in the boy, but she becomes filled
with vague undefined and undefinable longings. It is the period of
"crushes" when the girl is apt to bestow her overflowing emotion on a
girl friend. There is nothing reprehensible in these crushes--they
act as a safety valve--and only in rare cases are they apt to lead to
abnormal development. This is also the period of day-dreaming and of
romancing; the girl likes to read love-stories and novels in which she
identifies herself with the heroine. And it makes quite some
difference as to what the girl reads during this period, for
literature has a strong influence on the young in the most plastic
period of their lives; and it is important that older persons see to
it that those in their care spend their time on books of noble ideals
and high artistic value.

Girls of a highly sensitive or so-called "nervous" temperament,
especially if there is "nervousness" in the family, must be
particularly looked after. For it is during the years of puberty and
adolescence that any neurotic traits are apt to develop and become
emphasized. It is also the period when bad sexual habits
(masturbation) are apt to develop, and the careful mother will devote
special attention to her girls in their years of puberty, and guard
them as much as possible against physical and emotional shocks.

The age of puberty in girls is by many writers considered as
synonymous or synchronous with the onset of menstruation, which in
this country in the majority of cases occurs between the ages of
thirteen and fourteen. The year of gradual development before the
onset of menstruation is by some referred to as the pre-pubertal year;
and the first year after the onset of menstruation is the
post-pubertal year. The period from puberty to full sexual maturity is
called adolescence, and this term is applied generally to the period
between thirteen and eighteen. For at eighteen the boy and the girl
have reached full maturity. Mentally we acquire things as long as we
live, and even physically the body gets larger for some years after
eighteen. But sexually both boys and girls are fully mature at
eighteen, though in order to become parents it is best, for various
reasons, to wait to the ages of twenty or twenty-five.

=Nubility.= Nubility is the age or state when a boy or a girl is "fit"
for marriage. This is a vague and unsatisfactory term. At the age of
thirteen to fifteen boys and girls are physically "fit" for marriage,
that i