If the girl in her teens grown to womanhood is to be comfortable to
live with she must be trained to be kind. Kindness is born in
unselfishness, and if we expect her to be unselfish, the days of her
teens must be her training days. She must be carefully guarded from
daily association with women who speak cynically of life, and shielded
from close contact with those whose conversation is invariably the
criticism of their neighbors. She must be led to let her heart
speak—the heart is rarely unjust and seldom unkind. Her thoughts must
be continually turned, as were those of Frances Willard and Alice
Freeman Palmer, toward her neighbors in need, until a world-sympathy
is born in her, and the joy of helping makes her keen to help. The
girl to whose lips almost involuntarily spring the words “Let me help
you” will not find it so easy to utter the cutting word or the phrase
that leaves a sting. A real interest in “the other girl” will tend to
make her unselfish.
If she is comfortable to live with she must be thoughtful.
Thoughtfulness also has its birth in unselfishness. The girl wrapped
up in thoughts of herself has little time to be concerned with others,
and demands invariably that she be the center of the circle. She does
not make others comfortable and is not good to live with.
The girl who is good to live with in the world of the everyday, shares
her joys and pleasures with the family. How many times I have seen a
tired mother forget her cares listening to the recital of her
daughter’s “good times”! Her petty little annoyances, her
disappointments, she keeps to herself.
After all, when we sum up the qualities of the girl in her teens which
endear her to every one, and make her good to live with, we can put
them under the one word unselfish. If she is this, then she will apply
herself to her studies; she will remember her mother’s burdens and not
add to them; she will think of all she owes to her father and show her
gratitude to him; she will be a helpful friend to the boys and girls
with whom she associates, and she will have a good time, as the
unselfish girl invariably does. By frequent illustrations taken from
life, the Sunday-school teacher may hope to make her see how true
these things are. An absolutely unselfish girl may be, as those in
their teens say she is, “impossible,” but the impossible can be made
wonderfully attractive by the teacher who can picture the girl in her
teens at her best.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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