Chapter 4 THE GIRL WHO IS EASILY LED

She is a chameleon sort of girl but she is not rare. So often she is sweet and lovable. Almost without exception she is obliging, a jolly companion, fearless and frank. One often finds her a girl of talent and natural ability. She is the very opposite of the indifferent girl for she responds to everything. The girl she will finally become depends upon the companions whose lead she follows. Her safety lies in the establishment of the habit of going in the right way. She is the girl who most needs care and guardianship.

So much depends upon her choice of friends that parents and teachers must be wise for her.

A little ten-year-old, in whom all her teachers were interested because of her versatility and quick response to every interest, moved into a new neighborhood. Some weeks later because of her ability to learn rapidly she was put into a higher grade. Her new home and new classmates in a short time entirely changed the character of her environment. Before long the girl herself began to show the result of the change. She had always been too much interested in her studies to waste time or disobey the school rules. Following the leadership of some of the newly made friends she entered into all the little conspiracies of a group of girls and boys who made things hard for the teacher, a rather weak disciplinarian. One day, the girl hitherto perfectly honest, told a lie to get out of the trouble into which the following of the new leaders had brought her. It troubled her conscience and she cried on the way home from school, but her companions laughed at her, told her she was "all right," and had stood by them splendidly. They made her feel heroic and she dried her eyes and stifled her desire to tell her mother. Before the year was over the child had entirely changed. Her studies suffered, she seemed to lose her ambition, her naturalness and spontaneity vanished. Her mother began to discover increasing untruthfulness. One day, toward the close of the school year, the child asked to wear her best dress to school, saying there was to be an entertainment. There was no entertainment. Instead there was a party at the home of one of the girls of whom her mother disapproved. The party began later than they had planned and it was nearly six before the child reached home. She found her mother greatly troubled and said quite glibly that she had stayed after school to help the teacher. Next day the mother called at the school to remonstrate with the teacher for keeping the child so often and so late to "help" her. Then the whole truth came out and the mother was dismayed. She felt that the matter was so serious that she must remove her daughter at once from her companions and before school opened in the fall the family had moved back to their former neighborhood and the parents were permitted to send the little girl to another school where new associates were carefully chosen. Before she left that grammar school she had recovered her frank, sweet spirit, her interest in her studies returned, and surrounded by a group of fine boys and girls she went through the high school with the love and respect of teachers and companions.

This child is the type of many, who as early as ten years and younger, are so easily led that their natural tendencies toward good are wholly transformed by association with evil companions whose strong personality and power of leadership can so easily turn the weak wills into the wrong pathway.

Parents and teachers cannot be too careful of the companions of a girl of vacillating, easy-going, versatile temperament, for they may ruin or make her.

When Leonora moved from the great manufacturing city, which had been her home for fourteen years, to the home of her aunt, in a quiet suburb, where the children attending the high school were from homes of real culture and refinement, she was disconsolate. Voices, language, games, manner of recitation, behavior on the school grounds and street, perplexed her. She seemed lost in her new environment. She had never been a leader but had followed with all her heart. Her playground had been the street. She had enjoyed boisterous good times, had patronized moving pictures of every sort, had entered into the mischief of "the crowd" always close to the leader. In a pathetic letter to one of her chums she said that at the very first opportunity she should run away and be with them all again. She characterized the beautiful suburb with its neatly kept lawns and pretty homes as "a dead old hole" from which she could not wait to escape. Still, her aunt's home, the new wardrobe containing the lovely dresses, becoming hats and coats, for which she had always longed, tempted her to remain. One day, early in October, her classmates made the discovery that she could sing. She had quite a remarkable voice for a girl of her age. The teacher of music became her interested friend and found she could play unusually well, though mostly "by ear." The leader among the girls who "adored" any one who could sing adopted Leonora as her special friend. The new wardrobe added greatly to her attractiveness, and her aunt's social position opened many doors for her. Her new friend's mother was pleased with her daughter's choice of a companion despite the lack of good breeding and lapses in English.

Leonora became the obedient and devoted follower of the new girl friend and the influence of the music teacher was indeed remarkable. Almost as by magic Leonora dropped the coarse slang, loud talking and shouting of her companions, who in the city had been termed "wild" and adopted the ways of the new leader. At the end of two years it would have been quite impossible to recognize in the pretty, interesting, well-mannered girl of sixteen, who sang so sweetly, the uncultured, ill-mannered, slangy girl of fourteen.

