It is a high average, yes, it is ideal.  But the fact that so many girls are seeking that ideal, that so many against fearful odds are pressing toward it, and that so many little by little are achieving it fills one with hope.  The fact that so many men and women who but a few years ago were not concerned with either the needs or rights of a girl are bending every energy to the task of setting her free from the things that burden her, hold her back and make her suffer, fills one with anticipation, for the things which touch the average girl are the things which concern all who have great hopes and dreams for the future of our land.

This chapter and all the chapters preceding are an appeal to the average girl and those who love her to summon all their strength and raise the standard of the average.

Let the average girl be the highest possible average, realizing the important place she holds in the working out of all problems of right, justice and public welfare and knowing that God must have had great faith in the power and possibility of the average girl else He would not have trusted so much to her keeping.

The world is grateful for the brilliant girl, for the gifted, the talented, the beautiful; but without the average girl it could not live.  God bless her and give us more and better.

PART II

Her Religion

XI

THE GIRL AND THE UNIVERSE

When Wonder suggests its first questions to her they are large questions.  They have to do with the Universe.  They are eternal and unanswerable questions.  They fall from baby lips but they baffle sages.  It may be on some bright summer morning that she stands amidst the daisies scarcely taller than they, listening intently to the words of wisdom which tell her that God made the daisies every one, and all the flowers and the butterflies and the cows in the meadows.  After a time of silence she puts her question, her clear eyes searching the face of her would-be teacher.  “Who made God?” she asks, and while the teacher wavers she repeats her question until some sort of answer comes.  That night when she is tucked into bed her mind returns by way of her evening prayer, to the subject of the morning.  She hurls another question, “Where is God?” Since she cannot be evaded she is so often told that God is everywhere and accepting it with all the faith of the literalist she begins her search for Him.  She strives to solve the mysterious fact that He can be everywhere and yet in all the places where one searches He is not to be found.