=The independent girl.=--Parents should furnish their daughter with remunerative labor, or they should see that she is fitted for some position that will enable her to be independent. The independent girl is no more likely to fall than the idle girl at home. The independent girl who gets out into the world with her brother, shoulders the same burdens, masters the same difficulties, fights the same battles, acquires a poise and dignity, a freedom of action and speech, a knowledge of business and economy that give her an attractiveness that the idle fashion-plate girl on the bargain counter of the marriage market cannot compete with. This class of girls do not have to marry the first chance that comes around in order to have a home. =Parents too anxious to get their girls married.=--The financial burden of supporting from two to four idle girls is no small item. Many parents are anxious to get them married as soon as possible. The girls soon find it out. When ten years old, such girls are making goo-goo eyes at the boys; when eleven, they are passing notes to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the schoolroom; when twelve, they are desperately in love; when thirteen and fourteen, they have their mother’s consent to marry; when fifteen, they are in the divorce courts, and three months later they have their second husbands. One of the St. Louis dailies, over one year ago, had a notice of two “runaways.” One girl was twelve and the other thirteen. When overtaken by their fathers, brought back home and locked up in a room, to prevent a second attempt, one admitted to a reporter that up to that time she had not learned that Santa Claus was not a real being and the other sent for her dolls to play with. =Another case.=--In one town in which I lectured I was told of a mother who accompanied her thirteen-year-old-daughter and an eighteen-year-old boy to the county clerk’s office and gave her consent to her daughter’s marriage. To the clerk’s question, “Don’t you think your daughter rather young to be married?” she replied. “Gee, I got married when I was thirteen and my oldest daughter got married when she was fourteen.” Didn’t she need the protection of an asylum? =A woman in Arkansas.=--In Arkansas, you know what does not happen anywhere else sometimes happens in that state. I found a woman who ran away to get married when she was thirteen, had been married three times, had three divorced husbands, three families of children, aggregating twelve in number; was still a young woman and trying to get married the fourth time. That was courtship, marriage and divorce with a vengeance!