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In spite of being blind and deaf, Helen Keller insisted on her right to a normal girlhood and a good education. Every girl will want to read this sympathetic editorial by one of the truly remarkable women of the age.

By Helen Keller

SOME people are horrified by the rebellion of the modern girl against authority and tradition. Countless editorials are written for her correction, the pulpit rings with protests; but there is much to be said for the modern girl. Life is self-expression, and each new generation must express itself in its own way, and that is precisely what the modern girl is doing. Everything would be right with her if she were not quite so inclined to disport herself like a goddess exempt from the responsibilities of mortals. But the cause of her waywardness is not far to seek.

World changes have been so rapid that it has been hard for the young woman to adjust her life. She has had only half a century in which to free herself from the ignorance and subjections of past ages and prepare herself for the many new fields of activity now open to her. Everywhere she is shaking herself free of age-long restraint.

"True," her critics affirm with melancholy foreboding, "and of womanliness and modesty as well -- and a woman without modesty cannot keep a man's interest. Observe the modern girl. If you wish to know what woman released from all conventions is like, there she is sitting in public, smoking a cigarette, her legs crossed, shamelessly exposing her knees. She spends most of her time making up her face. We invite her to give a little of her time to making up and enriching her mind."

One wonders what all this to-do over a lipstick and a cigarette -- trifles as light as air -- is about. The modern girl has not lost the grace of blushing. I know, for I enjoy the society of a number of bright young girls who powder their noses and smoke, and in whom there is no lack of delicacy or modesty. As to the kind of mother she will be, time will answer that question; but it should not be forgotten that before or after she is a mother, she is a human being, and neither the motherly nor the wifely destination should overbalance the human.

Custom forbade the grandmother of the modern girl to exercise in the open air on pain of being frowned upon as unladylike. Custom prescribed long, voluminous skirts that swept the ground, and steel-ribbed corsets, and it was a long battle before the girl broke loose from the fetters of clothes and customs.

The conservatives build a wall to halt the modern girl, but she leaps straight over it. She is not consciously defiant, but simply obeying the urge of evolutionary forces that are shaping a new society. She stands between two ages -- the dead and the newly born.

We who understand the modern girl and believe in her, see that her spirit is radiant with dawn, that in her hands is beauty, and that the children of the future will rise up and call her blessed.