There is another type of girl who drifts. She is explained by the
phrase, "aimlessly drifting about." She is the girl who does not know
where she is going. She has no objective. Often parents, teachers and
friends have neglected to help her centralize her thought upon one thing
which she desires to do and she has not seen for herself that while
trying to do everything one accomplishes nothing. Many times she is a
girl of varied talents and puts all her effort first upon this thing
then upon that but never works long enough to complete anything or learn
to do it well. In school she changes her courses just as often as it is
permitted, in business she changes her position never remaining long
enough in any one place to qualify for a better. If at home she drifts
from settlement work to domestic science, from domestic science to a
dancing club and the golf links. She gives herself to the current and
the wind and _drifts_. She needs an anchor. She needs the strong will of
another to steady her while she is developing her own. She needs a great
ideal to guide her and hold her with the magnetic power of some North
Star. She needs to have her ambition aroused and to be made to believe
that she, as truly as any one in the world has a "call to serve." She
needs to have great things expected and demanded of her.
The power which rescues the drifting girl is a power outside herself. It
may be a call from the bank of the stream which causes her to pick up
her oars and leave the current, at the call of danger, in answer to a
cry for help; in times of sorrow and illness, many a drifting girl has
come ashore and rendered noble service. Those who thought they knew her
looked on with unconcealed surprise and said to one another, "I didn't
think she had it in her." Yes, it was in her. There, undreamed of by
those who saw her drifting. The drifting girl has within her all the
possibilities. That is the pity of it. As she drifts she may lose oars,
chart and compass and in the stress of the storm that is bound to come
be carried out into the sea of darkness, or be wrecked upon the shoals
or sandbars that line the stream of life.
A wise teacher, awakened parents, a good friend, a live church, a great
book, these have the opportunity of pulling the girl out of the current,
and steadying her until she fastens her life to the Ideal which can hold
her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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