A Girl’s Temptation by Emma F. A. Drake

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 22, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 37.

A Girl’s Temptation

By Emma F. A. Drake

By Emma F. A. Drake, M. D.

MANY young girls in their love for what they call a good time are led down into the forbidden way, and before they are hardly aware of it they awake to find that there is only a step to ruin. “It was only for fun, and I did not think it was wrong,” many a young girl says too late for her good.

The books you read are shaping your life and thought, and for this reason you must be very wise in your choice. Books that make you want to be better, and that point you the way, are the only safe ones. Books that deal with a questionable side of life, and that make you desire what you should not have, and that give you mistaken notions of life, must be carefully avoided if you would not get on dangerous ground.

Your love of dress may be a snare to you. If you have not a wise mother to warn and guide you, this may be one great influence which leads you downward. Many of our girls in business places are assailed in this way, by a gentleman friend (but an enemy in the guise of friend) who makes fine presents in return for liberties which no self-respecting girl can grant, and which lead to the greatest liberties when once a girl is under his power.

Among your own set there are those whom you should shun, as you would the most evil thing. You know the reputation of these men; it is not good, but they are attractive and captivating to a class of girls who are innocent of their devices, and they easily engage the affections of the unsuspecting. Very pleasant attentions are shown you, and you are led step by step away from your highest ideals, until things that once seemed wrong and far from the path which you would tread are covered with a false attractiveness. Cherish your high ideals, dear girls, for they are your beacons, and if lowered will inevitably lead you downward.

In your own life of purity you have a double responsibility, and, considering this, there is a doubly high incentive to choose only those things in your daily life that will fit you for leadership among your companions.—Purity League.