I have been spending the day with adolescence, surrounded by boys and girls in their teens and young men and women just outside. It is now the evening of Memorial Day, and I have spent most of the day at the popular pleasure resort just outside the city. My companion, a young woman just out of her teens, had taken her holiday to come to the normal school to arrange for entrance in the fall. She has worked hard for two years, saved her money, and now plans to take a full course at the school to fit herself to become an expert teacher in China. She wanted to spend the rest of the day with me and talk about it, and I took her to W. ——, that we might enjoy the out-of-doors. We sat in a secluded corner of the big open dining-room, and during dinner she talked of China’s need, of the great opportunity,—hurled facts about the darkness of China at me until I gazed at the animated encyclopÆdia in astonishment. Her face glowed with enthusiasm; it is a sweet face, girlish and eager, and I could but wonder as I looked at her how China’s need had gotten such a hold upon her.

While she seemed for a few moments lost in thought, my eyes wandered over the room crowded with youth. All sorts and conditions were there, but all young. It was Memorial Day, but they had not waited to see the short procession of those who still remain to us of the hundreds who went out with their lives in their hands at the country’s bidding. The procession and all it signifies meant little to them. They were jolly, happy, light-hearted, rough and very crude, and yet—they were just the ones who, if the country should call again, would answer; the boys promptly, willingly, offering their lives, the girls laying their hearts on the altar of their country’s need. But to-day was just a holiday. At the table near us was a group of four, none over seventeen. The discussion and final ordering of the dinner was most interesting. They talked over prices, too, with great frankness, “That’s too much,” and “we don’t need coffee, that will take ten cents off for each of us.” I have seldom seen four people enjoy a dinner as they did. The girls’ dresses manifested the effort to attain “the latest thing,” and the boys were not behind. When they left the dining-room and walked down toward the boat-house they tried to look so unconcerned! How they had saved for this day! This one little day! At every table were groups just as interesting. The grounds were crowded with other groups, laughing and shouting and joking. The jokes no one save themselves could appreciate. The skating rink was crowded—the dancing pavilion—the open air theater—every incoming trolley brought more intent upon having “a good time.” I forgot China until a direct question brought me back. Here she was,—my eager, intense, enthusiastic girl,—looking forward with joy to China with its crushing weight of ignorance, its impossible language and its almond-eyed people neither asking nor desiring to be helped! What has made the difference between her and those all about me? Before I could answer her question or my own, three automobiles passed, filled with laughing girls and boys, all in their teens. Their faces were different from those in the grove,—their laughter more musical,—the automobiles bore their country’s flag, the girls wore flowers. I knew some of the faces—it was a “house party,” and they were off for a “good time.”

Suddenly it surged over me that this was but one little spot in the great country—and the rush of the other thousands, the shop girls, clerks, the office girls, the students, all in search of a good time oppressed me, and before my mind hurried back to a Chinese kindergarten, my heart cried, “Oh, Lord, how shall the world play with real pleasure and profit?” Is this the way? I heard no answer. The problem is too big for me, yet I cannot let it alone, for the world must play, and always the most eager players are young,—and always the girl in her teens is the center of the game.

Man is social. He must have companionships and pleasures in common with his kind. Only when physically deficient, mentally deformed, abnormal, does he become anti-social. This is true all through life and especially true in adolescence when nature is most keenly conscious of elemental powers and passions.

It is true that the girl in her teens is often alone. Alone she dreams her day-dreams, writes her poems, floods her imagination with all the things that are to be. In common with all humanity she meets her deepest experiences alone. Yesterday a girl of nineteen tried to tell me of the happiness her engagement to a fine, strong man had brought to her. She said, “all that it means can’t be said.” Last week a girl of eighteen tried to tell out all the loneliness and crushing disappointment her mother’s death had brought, but she ended her appeal for help with the old cry, “no one can really help, I’ve just got to bear it.” Before the teens have passed so many girls learn that great joy and great sorrow must be met alone.

But for the common life of the every day, man lives with others. He can neither work alone nor play alone, and with adolescence comes the realization of it sweeping into the life. “The gang,” “our crowd,” “our set,” work and play together.

The girl who loves and seeks solitude continually is ill mentally, physically, or spiritually, and needs watchful, sympathetic care, which shall discover the cause of her morbidness and help her to escape from it.

Environment fixes largely the companions of the girl, and her place in the social scale predetermines to some extent how she shall play. If she is in a home where the family is closely related to the church in all departments of its active work and life, the church becomes her natural social center. Its entertainments, suppers, young people’s socials, etc., furnish the means for her amusement and the place where she may form friendships. If she is a working girl boarding in a strange city or living in a home in no way connected with the church, unless the Y.W.C.A. through the gymnasium or other classes reaches her, where shall she find her social center where she may enjoy the society of other young people, form friendships and have a good time? In summer the public parks answer that question. In winter, the skating rink, “the dancing party,” the moving picture show.

If the girl lives in a happy home surrounded by wealth, together with culture and refinement, her social life will be guided and guarded during her teens and she will be helped to have a good time. If she be that happiest of all girls, the one whose own home is the social center, where music, games and fun abound, and where friends are always welcome, she is safe. Such homes might solve the whole problem, but there are not enough.

