Susie.”
Several months later Miss Bell and Miss Lane called again on Dr. Barrett.
“Have you come with another problem?” asked the doctor.
“No, we have come to report progress and to learn, if possible, just how it has come about. There has been a wonderful change in the school. The girls and boys are no less friendly, but it is without that silly sentimentality which was so annoying. They are now just real good comrades, and seem to help each other in being orderly, polite, and studious. How did you do it?”
“Perhaps all credit is not due to me, but I will say that I gave Carl the instruction I thought he needed and he has passed the good word along. Several of the boys have met with me once a month to study concerning themselves, and I can see that they have grown to have a reverence for themselves and a deep regard for all womanhood. Carl was in 22 last evening, and said, ‘Dr. Barrett, I am so glad Miss Bell sent me with that note to you, for your talk to me that night has changed my whole life, I know. I feel so much cleaner all through, and have so much more respect for myself. And I think so differently of girls and women, and especially of my mother, and I realize as I never did before how important a thing it is to be almost a man.’”
A GATEWAY AND A GIFT.
Three gateways span the path of earthly existence: one at the entrance which we call the gate of birth; one at the close which we call the gate of death, and one at the entrance to the wondrous Land of the Teens, which we call the gate of manhood or of womanhood. At each of these gates a wonderful gift is presented to each individual. At the gate of birth it is the gift of earthly life, at death it is the gift of continued life, and at the gate which opens into the Land of the Teens it is the gift of creative life. You see that each gift is of life.
The path of earthly life, beginning at the gateway of birth, passes through the sunny meadow-land of Childhood, and also through a strange, mysterious land to which we have referred as the Land of the Teens, before reaching the Heights of Maturity. This Land of the Teens is peculiar in that the inhabitants are neither children nor adults, and yet, with the inexperience of children, they have many of the desires and emotions of grown-up people. This constitutes an element of great danger, while 23 another source of danger is the fact that adequate guidance is not always given in this transition period, or, if proffered, is proudly rejected by those who think that being in their “teens” makes them wise above that which is written.