She was not compelled to return home late at night without proper escort
as countless girls are today. She never spent the evening on the
streets, nor was she obliged to join the great army of girls who today
live alone in boarding houses in great cities, suffering from
discomforts and desperate loneliness. Her parents were more careful than
the majority of parents today and she knew what _protection_ meant.

It is because these things are so that one feels like giving added
praise to the girls who today _are_ girls of high ideals, who refuse to
let the carelessness of the times in which they live gain entrance to
their hearts to tarnish those ideals.

A short distance up the shore as I write I can hear the roar of the tide
as it rushes into the very center of a great rock of granite. The
geologist can find in that mass of rock the tiny crevice where the water
first gained entrance. It has split it asunder because it was able to
gain entrance through a little crack and each day sent in its drops of
water where now with that roar rushes the tide. Farther along the shore
is a solid block of granite. Its face is polished smooth by the dashing
waves. There is not a crack in it, not a tiny crevice. It presents its
splendid, shining surface to the great sea but offers it no opportunity
for entrance.

One cannot help wishing with all his soul that we may have more and more
girls who are like that bit of solid granite, strongly resisting those
things that seek a tiny crevice by which to enter. For we have so many
who through some weak spot have let the tide of evil in and slowly it
has done its work until now the once strong and fine ideals lie broken
and beaten by the waves.