The Girl and Her Religion   By: Margaret Slattery

BY MARGARET SLATTERY

THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY LUTHER H. CARY

Fifth Printing

THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON

[Illustration: WHILE PACKING HER TRUNK SHE DREAMED OF COLLEGE.]

FOREWORD

TO THOSE WHO READ THIS BOOK

It is not a technical book, it does not attempt philosophy. It does not contain the solution of all girl problems. It is not a great book, it is simple and concrete. It is a record of some things about which the girls I have known have compelled me to think. I have but one request to make of those who read it that they also think not of the book, not of the author, but of the girls for action is born of thought.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS PAGE THE GIRL I THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL 3 II THE HANDICAPPED GIRL 9 III THE PRIVILEGED GIRL 19 IV THE GIRL WHO IS EASILY LED 30 V THE GIRL WHO IS MISUNDERSTOOD 41 VI THE INDIFFERENT GIRL 55 VII THE GIRL WHO WORSHIPS THE TWIN IDOLS 68 VIII THE GIRL WHO DRIFTS 82 IX THE GIRL WITH HIGH IDEALS 96 X THE AVERAGE GIRL 107

HER RELIGION XI THE GIRL AND THE UNIVERSE 117 XII IN THE HANDS OF A TRIAD 130 XIII THOU SHALT NOT 141 XIV THOU SHALT 152 XV A MATTER OF CULTIVATION 162 XVI A PLEA AND A PROMISE 183 XVII A PERSON NOT A FACT 195 XVIII THE GLORY OF THE CLIMAX 206

ILLUSTRATIONS

While packing her trunk she dreamed of college Frontispiece

FACING PAGE Unconscious of her handicaps she anticipates keenly life in the new world 12

She was full of ambition and willing to work 22

She worships Pleasure and Fashion 68

Her heart is filled with a deep desire to serve 154

The future promises nothing and she has lost hope 198

PART I

The Girl

I

THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL

She has certain inalienable rights, regardless of race, color or social state. When it has thought about her at all, society in general has supposed, until recently, that in a free country, a glorious land of opportunity, the girl has her rights the right to work, the right to play, the right to secure an education and to enter the professions, the right to marry or to refuse, the right in short to do as she shall choose. And in a sense and to the casual observer this is true. Our country gives to her some rights which she can enjoy nowhere else in the world. But as one learns to know her, little by little the stupendous fact is impressed upon him that girlhood has been and is being denied its rights .

It is the right of every girl to be born into a community where the sanitary conditions are such that she has at least a fair chance to enter upon life without being physically handicapped at the start. But hundreds of girls every year open their baby eyes in dark inner rooms where the dim gas light steals what oxygen there may chance to be in the heavy air, take their first steps in foul alleys, find their first toys in garbage cans and gutters. They have been denied their rights at the start. In a Christian land, they grow weak, anemic, yield to the white specter and in a few years pass out of the unfair world to which they came, or remain to fight out a miserable existence against terrific odds. They make up an army of girls who have been denied their rights. And her religion? What is it that religion may offer to her in compensation for that which she has been denied?