And now she came asking for a mirror! Her hair ribbons are always present and her hat securely fastened by hat pins of hammered brass. She spends a good deal of time in school “arranging” her hair. Sometimes spelling suffers, sometimes algebra. Before standing to recite, she carefully arranges her belt. Contrary to her previous custom, she rarely volunteers, although her scholarship is very good. If unable to give the correct answer, or when obliged to face the school, she blushes painfully. One day recently, when the class were reading “As You Like It,” she sat with a dreamy look upon her sweet face, far, far away from the eighth-grade class-room; could not find her place when called upon to read, and, although confused and ashamed, lost it again within ten minutes. What has happened to Edith, the child of a year ago? She has gone. The door has opened. Edith is thirteen. The door opened slowly, and those who knew her best were perhaps least conscious of the changes, so gradual had they been. But a new Edith is here. One by one the chief characteristics of the childhood of the race have been left behind, and the dawn of the new life has brought to her the dim consciousness of universal womanhood. Womanhood means many things, but always three—dreaming, longing, loving. All three have come to her, and though unconscious of their meaning, she feels their power. Edith has seen herself, is interested in herself, has become self-conscious, and for the next few years self will be the center and every act will be weighed and measured in relation to this new self. Fifty other girls, her friends and companions all just entering their teens, share the same feelings, and manifest development along the same general lines. More than one of those fifty mothers looks at her daughter growing so rapidly and awkwardly tall, and says, “I don’t know what to do with her, she has changed so.” And more than one teacher summons all her powers to active service as she realizes that for the next two years she is to instruct one of the most difficult of pupils, the girl who is neither child nor woman. But the awkward years of early adolescence, filled with the struggle to get adjusted to the new order of things, with dreams, with ardent worship of ideals embodied in teachers, parents, older girls, imaginary characters, quickly pass. If they have been years of careful training, if the eager, impetuous day-dreamer and castle-builder has been guarded and shielded, if she has been instructed by mother, teacher, or some wise sympathetic woman in all the knowledge that will help keep her safe and pure and fine, then she is ready for the wealth of emotion, the increase of the intellectual and spiritual power to be developed within her these next few years.