evealed by companions, the suggestions of patent
medicine and kindred advertisements, or the falsehoods of those who seek
to corrupt. What has a girl's religion to do with these simple
undeniable facts?

_It is the right of every girl_ to receive the protection of wise
parental authority. The guidance of parents who earnestly, wisely and
with the highest motives require obedience from those too young to
choose for themselves is the right of every girl. Yet thousands of girls
every year are left to decide life's most important questions, while
parents, weak, indifferent or careless sleep until it is too late. Has
religion anything to offer to girls whose parents have laid down their
task and neglected their duty?

_It is the right of every girl_ to receive such moral and religious
instruction as shall develop and strengthen her higher nature, fortify
her against temptation and lead her in the spirit of the Author of the
Golden Rule into service for her fellows. Yet thousands of girls are
without definite moral and religious instruction and unconscious of the
fact that it is their right, and thousands more receive moral and
religious training in haphazard fashion and from sources inadequate to
the task.

When the community awakens to the necessity for sanitary conditions in
the environment of every girl and honestly seeks the solution of the
problems of economic injustice; when the educational system seeks to
prepare its girls for the life they must live; when laws for the
regulation of labor for girls are made in the interest of the girl
herself; when the community makes it possible for its girls to play in
safety and makes provision for friendless and lonely girlhood; when
mothers instruct their daughters in the most important facts of life,
parents exercise protective authority and the church provides adequate
assistance in the task of moral and religious instruction, then, and not
till then, will the girl receive her rights.

And the girl's religion? The girl is naturally religious. Without
religion no girl comes into her own. Whenever and wherever religion
concerns itself with the rights of a girl it becomes a girl's religion
to which she can pledge body, mind and soul. For the coming of that
religion the world of girlhood eagerly waits.

II

THE HANDICAPPED GIRL

They were both handicapped, as a careful observer could tell at a
glance. One stood behind the counter, the other in front of it examining