advice of her mother who has suffered much through inability to talk,
she holds imaginary conversations which often become real when she meets
people later. She makes a special effort to remember the names of those
whom she meets and some of the things in which they are especially
interested. She is learning to remember the names of books and their
authors and publishers, she takes special pains to remember worth while
magazine articles and last spring people appealed to her again and again
for information regarding the Balkan situation. She is making herself
an interesting companion and in a few years I believe all traces of the
awkward wooden silence will disappear.

In the long line of misunderstood girls, are many whose interests and
enthusiasms are altogether outside their immediate environment. There
are girls at college and sometimes at boarding-school who have seen a
larger world and have come to love the real things of life. They find it
very hard to waste the days in superficialities. They long to have life
mean more than a round of social events, and the family and friends
misunderstand. Some girls of this sort have solved the problem by
gaining consent to plan their own days. Some have never been able to
gain that consent and have gone on for years in unhappiness. Others have
learned to inject into the seemingly superficial some real things and
have found an outlet for the best that is in them through work for those
in need. One must feel real sympathy for the girl who, striving to be
her best, to live above the round of pettiness and selfish pleasure, is
met with disapproval and misunderstanding.

Many a girl is misunderstood by the one person in the world who ought to
understand her best--her mother. Perhaps more bitter tears are shed by
girls because their mothers do not understand than for any other reason.
The misunderstanding oftentimes is the result of temperament. It is