When the teacher looks seriously at the social side of her girls in their teens and realizes the craving of the whole nature for companionship, laughter and fun, she finds it hard to say “Don’t” even to the things of which she does not personally approve, because she must meet the question clear and frank, “What can I do then?” That question has been answered, so far as the church is concerned, only here and there. Some splendid and successful attempts have been made that give us hope for the future.

Most Sunday-school teachers of girls in their teens have awakened recently to the fact that unless the demands of the social side be satisfied in a sane, healthful way, the girl’s spiritual nature suffers, and the mental and physical as well.

When once the teacher really sees it she can no longer be content to meet the interested members of her class just an hour on Sunday, to discuss the lesson of the day. The crowded parks, the trolleys, the “parties,” the call of the great demanding whirl of amusements from Sunday to Sunday, presses upon her soul. She learns how her girls spend the week end and the evenings and then she throws herself, her knowledge, her skill, her time, into the scales, hoping where she finds girls in the danger zone to turn the balance in favor of clean, safe, sane pleasure.

Any teacher willing to make a little investigation will be surprised to learn how many of the girls enjoying the kind of amusements which do not make for sound moral health, were at ten or twelve regular members of the Sunday-school, and how many still come occasionally.

My observation the past few years of the social side of the girl in her teens, and especially the girl who has left school, has made me feel that if the opportunity to choose came to me as to Solomon, I would rather have the knowledge and power to give the young people of to-day sane, safe amusement than anything else I know.

The social side of the girl reveals itself not only in the desire to have a good time, but in the deep and ardent friendships formed during the teen period.

While she enjoys to the full the society of the group, the girl in her teens invariably has a “dearest friend,” who shares her joys, sorrows and confidences. This tendency becomes especially evident at sixteen and becomes more marked at the latter part of the period.

These friendships may be the source of greatest blessings or may mean the lowering of the whole tone of moral life. Both mother and teacher need to observe carefully the formation of friendships and be sure to encourage only the helpful ones. Public school teachers of experience can all testify to the rapid changes in girls which so often follow the development of a deep friendship.

I remember a girl of sixteen, dreamy, imaginative, and so much interested in her boy companions that lessons, home interests, and everything else were sacrificed. What to do with her, and what interests to substitute, were questions that both mother and teacher failed to solve. At a most opportune time a “new girl” moved into the neighborhood and entered school. She was practical, attractive, a good scholar, greatly interested in outdoor athletics. Because they were neighbors, the two girls were thrown much together. The companionship deepened into friendship. Soon the dreamy sixteen-year-old was playing tennis on summer afternoons, and reading aloud in the hammock afterward to rest. When winter came she suddenly decided that school and study were worth while, brought up all her averages, and made up her mind to try for college. Skating and the gymnasium made her a new girl. And all this transformation, fortunately for her good, came naturally and very rapidly through the influence of her companion. It comes almost as quickly in the other direction. Nothing can be more helpful to the shy, timid, self-conscious girl than the companionship of one who will encourage her and help her take her place with others in the social life of which she is a part.

Some of the bitterest suffering known to girls in their teens comes because they are “left out” and must go “alone.” The misery of being left to oneself is registered in that familiar sentence, “Oh, I don’t want to go alone!” The girl in her teens needs a “chum,” a “best friend,” a companion, and anything that the teacher can do to aid in the formation of helpful friendships is worth while, for the friends loyal and true through the teen age are the ones who in later years, when the need is deeper and friendships are tested, stand by. That there should be some way and place in which, surrounded by a Christian environment that makes for righteousness, girls in their late teens and just outside, who have no homes, or homes only in name, can meet and learn to know young men of the right sort is evident to all who have even considered the matter.

When the Great Teacher was here no need escaped his notice. All that he taught and did was in response to need. Many of the teachers of to-day are earnestly asking how far they can follow him in this great principle of his life.

When as teachers, interested in what we call the deepest things in the girl’s life, we are sometimes impatient with her light-heartedness, with the giggles and boisterous fun and “silliness” of the early teens, and the social tactics and sophistries of the later period, let us remember that the natural, healthy girl is “whole.” She is body, mind and spirit, and all three together make her a social being. All three speak in the passion to enjoy,—to seek pleasure. And the teacher of girls in their teens is as truly in the service of the living God when she boards the trolley car and accompanies her girls to the lake for a picnic supper after a day of hard work or study as when teaching them on Sunday the splendid principles that governed Paul’s life. She just as truly serves, some cold, rainy, February afternoon as, with two of the girls she wants to know better, she cuts out red hearts to decorate the room for the valentine social to which the members of her class have each invited a girl not specially interested in the Sunday-school as when she talks over on Sunday, “Serve the Lord with gladness,” for on Sunday she is telling them how to serve and on Tuesday she is showing them how through her own action. And they understand and are more willing to listen as she strives to impress upon mind and heart the facts and ideals that shall keep them steady, pure and true amidst all the distractions and temptations of the world’s good time.

If the teacher once catches a glimpse of the significant fact that a girl can not play wrong and pray right, a new realization of the importance of the social side will stir her to action and send her out to seek help from all who are willing to aid in the solution of the world problem, of how to satisfy the social nature in ways that make for character.