Part 2 — DIVISION VIII (continued 2)

Miss Forbes, their teacher, was one day giving her room a lesson in good manners. They were discussing modes of salutation when Karl raised a vigorous protest to taking off his hat to women.

“Well, now, why do we have to take off our hats to women any more than to men?” he asked. “I don’t see why they’re so terribly good they have to be treated like a church.”

“Why, Karl, I never heard of such ideas. Doesn’t your father take off his hat to women?”

“Yes, and he can’t give any more reason than you can. All he did when I asked him was to laugh and say I mustn’t be a barbarian. I’d rather be a barbarian than to do such a senseless thing, anyway. Women aren’t any better than men.”

“Karl, I want you to take off your hat to women now, and when you’re a man you’ll know the reason why.”

“That’s it, put me off with ‘when I’m a man!’ Father said that, too. But if there is any reason, why can’t you tell me now? It’s just like Santa Claus—there isn’t any, and only little kids and girls believe it.”

Leonard nodded a vigorous amen to his brother’s heterodoxy, and Miss Forbes let the matter drop because she did not know how to meet Karl’s arguments, although she was sure he was wrong. The two boys took a mischievous delight in passing her and other 805teachers on the street without lifting their caps or even touching them.

CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT

The child of a rationalistic temperament must be met with reasons; if a thing is right there are always good reasons for it, and these may be fully or partially explained to any child who is old enough to inquire for them. In Karl’s case, both parents and teacher should have given him the true reasons for the chivalrous regard for women which is symbolized and expressed in the raising of hats. An intelligent boy of ten should begin to rationalize the good manners which in earlier childhood are pure habit.

Miss Forbes might pleasantly have answered Karl, that the ceremony to which he objected is a conventionalized expression of the regard men have for women. “You love your mother, don’t you? She does more for you that you can repay, doesn’t she? Now, all other right-minded boys and men feel the same way about their mothers. And so they all agreed, a long time ago, that they would pay this mark of respect to women.”

This explanation would serve very well for the school, but it would be wise to have a private talk with Karl and explain to him more fully the considerations that underlie all chivalrous customs. Put upon a basis of rationalized justice, the custom of hat-raising will win hearty support from Karl, but as a mere matter of unexplained tradition it makes no appeal whatever to him.

806

COMMENTS

We have here a case where the love of approbation, strong enough in the average child to be used in fixing a good habit, does not function. Karl does not care enough for the approbation of parents, teacher or friends to make him do a thing not approved by his reason. The incident is inserted here because it is exceptional and illustrates the occasional case in which the love of approbation can not be used as an incentive. As a rule, the love of approval, of being considered “a gentleman” or “a little lady,” is strong enough to give all the motivation necessary for teaching good manners.

ILLUSTRATION (EIGHTH GRADE)

Miss Hendrickson taught in the town of Ridgeway, where the leading industries were carried on in factories of various kinds. Nearly all the parents worked in some one of these. Naturally, with their long hours of work, these parents had little time for such secondary matters as polishing their children’s manners. Most of them were thankful if they could feed the hungry youngsters and provide a place where they could sleep.

Miss Hendrickson soon became aware that the matter of teaching good manners devolved upon her exclusively. She also felt that a direct attack upon the rude customs of her pupils would be less effective than indirect procedure, since refined manners in this particular community usually resulted in having the scornful epithet, “Stuck-up!” attached to the possessor of said manners.

Interest in Manners

807After careful deliberation, Miss Hendrickson decided to take advantage of the story period in laying the foundation for more explicit teaching of manners later. Accordingly, she began the story of the feudal system and the institution of chivalry that sprang from it, a story always appealing to seventh and eighth grade pupils. She told how the feudal lord had to build strong castles for the safety of his family in those days of warfare. She vividly portrayed life in the castle, and showed how women also often had to do brave, daring acts in defending the castle when the husband was away. She explained how little boy pages were trained to wait on the ladies of the castle and to be polite to them, and how, when these same boys were older and became knights their highest duty was to protect these women who had few neighbors and who were shut up much of the time in the castles because it was unsafe to go abroad, and how the women returned this care by making the homecoming a very happy time for the lords and husbands whenever they came back from war. As the story progressed from day to day, Miss Hendrickson developed the thought that this sort of life in the castle gradually changed in many ways the ideals and habits of the people. Poetry and music, for other than religious purposes, began to be written and sung, and the rude people who had formerly laughed at refinement in manners as something effeminate and unsuited to a warrior, began to realize after a while that a man could be brave and strong, yet at the same time be gentle and polite toward women and toward all who were weaker or more dependent than himself. So, in 808time, the lords began to vie with each other to see who could be most polite or who could render the greatest service to his lady.

