here you are and with what you have."

It is only the woman who is prepared to say something like that to her
daughter, to help her to see it, and to rise to it that has brought
into her home the spirit of to-day.

Where there is failure at any one of these points, and if one fails,
all probably will, since they are obvious elements in the liberal view
of life, the girl must go forth if her life is to go progressively on.
She must seek work, less for the sake of work than for the sake of
life. To remain where she is, unproductive in a group which does not
recognize the calls of the present world and where _another
person_--for the mother who tries to force the individuality becomes
another person--insists on shaping her course,--to do this is to
quench the spirit, stop the very breath of life.

The girl goes forth to seek work. She has almost invariably the idea
that work outside the home has less of drudgery in it, _i.e._ less
routine and meanness, more excitement. She is unprepared for the years
of steady grinding labor which she must go through to earn her bread
in any trade or profession. She learns that work is work whether done
in kitchen, sewing room, countinghouse, studio, or editor's sanctum,
and all that keeps the operations which consume the bulk of the
worker's time in any of these places from being drudgery is that he
keeps before him the end for which they are performed. The first
disillusionment comes, then, when she faces the necessity of a long
steady pull for years if she is to "arrive."

A second comes when she finds she must prove to a busy, driven world
that she is worth its attention; she must do more than simply knock
for admission and declare her fealty to its ideals. She realizes
sooner or later that she is an outsider and must delve her way in. No
sapper works harder to make his trench than most young women do to
make stable places for themselves in strange communities.

The gnawing loneliness of the girl who has left home to make her way
is one of the most fruitful causes of the questionable relations which
well-born girls form more often than society realizes. The girl seizes
eagerly every chance for companionship or pleasure. Her keen need of
it makes her overappreciative and undercritical. Moreover, she has the
confidence of ignorance. Most American girls are brought up as if
wrongdoing were impossible to them. Nobody has ever suggested to them
that they have the possibility of all cri