re the teacher made the lesson interesting without
requiring much from the girls; she spent the afternoon with a book, the
piano, and the relatives and friends who came to call. Church, home,
friends, seemed content with her just as she was. She meant to do so
much and to some of her friends she told with great enthusiasm her plans
for future work. But the days passed as other days had passed. What
became of her passion to serve, to share in the work of making life
easier and happier? What became of the cry in her heart for something to
do to express the new life which had fired her soul? They died. Slowly
the fire was quenched by inaction, the embers grew cold, the longings
were quieted, life went on as before--so easy it is to _drift_.

She has the sympathy of every one of us, the girl who "_means to_," for
we also intend to do, and fail. Perhaps she learns from our vocabularies
the words and phrases which so often appear in her own. "Tomorrow," she
says, and "I am going to," "I intend" and "I mean some day to." She
enjoys the present but all that she hopes to _do_ she puts into the
future. She does not realize at first that the future always has a day
of reckoning and that suddenly when one least expects it, the future
meets her in the present and says, "How about this and this and this
which you were going to do? The time is past. What now?" Sometimes with
bitter tears, often with deep regret, always in half guilty fashion the
girl answers, "Well, I really meant to do it, only--"

If the drifting girl who "meant to" is to be strengthened in character
she must be helped to substitute "I have done it" for "I really meant to
do it."

The girl who continually "means to" and seldom "does," is usually
emotional, responsive, lovable and irresponsible. I remember a most
interesting teacher in the last year of the grammar school who had just
such a girl in her room. The girl admired her teacher greatly, and
whenever she expressed the desire to read a new book, to have the class
see a fine picture, to use certain material for the lesson in drawing or
painting, the girl promised that the book should be brought, the picture
would gladly be loaned by her father, the poppies or tulips she would
get from her garden. Almost never was the promise fulfilled, still she
continued to promise. One afternoon her teacher talked with her after
school and showed her a list of twenty-one things she had promised to do
and had not done. "I kn