Chivalry sprang up, and, indeed, died out, many hundreds of years ago, yet it still has an influence over us, for we still use the term lady, not meaning now, exclusively, the wife of a lord, but any woman who is worthy of our respect. And a chivalrous man is still a man who is polite to women, and who always springs to their defense whenever they need protection. Gentlemen in those days meant a lord or someone of high birth. But such men had more refined manners than had the other people, or serfs, as they were called, having been trained in chivalry; and today we use the term in this country to mean any man who has fine manners.

Of course Miss Hendrickson told the story very much more in detail than has been done here. She dwelt upon phases which she knew would strongly appeal to the children and illustrated them with many pictures borrowed from the library. She had the children bring in baskets of stones from the river bank and asked two of the boys who had the most offensive manners to build a miniature castle on the sand table. She read a few of the poems sung by the minnesingers and troubadours, and the oath which the squires must take before they could be dubbed knights.

All this time Miss Hendrickson had said very little about the personal manners of her pupils, but she had substituted a new ideal regarding the desirability of good manners for the crude one generally held by her pupils. She had made such manners seem attractive, 809and thereafter when a child was about to do some act which she could not approve, she would often say, “What would a knight do, James, in such a case?” and many times the suggestion was sufficient to induce the desired conduct.

7. Submitting to State Control

CASE 145 (EIGHTH GRADE)

The Longfellow School was situated in one of the most congested foreign settlements of one of our largest and most cosmopolitan cities. Very few of the parents of the pupils could speak any but the most broken English. Many made no attempt to converse in the difficult language of the strange new world to which they had come.

Saluting Flag

The board of education was particularly anxious that the children of these foreign parents should be trained in appreciation of American institutions and in reverence for the American Flag, with all it stands for. They requested that all the national holidays should be made the occasion of special programs to which parents should be invited and that each afternoon when the schools were dismissed each pupil should salute the flag both verbally and with the hand.

Most of the children entered into the custom without demur, but one boy of fifteen, Hans Neuhaus, refused to give the salute.

“Hans, everyone is expected to give the salute,” said his teacher, William Hoover. “Once more, now.” Still Hans remained silent.

810“Hans, I wish you to give the salute with the others.”

“I don’t believe in saluting the flag,” said Hans. “It isn’t my flag, anyhow. I’m not going to salute that flag.”

“Hans, you must salute it,” said the now exasperated teacher. “The board requires it, and if you do not obey we can not have you in this school.”

“All right, then. I’ll go,” and Hans cooly took his books from his desk and walked out.

Three days later, as Hans did not reappear at the school, he was arrested for truancy and taken before the juvenile court. Under the coercion of the court he was made to return to the school and to give the daily salutes.

CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT

Try a roundabout way of getting at Hans’ difficulty. For a little while, at least, appear not to notice that he is not joining with others. Meanwhile, in the story period, or in the history class study, in a simple and interesting way, tell the history of the flag and the principles for which it stands. Imagine yourself in Hans’ place—that is, that you are a foreigner in a strange land, and that it is the flag of another country that you are asked to salute. What considerations would make you willing to do it? When this question is answered in your own mind, then set out to win the allegiance of Hans.

Keep watch on the playground to see if some of Hans’ hostility has not been caused by unkind teasing on the part of other children.

811

COMMENTS

Only the outward form of loyalty can be brought about by force. Mr. Hoover forgot that only an intelligent understanding and appreciation can be the basis of true loyalty, and these require time in which to develop. He should be more concerned, then, in the conditions favorable to a steady growth of these attitudes than about mere compliance to outward, conventional form. Saluting the flag and honoring the flag may be two quite different acts.

ILLUSTRATION (THIRD GRADE)

Honoring the Flag

Miss Beardsley, of the Lincoln School in Newport, taught her class, by many little talks and allusions to venerate the ideals of the national flag rather than the flag itself. “Only noble-hearted persons have a right to stand under that flag,” she often said. Then, when some especially praiseworthy act had been performed by any child during the day, she would call that one forward to stand under the flag that was gracefully draped in the corner of her school-room, while the others gave the salute just before going home at the close of the day’s session. The children soon began to vie with each other, in helping a younger child, in being polite, keeping desks tidy—anything that would especially entitle them to stand under the flag—the greatest honor the teacher could confer. Thus the pupils learned to associate true patriotism, so far as a young child could understand it, with the symbol of state control.

