ters to a false standard and to a selfish life.

Teachers also probably seldom realize how wide an influence they may
exercise upon their adolescent girl pupils in the matter of dress.
Many a girl forms her standard and her ideal from what her teacher
wears. Teachers must accept their responsibility and make good use of
the opportunities it gives them.

It is approximately at the time of her awakening to the beautifying
instinct that the girl begins to take a special interest in social
matters. Here again she needs wise guidance, and usually more
_guidance_ and less _direction_ than most girls get. The American
mother is prone in social questions to trust her daughter too much, or
not enough, and to train her very little.

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Skating offers fine opportunity for healthful social intercourse]

In many cases adolescent society centers about the school. There are
the everyday walks and talks of the boys and girls, the games and
meets and contests, with their attendant social features, the literary
societies and debating clubs, the school parties and dances. The
school thus comes to assume a considerable part in the boy's and
girl's social training, much more than was the case twenty or even ten
years ago; and the whole trend of educational movement in this matter
is toward doing more even than it now does.

In some cases schools have merely drifted into this social work,
without definite aims and without conspicuously good results, just as
some parents have drifted into acceptance of the situation, with
little oversight and a comfortable shifting of responsibility.

[Illustration: Games form an important part of the adolescent girl's
life]

When this sort of school and this sort of parent happen to be the
joint guardians of a girl's social training, it usually happens that
the girl discovers some things by a painful if not heartbreaking
trial-and-error method, and other things she quite fails to discover
at all. Most of all, she needs her mother at this time--a wise,
interested, companionable mother, who knows much about what goes on at
school parties and at school generally, but who never forces
confidences and, indeed, who never needs to; an elder sister sort of
mother, who helps. And she needs also teachers who supervise and
chaperon social affairs with a full realization that social training
is in progress and that lives are being made or marred.

There are school