When she meets the hard things of life or the temptations of leisure a girl so taught and trained will have something to help her; and such a girl, as she enters college and takes up critical study of the Book, will have nothing to fear. The secret of the marvelous influence of the Old Testament on human life lies in three short words,—“And God said,” and the secret of the marvelous transforming power of the New Testament lies in one word, “Christ”—“Christ”—“Christ.” When the girl in her teens opens daily to read for herself what that Book has to say of the leadings of Jehovah and the teachings of Christ, she is on the road to safety,—therefore the work of every teacher is to help her to open it. CHAPTER IX—HER RELATION TO THE EVERYDAY The girl in her teens, although she is able now and then through her imagination to transfer herself to a land of day-dreams, where all she desires is hers, for the most part is obliged to live in the everyday, and often she finds it hard. But she is young—and one may always hope when in her teens. If she is ill, health may come in a few weeks, a month, a year at most. If she works hard, she may always hope for a “better place with more money,” or by and by, just in the future a little way, a happy home of her own where she will have everything she wants. If she is struggling for an education, the joy of what she will be able to do some day sustains her. If she is a care-free girl with no burdens, one whose parents give her every advantage and strive to make her girlhood happy, life is one great joy and the future an even more wonderful dream. But these girls, every one of them is obliged to live in the ordinary world, and we who realize it must so train them that when they meet it in reality they will be able to live happily. One reason why there is so much misery and unhappiness in home life to-day is because the girl in her teens is not trained to live. Even those who love her most say, “Oh, she’s young yet, there’s time enough.” Meantime habits are formed and when the “time” comes effective training is not possible. In spite of hopes, castles, day-dreams, most girls are destined to live amid the commonplaces of life, and unless we prepare them, many will fail to learn that “The trivial round, the common task Will furnish all we ought to ask; Room to deny ourselves, a road To bring us daily nearer God,” and so insure our happiness. The Sunday-school is limited of course in what it can do to guide the girl in the everyday, so many other agencies enter into her training, and yet we have seen that what we teach on Sunday must influence her on Wednesday as she settles some question, or we have not really helped her. As we try to plan how we may best help her to live, we ourselves meet the question, “What, after all, do we want her to be in this world of the everyday?”