Certain it is that the physical side exists, and is to be reckoned with in the development of human life to the highest possible point. The more we know about the physical side, the more we stand in awe of ourselves, and the more we appreciate the wonderful machine with which we are to do our work in the world.
I saw recently two locomotives that taught me again what it all means. One had been in a wreck and lay pitched over on its side, its splendid power gone. Its size and its powerful strength made its ruin more pitiful, and its utter helplessness appealed strongly to all who looked at it. Near it on the second track, all hot and panting, ready and waiting to pull its heavy load up the steep grade, was a fellow engine, in full possession of its powers: how strong, how complete, how perfectly able to perform its task it seemed as it stood there on the track beside its helpless brother. For days I could not forget the picture, and when I looked into the faces of my girls in their teens all it suggested impressed me anew.
How I should like to have them fully equipped physically to meet the demands which life will bring to them! The girl in her teens has a physical side of tremendous significance and importance, for it is during these years that she develops her powers or wrecks them. It is her time of rapid growth, of severe tax upon every part of her physical being. It is during these years she meets her crises.
We have seen that early in her teens a girl begins to care "how she looks."
She should be encouraged to look well. She should dress carefully, which does not mean expenditure of much money, but does mean thought. She should be taught that dress means much, and physical condition even more.
But all this, some teachers may say, belongs in the home. It is the duty of the home to look after these things. Yes, it is true. And it is a cause for thanksgiving that in so many homes, sweet, patient, wise mothers watch over their girls and give them what they need. But every Sunday-school teacher of girls in their teens has at least one girl whose mother does not or can not help at the time when help is most needed. Some have had no training themselves and do not see the need; some are crushed by the multitude of burdens, some are careless, and some have no knowledge as to how to cope with the wilfulness of girls which sometimes appears in the years of adolescence. "The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," the great Teacher said once, and it is true to-day. Both the public school and the Sunday-school exist to cultivate all of good that appears in the girl's life, and develop what she lacks.