The Project Gutenberg EBook of Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls, by
Mary Roberts Rinehart

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Title: Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls

Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart

Release Date: March 25, 2009 [EBook #28406]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Women Working 1800 - 1930)

_Why I Believe in Scouting for Girls_

By MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

[Illustration]

Series No. 10

GIRL SCOUTS NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
189 Lexington Avenue
New York City

Why I Believe in Scouting

_By Mary Roberts Rinehart_

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