s to be derived from it will
hold the attention. The main trouble is in the learning, which
requires unflagging energy and constant practice. An overmodest
beginner will make the mistake of playing only against her likewise
beginning friends; the result is that she takes a discouragingly long
time finding out how to use her racket properly and never gets a
chance to return a really good serve.

It is really just as well at some point in your practising to see some
well-trained athlete do the thing you are trying to learn.

A girl can accomplish a great deal with her brain as well as with her
muscles in athletics. Some one once remarked that he learned to swim
in winter and to skate in summer. He meant that after he had in its
proper season practised skill in the winter sport, his brain, during
the warm months, kept repeating to the muscles those directions until
by the next winter they had a very fair idea of what they had to do,
and responded more quickly and easily. It is rather consoling to think
you do not lose time, but rather progress, between seasons.

The girl who goes camping with a crowd of boys and girls realizes how
much depends on the mere strength of the boys; at the same time she
herself has an opportunity of showing not only her athletic
proficiency and nerve, but also her superior common sense. She will
really have to leave the heavy work of pitching the tents and chopping
the wood to the boys, but she cannot sit down and fold her hands
meanwhile. She can be collecting materials for the beds of balsam on
which they hope to sleep in comfort, or she may gather chips for the
fire, or she may be helping to unload the wagon or canoes in which
they have come. When the tents are pitched she has a woman's
prerogative of "putting the house in order," and during the time of
camping keeping it so.

If there is actually a case of nothing for her to do, far better for
her to sit down and keep quiet than to get in the way of the boys and
bother them. A young man who in his first season as a guide in the
Canadian woods took out a party of girls from a summer school on a
camping trip told me that he would never do it again, because they
gave him no relief from a continual rain of questions. A case where
zeal for knowledge outruns discretion.

After the tents are pitched and the fire made by the boys, it is
plainly up to the girls to get supper. Let us hope they have practised
cooking for some time before they wen