leaders had brought her. It troubled her conscience and she cried on the
way home from school, but her companions laughed at her, told her she
was "all right," and had stood by them splendidly. They made her feel
heroic and she dried her eyes and stifled her desire to tell her mother.
Before the year was over the child had entirely changed. Her studies
suffered, she seemed to lose her ambition, her naturalness and
spontaneity vanished. Her mother began to discover increasing
untruthfulness. One day, toward the close of the school year, the child
asked to wear her best dress to school, saying there was to be an
entertainment. There was no entertainment. Instead there was a party at
the home of one of the girls of whom her mother disapproved. The party
began later than they had planned and it was nearly six before the child
reached home. She found her mother greatly troubled and said quite
glibly that she had stayed after school to help the teacher. Next day
the mother called at the school to remonstrate with the teacher for
keeping the child so often and so late to "help" her. Then the whole
truth came out and the mother was dismayed. She felt that the matter was
so serious that she must remove her daughter at once from her companions
and before school opened in the fall the family had moved back to their
former neighborhood and the parents were permitted to send the little
girl to another school where new associates were carefully chosen.
Before she left that grammar school she had recovered her frank, sweet
spirit, her interest in her studies returned, and surrounded by a group
of fine boys and girls she went through the high school with the love
and respect of teachers and companions.

This child is the type of many, who as early as ten years and younger,
are so easily led that their natural tendencies toward good are wholly
transformed by association with evil companions whose strong personality
and power of leadership can so easily turn the weak wills into the wrong