sician.

Sometimes a girl becomes indifferent from lack of a sympathetic
environment. She feels that others do not care about her and that what
she does makes no real difference to any one. She may be surrounded by
poverty, where the struggle to exist is so keen that there is no time to
think of the girl and her needs, or she may have every luxury yet be
denied the companionship of one who understands.

I am thinking now of a girl of fifteen, who does not seem in any way to
belong in the family where she was born. Her sisters are at work in the
factory and content. They are sweet, attractive and good. But she does
not want to work in the factory. She would "give the world to have a
room alone, that could be all fixed up," as she would like it. The
family cannot understand her. She can have none of the things for which
she longs, she is not able to be with the sort of people she loves and
admires. She wants good books, she enjoys music and longs to be
permitted to finish her high school course. She is willing to work out
of school hours, to do anything if only she may continue to study.
Because the family consider all her notions ridiculous, and all she
longs for seems impossible, the don't-care, reckless spirit and the
indifferent "what's the use anyway" are gradually enveloping her whole
life.

Surrounded by much that money can buy, a most interesting girl whom I
met recently is surrendering all her interests to the "don't-care"
spirit because the one great desire of her heart is not to be gratified.
She has been urged to enter upon the duties of the social world but says
she has tried it and "despises society." She does not care about travel,
she wants to be trained as a nurse, enter a school of philanthropy and
then become a district worker among the poor. Her father will not
listen to the plan, her aunt opposes it, her brother laughs at it.

She says that now since all her most earnest desires can never be
fulfilled she doesn't care about anything. It was a long time before the
teacher of the Bible class of which she was a member could believe that
this indifferent girl whose silence had annoyed her each Sunday was
longing to serve her fellowmen and had lost heart because the way was
blocked. It was only when she had made a special and earnest attempt to
really know the girl that she learned the truth.

No one can act wisely in the dark, and before passing judgment upon the
indifferent girl who may try one's so