8128. Self-Regulation

(1) Wise choices in human relationships. Sooner or later in the life of every normal child, the more or less arbitrary control of parent and teacher must give way to self-regulation of conduct. Happy is that boy or girl who has been unconsciously practiced in self-control and wise choosing before that day comes when he no longer has a wise counselor at hand in life’s startling emergencies.

CASE 146 (HIGH SCHOOLS)

“Well, you’re going to the gayest place on the coast, and when you come back in the fall I shall expect you to bring us some startling ideas for our winter fun, Constance. Do see if you can’t pick up something really new. We’ve done the same old thing so long, you know! Well, goodbye. Have a good time!”

Choosing Companions

Miss Osgood stood on the platform and waved her handkerchief to the Yule children and their delicate little mother, who were off for Greenwood Beach for the month of August. The Yule young people were much flattered by Miss Osgood’s attention, for she was a young matron in a very fashionable private “finishing school” for young ladies. She was also quite a favorite in the society outside of the school, as well as the organizer of all the social functions within it. Constance, especially (who at eighteen had just finished high school and would be “coming out” next winter), thought she was a lucky girl to have Miss Osgood notice her in such a way as to indicate that it would be possible for her to suggest valuable ideas to 813Miss Osgood’s fertile mind. Inwardly she resolved that if any startling ideas were floating around at Greenwood Beach, she would bring them back and lay them at Miss Osgood’s feet. Her brother Clarence, a sophomore at college; Helen, who was a high school sophomore, and Kenyon, just finishing grammar school, were as eager as Constance for good times; but Constance was the leader, and as her mother was not strong enough thoroughly to oversee her children’s lives, Constance led the others in whatever they did.

“Oh, you dear—it’s so lucky you came tonight!” one of her friends gushed, as they entered the hotel which was to be their temporary home, late Saturday afternoon. “We’re planning a coaching party for all day tomorrow, and need two more to make up the party. Won’t you and your brother go?”

Constance reflected. She knew her mother, who was at the desk arranging for rooms, would want them to go to church the next day, and to rest after the long trip. Still, going to church and resting gave one no startling ideas, and it was certainly not having “a good time.” So she consented, and later cajoled her reluctant mother into a grudging consent.

Having started out with the idea of social gayety rather than of rest and recreation, Constance soon became a leader in the gayest life at the hotel. She even planned the champagne supper at the old sailors’ tavern, which was written up in the New York papers. Her old friends, the wholesome girls with whom she had tramped and gone swimming in previous summers, soon found that she had no time for them, and 814began to avoid her. The month resolved itself, for her and Clarence and Helen, into a feverish rush of engagements. Constance came home in September tired and sophisticated, but full of those sensational ideas that Miss Osgood had said she wanted. She met Miss Osgood at a tea before long, and hoping to gain her notice and become her companion, she regaled the ladies present with a lively account of her summer’s gayety.

After she had gone, there was a little silence. Then Miss Osgood said to the other women:

“Isn’t it a pity the Greenwood Beach should have spoiled Constance so? She was such a sweet girl last summer, and now she seems like a jaded old society belle, and a belle not too particular as to her companions at that. I suppose she’ll be the rage this winter, but I shall rather steer clear of her.”

CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT

Constance’s case calls for the application of the principles of suggestion and of initiative in coöperation. See to it that no young person who has been under your influence for a period of months or years goes to a new and different world without trying to indicate to that person how he or she may get the best rather than the worst out of the novel experience. A little conversation as to the purpose of the trip, a few suggestions as to the interesting places that may be visited, a little reading together of the historical or other literature connected with the new field, a helpful word as to how the trip may be made beneficial to the friends who are not fortunate enought to enjoy such 815pleasures, may give direction to ambitions which otherwise will expend themselves upon unworthy ends.

COMMENTS

Girls and boys in the adolescent period are possessed of so many conflicting ideals that they may be turned in any one of half a dozen directions at a psychological moment. Just at the time when Constance was feeling very grown up, and was looking forward to a very vivid experience of some kind, Miss Osgood thoughtlessly dropped the suggestion which colored all of Constance’s thoughts and acts during her vacation. Instead of trying to gain Miss Osgood’s approbation she should have spent her month in growing strong and brown in the open air, in helping to make the life at the hotel simple and wholesome and health-building; but Miss Osgood’s influence all went the other way.

