The Girl and Her Religion

Girl and Her Religion, The

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Title: The Girl and Her Religion
Author: Margaret Slattery
Release Date: August 13, 2005 [EBook #16520]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE GIRL AND HER RELIGION
BY MARGARET SLATTERY
THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY LUTHER H. CARY

Fifth Printing THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON

[Illustration: WHILE PACKING HER TRUNK SHE DREAMED OF
COLLEGE.]

FOREWORD
TO THOSE WHO READ THIS BOOK
It is not a technical book, it does not attempt philosophy. It does not
contain the solution of all girl problems. It is not a great book, it is
simple and concrete. It is a record of some things about which the girls
I have known have compelled me to think. I have but one request to
make of those who read it--that they also _think_--not of the book, not
of the author, but of the _girls_--for action is born of thought.
THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS PAGE THE GIRL I THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL 3 II THE
HANDICAPPED GIRL 9 III THE PRIVILEGED GIRL 19 IV THE
GIRL WHO IS EASILY LED 30 V THE GIRL WHO IS
MISUNDERSTOOD 41 VI THE INDIFFERENT GIRL 55 VII THE
GIRL WHO WORSHIPS THE TWIN IDOLS 68 VIII THE GIRL
WHO DRIFTS 82 IX THE GIRL WITH HIGH IDEALS 96 X THE
AVERAGE GIRL 107
HER RELIGION XI THE GIRL AND THE UNIVERSE 117 XII IN
THE HANDS OF A TRIAD 130 XIII THOU SHALT NOT 141 XIV
THOU SHALT 152 XV A MATTER OF CULTIVATION 162 XVI A
PLEA AND A PROMISE 183 XVII A PERSON NOT A FACT 195
XVIII THE GLORY OF THE CLIMAX 206

ILLUSTRATIONS

While packing her trunk she dreamed of college Frontispiece FACING
PAGE Unconscious of her handicaps she anticipates keenly life in the
new world 12
She was full of ambition and willing to work 22
She worships Pleasure and Fashion 68
Her heart is filled with a deep desire to serve 154
The future promises nothing and she has lost hope 198


PART I
The Girl

I
THE RIGHTS OF A GIRL
She has certain inalienable rights, regardless of race, color or social
state. When it has thought about her at all, society in general has
supposed, until recently, that in a free country, a glorious land of
opportunity, the girl has her rights--the right to work, the right to play,
the right to secure an education and to enter the professions, the right to
marry or to refuse, the right in short to do as she shall choose. And in a
sense and to the casual observer this is true. Our country gives to her
some rights which she can enjoy nowhere else in the world. But as one
learns to know her, little by little the stupendous fact is impressed upon
him that girlhood has been and is being denied its rights.
It is the right of every girl to be born into a community where the
sanitary conditions are such that she has at least a fair chance to enter

upon life without being physically handicapped at the start. But
hundreds of girls every year open their baby eyes in dark inner rooms
where the dim gas light steals what oxygen there may chance to be in
the heavy air, take their first steps in foul alleys, find their first toys in
garbage cans and gutters. They have been denied their rights at the start.
In a Christian land, they grow weak, anemic, yield to the white specter
and in a few years pass out of the unfair world to which they came, or
remain to fight out a miserable existence against terrific odds. They
make up an army of girls who have been denied their rights. And her
religion? What is it that religion may offer to her in compensation for
that which she has been denied?
It is the right of every girl to be born under conditions which will make
possible sufficient food and clothing for her natural growth and
development. But scores of little girls go shivering to school every
morning after a breakfast of bread and tea, they return numb with cold
after a dinner of more bread and tea and they go home to a supper of
the same