e is likely to be,--there is "considerable danger
both ways."

Even if a girl has never been away from home before, it is possible that
she will not suffer from homesickness. It is probable, however, that the
new surroundings in which the girl finds herself, and the separation
from those who are the centre of her personal life, will bring on an
attack of this most painful malady. It takes time to fit comfortably
into the new surroundings, and meanwhile everything is strange.
Homesickness is not to be laughed at, but it must be less deadly, less
fatal than some people think it, or there would not be so many
recoveries. Girls often weep when they enter school, and then after the
long dreary years are really over, lived through, and the poor forlorn
freshman is metamorphosed into the senior, they weep again. Is it not
strange that these seniors who wept on entering school should weep also
when leaving it? It looks in the end as if Phoebe Pamela were sure to
get well. Yet the effort to get well requires a fine effort at
self-control,--an effort every girl is the better for making, although
it may take everything plucky in a girl to "back up" her intention to
remain in school. The earlier the student considers this question of
homesickness the better. Let her face its possibilities before she goes
away from home, and make up her mind, if she is attacked, resolutely to
overcome it. If it comes, let her never give up the struggle, for, by
giving in, she will only lose ground in every way, morally, socially,
intellectually. By her cowardice she will part with what she can never
recover later.

Many temptations follow in the wake of homesickness, and the most
serious of all is to make friends too rapidly. It may be laid down as a
rule that a friendship formed on this stop-gap principle, and too
rapidly, is not likely to endure. Such a friendship is not a sane or a
wise relation, for friendship is like scholarship: if it is worth
anything at all it comes slowly. Impulsive, quickly forced friendships
are not wise investments; the very fact that they come so quickly
implies an unbalanced state of idealizing, or lack of self-control. This
does not mean that one is not to form pleasant acquaintances from the
very beginning of the school life. Acquaintanceship always holds
something in reserve and is the safest prelude to a deeper and more
vital friendship.

There is no denying that there is great temptation to violent
admirations