It is important that even chance acquaintances watch their casual injunctions to young people, not only because they may have so much more influence than they dream, but also because they may speak at a time when the mind of the hearer is peculiarly sensitive to suggestion.

ILLUSTRATION (HIGH SCHOOL)

A Wise Choice

Dodge Monroe was changing from the East High School to the Sidney Lanier, because his parents were moving farther out in the suburbs. A few nights before they left for their new home, the Claytons gave the Monroes a farewell dinner, and Dodge, much to his delight, was included in the invitation. It 816was his first dinner party, and in his new Tuxedo he felt very grown up and manly.

Over the salad Mr. Clayton turned to Dodge, who was beginning to feel a bit left out of the grown people’s conversation.

“And you change now to the Sidney Lanier High School?” he inquired.

“Yes, sir. I start there next Monday.”

“I know they’re sorry to lose you in the East, but you’ll make an equally good record in Sidney Lanier. And it must be an inspiration to any boy to attend a school named after such a man. He could hardly be unworthy, having such an example of manhood always before him.”

Dodge knew nothing about Sidney Lanier, but this aroused his curiosity, and on Sunday afternoon he went to the branch library and read up on Sidney Lanier. As the details of that brave and beautiful life became real to him, he found himself measuring his own character by the standard of Lanier’s. He took out Lanier’s “Boy’s Froissart” to read.

That week he met dozens of new boys. Being frank and strong, he was liked at once, and many acquaintances offered. Some of the boys seemed all that boys should be; others, he knew, his mother would not approve as his friends. This thought came to him:

“Back at East I’d just grown up with the fellows, and knew everybody. Here there’s a bigger school, and I can’t know them all. I’ll have to choose. If I’m trying to make myself like Sidney Lanier, why not try some such test in regard to the fellows?”

This is what Dodge did, more or less consciously. 817Mr. Clayton’s admiration for a fine man, expressed in the most casual way, had a determining effect upon Dodge’s character.

(2) Religious attitudes. If regulation of conduct between man and man must become eventually a matter of individual choosing, in a still higher degree must religious attitudes become an issue for self-regulation. The teacher’s problem, then, is to throw about the pupil a social environment which shall stimulate the pupil’s highest ideals, but yet without encroaching upon his individual liberty and responsibility.

CASE 147 (HIGH SCHOOL)

Mr. Grey was distressed at the lack of church-going in the little town to which he had come as principal. A very religious man himself, he never missed a service and never failed to find satisfaction and help in one, no matter how unprofitable it might seem to others. When, therefore, he observed that few of his high school pupils attended the village church, he resolved to talk to them about it.

Going to Church

“I want to talk to you about a matter which is far more important to you than your education,” he began “Education will fit you to do your part well in this world, but religion teaches you about the world to come, and is, therefore, more valuable to you, since eternity so far transcends time. I am here to train your minds, but unless you go to church your souls, which are far more important than your minds, have no training at all. ‘What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ Right now, while you’re young, you ought to be forming 818church-going habits, even if you don’t care for church. You’ll get used to it, and even come to like it in time, if you don’t at first.”

There was more of the same sort of appeal, to all of which Mr. Grey’s pupils listened politely, for they respected him highly, but none of which seemed to swell the church attendance on Sunday. Although he succeeded in other respects, in this one matter Mr. Grey had to acknowledge that his efforts led nowhere.

CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT

Let the appeal for church attendance, like many others, be based on interest. All young people like company, action, color and music; therefore, most little children like Sunday School, but when they reach an age at which the church does not offer them these inducements, they are likely to stop unless kept in by family influence. Make your appeal according to the age of your pupils and their tastes.

COMMENTS

Mr. Grey talked to his pupils of things they knew little or nothing about. This world is very real to the young; the next world is very shadowy and hypothetical. The only persons whom Mr. Grey’s appeal would reach would be those pupils who had been brought up with religious training—i. e., the children who would not need it. In separating education and religion, time and eternity, mind and soul, he used outworn and abandoned conceptions of things, foreign alike to modern thoughts and to pupils’ knowledge. In assuming that they would not like it at first, he 819frightened them away from the duty urged upon them.

