vulgar hides behind a mask, over every place which by its very nature
opens doors of temptation and lowers powers of resistance. The teachers
of religion, and all agencies for moral training and uplift, _because_
of the comparative helplessness of girlhood, have the right to teach by
every means at their command _thou shalt not_.

Some one must teach the growing girl that extravagance is sin; some one
must say _thou shalt not_ to her common faults of promising without
thought of the cost of keeping the promise, of exaggeration and
untruthfulness. Some one must help her see the utter folly of
snobbishness and false pride. In some way she must be taught the cruelty
and meanness of gossip, the results of a sharp tongue and a critical
spirit. She must be shown the sin of ingratitude and the curse of
jealousy and envy. In fact the old ten commandments are needed by the
girlhood of today as truly as they were needed by that great army of
people in the days of the youth of a race, when their great law giver
and leader strove to save them from the results of their own ignorance
and newly acquired liberty.

Who teaches _thou shalt not_ to the girl of today? Indirectly, a great
many people. Directly, clearly, definitely so that she understands and
is impressed, very few. The Sunday-school in a half-hour a week attempts
to do it, but the Sunday-school reaches a very small part of the
girlhood of our land, and its work with those whom it has reached is
often ineffective. It is at present engaged in a serious effort to make
its teachings more effective and far reaching. The public school is not
directly teaching the _thou shalt not_, for teaching it does not mean
saying it, in the form of a command. It does much indirect moral
teaching, which is invaluable. It is experimenting with direct moral
teaching and many of the experiments have shown highly gratifying