er disapproved. The party
began later than they had planned and it was nearly six before the child
reached home. She found her mother greatly troubled and said quite
glibly that she had stayed after school to help the teacher. Next day
the mother called at the school to remonstrate with the teacher for
keeping the child so often and so late to "help" her. Then the whole
truth came out and the mother was dismayed. She felt that the matter was
so serious that she must remove her daughter at once from her companions
and before school opened in the fall the family had moved back to their
former neighborhood and the parents were permitted to send the little
girl to another school where new associates were carefully chosen.
Before she left that grammar school she had recovered her frank, sweet
spirit, her interest in her studies returned, and surrounded by a group
of fine boys and girls she went through the high school with the love
and respect of teachers and companions.

This child is the type of many, who as early as ten years and younger,
are so easily led that their natural tendencies toward good are wholly
transformed by association with evil companions whose strong personality
and power of leadership can so easily turn the weak wills into the wrong
pathway.

Parents and teachers cannot be too careful of the companions of a girl
of vacillating, easy-going, versatile temperament, for they may ruin or
make her.

When Leonora moved from the great manufacturing city, which had been her
home for fourteen years, to the home of her aunt, in a quiet suburb,
where the children attending the high school were from homes of real
culture and refinement, she was disconsolate. Voices, language, games,
manner of recitation, behavior on the school grounds and street,
perplexed her. She seemed lost in her new environment. She had never
been a leader but had followed with all her heart. Her playground had
been the street. She had enjoyed boisterous good times, had patronized
moving pictures of every sort, had entered into the mischief of "the
crowd" always close to the leader. In a pathetic letter to one of her
chums she said that at the very first opportunity she should run away
and be with them all again. She characterized the beautiful suburb with
its neatly kept lawns and pretty homes as "a dead old hole" from which
she could not wait to escape. Still, her aunt's home, the new wardrobe
containing the lovely dresses, becoming hats a