“This little book is born of a desire to help and encourage our girls who are struggling with the problems that come up in teens,” Mabel Hale writes in the foreword to Beautiful Girlhood. “Youth has its problems, its heartaches, and disappointments. It is not always a smooth path to the perfection of womanhood.” Ya got that right, Mabel. With chapters titled “The Strength of Obedience” and “The Girl Who Can Be Trusted,” Hale’s book certainly has helped me understand my teens ~ so what if I’m reading it twenty years too late?
1922: A Sunny Disposition
Once I looked upon the face of a dear little boy whose bright eyes and sunny smiles cheered my heart. I asked him what his name might be, and he answered, ‘Papa calls me Sunshine John.’ Then I knew that the merry smile I saw was, as I thought, an index to the sunny little heart. Any home is blest if it has a sunshine-maker.
Every girl owes it to herself and to her associates to be sunny. A happy girlhood is so beautiful that it can not afford to be spoiled by needless frowns and pouts. There are clouds enough in life without making them out of temper. A girl who is full of smiles and sunshine is a fountain of joy to all who know her. The world has enough of tears and sorrow at best, and her sweet, smiling face can scatter untold clouds. Could a girl ask for a better calling than that of a joy-maker for all about her?
Every girl must meet her share of bumps in life. If they do not come soon they must come late. It is impossible that she should pass through life in the sunshine all the time. She must have her share of shadow. She can not escape it. But it is not the deep shadows that generally cloud a girl’s life, and make her unhappy and sullen. It is the little things, insignificant in themselves, and which could have been passed by with hardly a thought if resisted one by one, that irritate the temper and mar the happiness. Every day our girl will meet with circumstances in which she has her choice between frowning and sending back a stinging retort, or smiling and passing them by with a kind word. If she can pass these little bumps and keep sweet, then she has mastered the art of being sunny.
Source: Hale, Mabel. Beautiful Girlhood. Anderson, Ill.: [Gospel Trumpet Co.?], 1922.
~ pp. 56-57 ~