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) [Sidenote: 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 some 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.”