ILLUSTRATION (HIGH SCHOOL)

Mr. Tate, teaching also in one of the small towns in which church-going was out of fashion, said to his boys and girls:

Correlate Church and School

“Mr. Corithers told me that he was going to preach about Phœnician ships next Sunday. I wondered how he could make a sermon out of that subject, but he wouldn’t tell me. As we’ve just been studying about this matter, I suggest that we all hear this sermon Sunday, and then we’ll discuss it Monday.”

He and Mr. Corithers had talked over ways and means, and had together planned a series of sermons that should correlate with some of the school work being done. They planned to have simple and dignified music, and talk little about eternity until the young people had been led far enough in the spiritual life to know they had souls. The services, concrete and beautiful, and the sermons, which were planned to reach their hearers, were attended and enjoyed by Mr. Tate’s pupils.

Mr. Tate did not urge his pupils to go to church without a conviction that they should do so, and a knowledge that they would hear something they could understand. He and the minister planned earnestly and well to get results, and won.

CASE 148 (PRIVATE SCHOOL)

“Well, what do you think of the girls by this time?” The kindly old president looked hard at Miss Swallow, 820who had just finished her second month as a teacher in a girls’ private school.

“I think they are lovely girls, and I like to work with them,” she replied. “With one exception, they could hardly be better.”

“With one exception? And what is that?”

Time for Bible

“The matter of piety. This is a church school, and yet I feel a real lack of a spirit of devotion among the girls. When I visit their rooms, I see all sorts of books in evidence except the Bible. When I attend the Y. W. C. A. meetings, it seems to me that most of the girls give evidence of a very superficial sort of religious experience.”

“What you say is true. I have often thought of it myself. But what can we do? I urge the girls not to neglect their spiritual interests, in chapel. And every Lent we have special meetings.”

“I’ll study the situation a little and tell you what I think about it, Dr. Dayton.”

“Do, please. I am anxious to better things if I can.”

In a few days Miss Swallow was back in the president’s office.

“I think I’ve found the reason for the trouble,” she said, “and the remedy is simple. We expect our girls to grow strong here, and so provide them a gymnasium and a tennis court, and give them time for exercise. We expect them to eat, and provide a meal time; we expect them to sleep, and make them put out their lights and go to bed. But we expect them to cultivate the spiritual life without providing any special time for it. There is not even a five-minute period for devotions and quiet during the day.”

821“But girls say their prayers and read their Bibles at night, don’t they?”

“Yes, if they do it at all. They do it when they are tired with the long day’s work and play, and their attention is not particularly drawn to it by any stipulated time set aside for devotions. I think we should emphasize our idea of the importance of devotions by giving it time during the day.” She outlined a plan, and they agreed to try it in the winter term.

They provided a fifteen-minute “quiet time” just before breakfast, which every girl was expected to use in meditation and prayer. After a time they changed it to fifteen minutes after breakfast, before classes began; this worked much better. Girls who had never given any time to devotions now found a time provided, and a lack of distractions which suggested a compliance with the expectation. Girls who had always wanted to, but could never find time, now began systematically to study the New Testament or the “Imitation.” There was no compulsion about it, but the suggestion of the definite provision for the cultivation of the inner life bore abundant fruit in lives made gracious by its growth.

CASE 149 (HIGH SCHOOL)

Religious Perplexities

Mr. Horne had won the respect and devotion of the high school boys by his efficient and conscientious coaching of the athletic teams. Therefore, it was not strange that one of the boys, Donald Hope, came to him one day after school, and, after much hesitation, plunged into a discussion of religious faith.

“Now, our minister says we ought to believe,” he 822said, “and I don’t see how we’re to believe a thing that we never saw or felt or heard, but that people just tell us is so. It isn’t scientific. I don’t want to be wicked, you know—he says you’re condemned if you don’t believe; but how’s a person to believe when he doesn’t?”

Mr. Home was greatly puzzled by this question, and much troubled as well. He hardly knew whether to attempt to answer it or not; finally, he decided he would better not.

“You ask Mr. Curtis about it, Donald,” he said. (Mr. Curtis was the minister whose teaching Donald had reported.) “You see, I’m a public school teacher, and we are not allowed by law to teach religion. Besides, I’ve never thought much about such matters, and I might tell you wrong.”

Donald went away with a heavy heart. Mr. Home was the one person in whom he had faith enough to take to him this big and serious question, and he had failed him. He did not think for a moment of going to Mr. Curtis, who was elderly and inclined to be dogmatic. He resolved to wait until chance might bring him an explanation of his difficulties.

CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT

“Never fail to help where help is needed.” Even if giving help involves research into new fields, this is a good ideal for teachers to live up to.

Mr. Horne, finding himself unable to help Donald, should have promised him at least to think about the matter, and the two might have discussed it freely 823and in sympathetic sharing of a difficulty which most people have faced at some time or other.

COMMENTS

There is nothing unlawful or wrong in helping students with their personal difficulties, religious or otherwise, if this is done outside the classroom and outside of school hours. On the other hand, it is a very serious thing indeed to fail to help a human being who needs help.

The rationalizing of faith is not so insuperable a difficulty as it appears to be when one first faces it. There are a number of books dealing with the question, and these Mr. Horne might have found and read, both for his own sake and for Donald’s. The whole structure of civilization is built on faith, and religious faith is but a higher form of that which children have in their parents or pupils in teachers.

CASE 160 (HIGH SCHOOL)

Saintly Recluse

She was an anemic-looking girl of fifteen, her pretty brown hair pulled tightly back and braided with Puritanic neatness, her thin little body clad in the most severe of gingham frocks. Miss Corliss noticed her the first day, noted her letter-perfect recitation in English and her aloofness from the other students, and wondered what her story was.

In a few days the Juniors came to Miss Corliss for advice and help in planning their fall frolic. When they came to the business of assigning committees, she made a special plea that Susan should be given 824some work to do, as she wanted to see her on friendlier terms with her classmates.

“Susan White? Oh, she’ll never have anything to do with the parties. She thinks they’re wicked. She stays at home and reads the Bible all the time, Miss Corliss.”

“But if you ask her, won’t she help with the work and come to the party?”

“No, Miss Corliss, we’ve tried it. We used to invite her but she always turned us down, and now we don’t bother. Her mother is kind of crazy about religion, I guess, and Susan is growing to be just like her.”

Miss Corliss talked to Susan and found her sweetly frank about her views. She was in no sense “crazy,” but she had been led to a piety unusual in one so young, through the influence of her widowed mother, who had found consolation for bereavement in extreme devotion. Susan, feeling it her duty to devote herself to her mother, had gladly denied herself the usual pleasures of youth and found real joy in her asceticism.

“What can you do for her?” the principal, Mr. Waiting, asked.

“Do for her? I shall not do anything for her—she doesn’t need anything done for her. She is not abnormal; she is only unusual. She is one of the happiest girls in school, but she is one of the occasional people, very occasional nowadays, who find their whole happiness in a very personal, mystic type of religious service. To try to make her over to be like the other girls would be a great mistake.”

“But this isn’t the age of the religious recluse, you know.”

825“Yes, I know. That’s why one mustn’t interfere with them. If she were living in the time of Saint Francis or of Jonathan Edwards, I should suspect that her saintliness was copied from a model too often urged upon her. As it is, she keeps to her mysticism and asceticism in spite of every suggestion to the contrary here at school. I shall watch her for signs of unhealthfulness, but as yet I don’t see any. She has as much right, you know, to develop her talent for religious devotion as Stanley Brand has to develop his for mechanics.”

“I never thought of it in that light. Well, probably you’re right, only, as you say, be on the lookout for signs of a pathological development.”

COMMENTS

Miss Corliss is to be commended for her attempt to interest Susan’s classmates in her behalf. It is unfortunate, however, that she dropped the matter upon learning that Susan herself preferred to be left out of their sport. There is no incompatibility between innocent fun and a devoted religious life. To sacrifice entirely the one is to make the other onesided in its development. Sunshine as well as shadow is necessary for healthy growth in any of the higher types of life.

Susan’s habit of isolating herself from her associates might easily become so fixed as greatly to injure her future prospects in life. Coöperation, rather than isolation, is to be the watchword of the future and ability to coöperate with one’s fellows can be learned only through actual experience—an experience that Susan was failing to get.

826Finally, Susan’s own physical health required a more vigorous and varied type of life. It is highly significant that the account, as it comes to us, describes Susan as anemic. This pathological condition of the body was undoubtedly, in part at least, both cause and effect of Susan’s mental attitude—one by no means to be encouraged to the exclusion of all recreative activities. If not strong enough to indulge in the more vigorous sports of her classmates, Susan should at least be led to feel it incumbent upon herself to share in such activities as did not tax her strength too severely.

827