“What does the girl in her teens need?” has been asked these past few years, by fathers, mothers, and teachers of girls, with increasing desire to find a real answer. As yet, not enough thoughtful people have even attempted to meet the question to make us sure that we have a safe and universal answer. Yet we may be reasonably sure of a few things. She needs love. But, comes the reply, we do love her. From the time when she “lengthens” her dresses and “does up” her hair, to twenty when we greet her as an equal and consult her about all things, we _love_ her. Who could help it? But she needs _intelligent_ love, which is really sympathetic understanding and keen appreciation wisely expressed. And she needs, from thirteen to twenty, to be taught two things: to _work_ and to _play_. The girl in her teens needs to be helped to realize her dreams in action. _She_ has the dreams, the hopes, desires and longings. _We_ must furnish the opportunity to work them out into reality. Real, healthful, natural enthusiasms for all phases of life, she can furnish if she be a normally developed girl. The opportunity to express that enthusiastic abundance of life _legitimately_ is ours to supply. It sometimes seems as if Shakespeare must have been thinking of the adolescent period of life when he said: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.” The teen age is the period where the battle for an honest, clean, pure, righteous type of manhood and womanhood must be waged and won. Having realized this, it now remains for us to bend all our energies and summon all our skill to meet the task. CHAPTER II—THE PHYSICAL SIDE That mankind has a spiritual, mental and _physical_ side to his nature has been acknowledged for many centuries. That they are of equal importance has been accepted but for a comparatively short time. Time was when the spiritual nature was developed, the mental side cultivated, and the physical scorned and abused. The pale face and emaciated form were indications of the pure heart. The starved body meant the well nourished soul. When men were most deeply concerned with the future beyond the grave, and this life was but a penance, a period to be endured, a terrible battle to win, having little joy, and almost no pleasure not labeled _wicked_, it was natural that they should treat with a measure of scorn or ignore altogether the physical body in which dwelt so much of evil. But when man realized that eternity begins here and now, he turned his thoughts to the present welfare of his fellows, and the physical side assumed a new importance.