Leonora was so easily led that it was not a difficult task or a great accomplishment to have so transformed her. If she remains until she is eighteen or twenty in her present environment, the chances are that the good friend, Habit, will have determined the way that she shall go. If she should now drop back into the old street, the old companionship, the place which until her father's death he had tried with her help to make a home, the chances are the old voice and manner, the old slang and old interests would return.

For a girl of Leonora's type the impress of the right environment, the guidance of the right hand, means everything. To discover such girls, to open the way for the working of new friendships, which shall furnish new leadership for them, is a fine task and a great pleasure for the lovers of girlhood.

But so impossible is the task of attempting, through the individual, to touch the great mass of girls who are easily led, that one can work effectually only through the individual effort plus the law. It must be made "to go hard" with those who, for selfish ends and financial profit, plan to take advantage of the weak will and trusting, unsuspecting mind of the girl who is easily led.

Most of the girls in their teens, who are walking in evil ways, are there because they have followed friends and companions. There are girls who have blazed the way to paths of evil for themselves, but they are comparatively few. Any court, or school for delinquent girls, which contains a sympathetic man or woman to whom the whole truth may be poured out, will testify that somebody led the way. When allowance is made for the tendency to lay the blame upon other shoulders, the facts bear out the testimony that there has been a leader. The girls who by nature are weak of will, and have had no training which could tend to strengthen or develop that will, must be protected, and that protection must be furnished by the community. It may be furnished by putting the welfare teacher into the school; by making the street on which so many girls find companionship as safe as possible; by driving professional leaders of the unsuspecting and easily led from all places of recreation and amusement; by helping parents, especially those parents, who, themselves born across the sea are attempting to bring up daughters in the new land, to see and understand the dangers; and by making it a real crime to lead the easily led astray.

But this is not enough. Perhaps the greatest steps toward the safe-guarding of the easily led were taken when the carefully supervised public playground and the school gardens were started and the women police were sent out into the streets of cities.

A strong, wise, sane woman who is neither a prude nor a crank can do more toward preventing the first steps into forbidden ways than those interested in great city problems have yet dreamed. The day will come when these women will make the arm of the law an efficient friend of the weak and unprotected girl and give all the positive, helpful agencies an opportunity to strengthen her against temptation.

I shall never forget my visit that Sunday afternoon to a detention school for delinquent girls. Over in the corner of the room where the afternoon service was to be held was the piano, the orchestra, made up of members of the school, was gathering. There was a cornetist, two or three violins followed, then a banjo and guitar. The service that day was to be a great event, for the wonderful woman in charge of that school who had done away with the cells, taken down the great spiked iron fence and planted flowers in its stead had persuaded board, committee and municipality to permit her to follow out the one great desire of her heart. The girls were to wear on Sundays and other dress occasions white Peter Thompson suits, big bows of ribbon in their hair and shining, well-fitted shoes.

Soon she entered the room. One could hardly take her eyes from that sweet, sympathetic, calm, face. A glance told one she might trust her with her soul's secrets without fear and might tell her anything and she would understand. After her came the girls and quietly, with an attractive self-consciousness because of their new glory raiment, they took their seats. Who could fail to forgive them if they fingered lovingly the great soft silk Peter Thompson ties and patted the bows on their hair. Some of them seemed scarcely more than children though some were in their later teens. No one of the group present that afternoon will ever forget how they sang, nor how they listened with eager responsive faces. No one can tell what new hopes and ambitions were born as they sat in their new finery, some of them for the first time in their lives becomingly dressed.

After the service they filed out, put on their long checked aprons and got supper. We saw the beds in the wards where all the new comers must sleep, then the smaller rooms with six and four beds, the still smaller with two and the honor rooms which a girl might occupy alone and might arrange as she chose. There were flowers in all the single rooms and pictures on the walls.

It almost seemed as we walked along the edge of the drive over the walk the girls had laid, that we were leaving a boarding school where girls were being taught household economics and the arts and crafts.

The woman who had wrought the miracle which had been wrought in that school stood at the end of the drive as we left and in response to the exclamation, "It seems impossible that these girls could ever have been guilty of the deeds the records show!" she answered, "These girls are not vicious. It is after all a question of leadership and they followed the wrong leaders." She paused a moment, looked back at the buildings, and then said softly, "God pity the girl who is easily led." And in our hearts we echoed her prayer.

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