Just what is wisest to give in return is our great problem.  The church must meet it and it needs help.

The time is ripe and more than ripe for the direct appeal to the home.  It should be made through every avenue and in every language.  It should be made through every newspaper and printed in every tongue—­“Responsibility belongs to the home.”  All sorts of homes must help in making the atmosphere in which a young girl must live, safe, free from poisons that mean suffering and in the long run death to the best things.

I happened one day in a smoke laden city upon a group of women in one of the residential districts who were meeting together to see if all the families for a certain number of blocks east and west would promise to use only hard coal in their homes.  One of the women, the mother of three young children, pictured vividly the difference it would make in the atmosphere their children must breathe and closed her appeal by saying, “But women, it means that we must all burn it.  The help one or two of us can give amounts to almost nothing.  Into each of our cellars the hard coal must go and each of us must insist upon using nothing else.  Then we shall have clean, pure air for our babies to breathe throughout all this section.”

She had stated the answer to the whole problem of bringing inspiration to our girls.  It will need every home and every church to keep the atmosphere clean and invigorating.

It may be that the girl herself is reading and thinking over this Plea and Promise.  If she is she will realize how earnestly we covet for her all the best things and how we long for wisdom to help her get them.  Perhaps she will think that she can do a great deal toward getting them for herself, and she can.  Let me recall to her mind one of the girls whom we find in almost every gymnasium class, whose pale face and stooping shoulders attract at once the instructor’s attention.  Let me remind her of the special exercises given that girl for chest development, the advice about food and the command, “Live with your windows open.  Let the air into your lungs.”  Again and again you will remember the instructor gave the command to the class, “Breathe.  Use your lungs!  Half of you use only two-thirds of your lung capacity!” And then by way of emphasis she contrasted her own chest expansion and yours, adding, “If you want health, take deep breaths.”

The Plea which I make to the girl herself is that she use, to the full capacity, her power to inhale those things that shall give inspiration for pure, helpful living.  Every girl has that power.  Some use only two-thirds of it, some one third, some have forgotten its existence.  If a girl wants to really live she must “breathe deep,” with her soul’s windows open wide to the atmosphere that will give her strength.  If she is obliged to live with those who do not think of these things,