The girl of high ideals is everywhere. Every school can claim her.
Despite teasing, sneers and laughter, she remains true to her ideals.
She is not a book-worm but she studies, she is not prudish but she is
high minded and pure, she has fun but it is wholesome and clean and
kind.
She is found in every shop, every department store is aware of her
presence. Honest, attentive, true, interested in her work, following
amidst many insidious temptations her own high ideals.
Every college knows her. She resists the petty sins of college life. She
banishes jealousy and self-assertion. Snobbishness she will not
tolerate. She seeks no honors save those fairly won. Keen, alert, pure
and true, capable of sacrifice and hard tasks, sympathetic with all
need, a lover of true sport and real fun she represents the college girl
of high ideals.
Every factory has her among its operatives. A good worker doing honest
work, refusing to allow the stain of coarse jests to touch her, or the
temptations which come with low wages and great fatigue to enter her
life. Again and again she has revealed her ideals in moments of disaster
and death. It is hard to find words to express one's admiration for the
factory girl as she holds to her high ideals.
Many a kitchen knows her. Neat, clean, honest, capable, happy in her
work, resisting all the temptations that come through loneliness and
deadly routine, she clings to her ideals with courage.
Every set in society knows her; turning her back upon temptations to
excess, vanity, pride, scorning all forms of gossip, neither listening
to, nor repeating the words that "they" say, she keeps her mind and
heart fixed upon the undimmed ideals she has set for herself.
Many a schoolroom and office know her, the girl who does her best work
though no one sees and none commend, refusing to lower her ideals in
obedience to subtile suggestions or definite temptations; a girl who
does what is expected of her and more, who puts her heart into her work
and glorifies it.
The girl, whatever her station in life, whatever her occupation, who has
kept her ideals high has the right to be happy. She can afford to be
light-hearted, to enjoy fun and frolic and to get the most out of
everything, for she need not spend days in regret, nor wet her pillow
with tears of remorse. Nothing in the world can make up for the loss of
a pure and high ideal. If girls could see the sad faces and know the
suffering hearts of the women who in girlhood forsook their ideals, they
would understand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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