But if not—if the earliest years have been filled with questions for which no satisfactory answers were given, if great mysteries that puzzle are solved for her only by what schoolmates, patent medicine advertisements, and imagination can teach, then she does not have a fair chance. She is not well equipped for life, and if in some moment of trial which we fondly dream will never, never come to _her_, to others perhaps, but not to _her_, she is overwhelmed, then we who have left her unguarded are to blame. If at thirteen she was awkward and sometimes disagreeable, at sixteen we forget all about it, for now she is charming. The floodtide of life is upon her,—it is June, and all the world is her lover. To be alive is glorious; she shows it in all that she says and does. She laughs at everything and at nothing, and she dearly loves “a good time.” She makes use of all the adjectives in her mother tongue, and yet they are not enough to express all that she feels. Superlatives abound, and a simple pronoun, third person, singular number, masculine gender, is introduced so often into her conversation with her girl friends that it reveals at least one prominent “line of interest.” But she is a dreamer still of new, deeper dreams in which self plays a large part, but a different and more altruistic one; and the longings that dawned on her soul with adolescence have grown in power. She not only longs for the concrete hats and gowns and beautiful things, to sing and play, to be admired, to be popular, but she longs to be good and to do good. Now, when all her powers have awakened, obeying instincts of her womanhood, she is ready to give herself in loving service to some great cause, to serve the _world_. All teachers of English composition can testify to the desire to serve which stands out so clearly in the essay work of girls at this period. Hazel is a type of hundreds. She attended a lecture a while ago and saw pictures of the tenements; the crowded conditions, wretched poverty and suffering children stirred her soul. Every composition since has been a record of her dreams and longings. In every written sketch or story a wretched child of the tenements appears. A girl of means, “about sixteen years of age,” with plenty of spending money, seeks out the child, often crippled or blind, gives it food, clothing, a wheel chair, or takes it to a great physician who makes it well. Sometimes the heroine finds work for father and mother, and they move to a cottage in the country and are happy. Always in the story misery is relieved and hearts are made glad. Always the heroine is self-sacrificing and those helped are touched with deepest gratitude. In the last story, “Little Elsie sat comfortably back in her wheel chair too happy even to move it about. Her mother tried to find words to express her gratitude, but could only murmur her thanks. The child looked up into the face of her kind friend with a celestial smile that paid for all the sacrifice.”