Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls

Girls are great idealists. No one familiar with the working of the girl mind can fail to recognize how quickly they respond to ideals. They dream dreams, not of success, but of happiness. They look up rather than out. But they are vague and uncertain, full of wistful yearnings that lead nowhere. Given a cause and a leader, and they will bring to it an almost pathetic eagerness, staunchness, loyalty, enthusiasm and unselfish effort. There comes a critical time in a girl's mental and spiritual life, when she is waiting impatiently for young womanhood. The things of her childhood have lost their interest. She has abandoned her dolls. The little boys she played with have deserted her, and found the girl-less associations of the 'teens. They have their clubs, their sports, their meeting places. But to the young girl there is nothing but that period of waiting. She is peculiarly isolated. Her family often finds her strange. She is moody and dreamy. She begins to spend an almost alarming amount of time and thought upon her appearance. The family says: "What in the world is the matter with Jane?" And her father suggests it is too much going to the moving pictures. But the truth is that Jane is idle. She does not belong, between babyhood and womanhood, anywhere in the social organization. She is active and romantic. Her days are a long waiting for maturity, and with maturity the fulfilment of her dreams, of love, of marriage, of motherhood. She haunts the movies because she finds there vicarious romance and vicarious adventure. The great out-doors is hers to play in—on the screen