Some of the most loyal, responsive and successful teachers of pupils from nine to twelve, I have found in the boys and girls of the later teens. While they lack mature judgment and discretion, they have enthusiasm and desire to succeed in any undertaking. If the Sunday-school is constantly training such helpers as assistants, and testing them as substitutes, then the changes that are bound to come in the teaching force of any Sunday-school are not so disastrous, for some one will be ready to supply the need. As has been hinted in previous studies, the Sunday-school should lend valuable assistance in making the church a social center for the young people who need it. To be of real vital interest to the girl, the Sunday-school must touch her everyday life. It does that through the social side of its work. The organized class giving socials, entertainments, enjoying lectures and music, picnics, trolley parties, skating or camping has a decided influence for good on all the members. I know of one such organized class of girls eighteen and nineteen years old which met three times a month for an entire year. They met one week “for fun,” the next to “go somewhere,” or “to hear a talk,” or “to sew and read, and talk if we want to,” and the third for a “sing” to which they invited members of the boys’ classes. All these meetings were popular, well attended, and have meant a strong united class with a splendid spirit. The girl in her teens needs the Sunday-school because of the help and uplift which its teachings are bound to bring to her. Even if she belongs to a class in its early teens which is given over to the giggles, to wandering thoughts, to all sorts of asides in more or less noticeable whispers, to the continual admixtures of the Bible lessons and the events of the week just passed or to come,—even though as is often the case with the American girl, she is thoughtless enough to forget to be either reverent or courteous, still it pays for her to come. She gets something,—often more than we think. And the Sunday-school needs the girl in her teens. It needs her devotion, her enthusiasm and eagerness, her close touch with both the real and ideal in life, that it may keep its balance, stay in the real world of need, and not walk far afield by paths of theory. The Sunday-school has awakened to its need of the girl, and now at its door lies the task of making her feel more and more her need of it. CHAPTER VII—HER RELATION TO THE CHURCH