When one observes carefully any large cosmopolitan group of young
women, she sees some with hard faces, some marked by suffering, many
marked by selfishness and fretfulness and many more showing
dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and her mind goes back involuntarily to
the fairy story with the mirror which showed "the girl you meant to be."
The contrast between what many a girl meant to be and what she is,
reveals a real tragedy.

Many a girl drifts through life always meaning to do--to be, yet missing
the joy of accomplishment because she does not summon her will to her
aid, and often because friends are too lenient and parents too
thoughtless to make her see to what failure and unhappiness, meaning to
do and never doing will invariably lead one. If a girl who some day
"means to" should read this chapter let her seize at once the only life
line which can ever save her. It is made up of three short words which
are relentless, but if she obeys they will prove her salvation. _Do it
now_, they read and for the girl who "intends to," there is no other way
of escape.

There is another type of girl who drifts. She is explained by the
phrase, "aimlessly drifting about." She is the girl who does not know
where she is going. She has no objective. Often parents, teachers and
friends have neglected to help her centralize her thought upon one thing
which she desires to do and she has not seen for herself that while
trying to do everything one accomplishes nothing. Many times she is a
girl of varied talents and puts all her effort first upon this thing
then upon that but never works long enough to complete anything or learn
to do it well. In school she changes her courses just as often as it is
permitted, in business she changes her position never remaining long