need and have wanted to meet
it and yet have been unable to find the story that was needed by the girl.
It is because of this very need in my own work that I am sending out these
stories, most of which I have told over and over to my girls. Many of them
have been written because of special problems that needed to be
met--problems peculiar to adolescence--problems found in every class and
club of girls the country over.
The stories are not to amuse, for we have no time to amuse girls in the
story hour. We have little enough time, at the best, for implanting ideals
and every story hour should leave a vital message. That is the thing the
girls want and why should we give them less.
The stories are not to be read. They need the personal touch, the
sympathetic voice, the freedom of eye that tells the story-teller which
girls are finding the message of the story. Some of them will hurt--but
experience has shown me that these are the very ones that one has to tell
over and over. Can you imagine the Master reading to the groups gathered
about him the stories that you and I love to read in his word? When you go
into the heart life of a girl, let all your personality help you to carry
the message. It was the Master's way of story-telling.
"'Twas only a little story,
Yet it came like a ray of light;
And it gave to the girl who heard it
Real courage to do the right."