Part 5 (1/2)

For a young man there is no source of safety and wisdom so abundant, pure, and unfailing as the making his mother his confessor. Tell her everything. I mean just that, tell her literally everything.

Do not fear her reproof. Chemistry has no miracle a fraction as wonderful as the patience and forgiveness of a mother for the exasperations of her son. There is not a thing which you ought to do, the telling of which to your mother will prevent your doing. And her counsel to you will be golden upon those purely personal matters which you could tell no one else, and which no one else could understand or sympathize with.

Remember that she has the wisdom of instinct--a wisdom peculiarly worldly and practical in its applicability to real things and real situations. The advice of a wife in business affairs has this same peculiarly valuable quality, quite beyond the strength of her or his intellect or the reach of her abstract understanding.

It is the instinct to preserve the home nest which makes the business advice of the wife to the husband so priceless; and it is this same instinct exercising itself in another form--seeking to preserve the offspring--which gives such shrewdness and depth to the counsel of mother to son.

This making your mother your confessor will not only keep you out of trouble, and give you light and direction along lines where you otherwise will be as blind as a young puppy, but it is good for you in a far more important way--a far profounder way. I have always been impressed with the wonderful understanding of human nature and the needs of it which the inst.i.tution of the confessional in the Catholic Church reveals. ”No man liveth to himself alone.”

For the ordinary human being there is no such thing as a secret.

The ordinary man who is compelled to keep everything to himself gets morbid and suspicious. He broods over what he thinks he must not utter to others. Not daring to talk with friends, he converses with himself.

Thus his sympathies narrow, and his vision grows not only feeble but false. He gets the proportion of things sadly confused. It is not only a relief, but a real benefit to most men and women to be able to unburden their souls to some other human being whom they know to be faithful.

And if this be the intellectual need, strong as nature itself, of grown-up men and women, it is plain that the young man, whose character is forming, requires the same thing a great deal more. Very well. Your mother is the confessor, young man, whom Nature has given you for this beautiful and saving purpose. Do not eat your heart out, therefore, but frankly tell her your hopes, desires, offenses, plans.

Confide in her your good deeds and your bad. And she, who would give her life for you, and count it the happiest thing she ever did if it would only help you, will give you the very gold of wisdom, refined and superrefined by the fires of that love which burn nowhere else in the universe save in a mother's heart.

Of course I am talking now of the ordinary American mother, who is a mother in all that the term implies. We all know that there are women who have children without understanding at all--yes, or even caring at all--what motherhood means; without understanding or caring what their duties to their children mean.

As is always the case with the abnormal, these unfortunate types are found at the social extremes; in the so-called ”depths” and the so-called ”heights.” There are women too vicious to make good mothers and women too vain to make good mothers. But these are not numerous.

The mother this paper is dealing with is that angel in human form that the ordinary American man knew in the old home when he was a boy; and whether she be intellectual or not, educated or not, such mothers have shaped the characters that have made the American people the n.o.blest force for good in all the world.

In her work, her prayers, her daily life, you will find the sources of all that is self-sacrificing, prudent, patriotic, brave, and uplifting in American character. It is the influence of the American mother that has made the American Republic what it is; and it is in her heart that our national ideals dwell.

”That is all right,” said a practical-minded man, with a dash of American humor in him, in the course of a conversation along this line; ”that is all right, and I think so, too,” said he; ”but where does 'the old man' come in? What about the father?” And the question is as sane as it is pat. Don't you neglect the father. He feeds you.

He clothes you. He is schooling you. It is to his brain and hand, and the wisdom and skill of them, that you are indebted for the college education you are going to get.

And by these tokens your father is a _man_, and a whole lot of a man at that.

You will realize how much of a man he is if you will think what you would be up against if you had to support yourself, and then another person more expensive than yourself, and in addition several other persons more expensive than yourself--not only support them, but supply their whims and humor their caprices; for it must be said of us Americans that we really do not need more than half what we think we positively must have.

Think, I say, young man, of having to do all that, and having to keep on doing it to-day and to-morrow, this month and next month, and all year and every year as long as you live. If, in your mind, you feel yourself equal to that, tell me, do you not feel in your mind that you have in you the makings of a man indeed--a tremendous man?

Very well. That is what your father not only imagines, but _does_. So he is decidedly ent.i.tled to your respect. You owe him grat.i.tude, too, of a very definite, tangible kind--the sort of grat.i.tude you can weigh in scales and count up in cash-book.

Now we come to the point of definite benefit for you in all of this; for, mind you, this paper is for your own selfish interests. Even when I am advising the beat.i.tudes of life, I am doing it from the view-point of your practical well-being.

Think, then, of the incalculable advantage of having at your beck and call a friend who has proved that he knows the highways and byways of the world by having successfully found his way around among them.

Think of the value of having such a guide for your daily counselor.

Think of how the worth of such a man's directions to you is multiplied infinitely by the fact that he cares more for your success than for any other one thing in the world. When you have thought over all these things, you will begin to have some faint understanding not only of what you owe your father, but of his practical helpfulness to you.

A father is an opportunity--a young man's first opportunity in life, and the greatest opportunity he will ever have. That father has made lots of mistakes, no doubt; but you will never make the mistakes he made if you will listen to him. He has made many successes, perhaps; but his successes are only the acorns to the oaks of your deeds, if you will but take his words as seed for your future enterprises.

And let me tell you this: Nothing makes a better impression upon the world that is watching you--watching you very cunningly, young man--as to be on good terms with your father. I have known more than one young man to be discredited in business because it was generally understood that he ”could not get along with the old man.”

You see, the world thinks that it is the boy's fault when there is friction between father and son--and ordinarily the world is right.

Sometimes, of course, the world itself ”cannot get along with father”; in such cases it does not blame the son for not getting along with him either. But that is not your situation, you who read this paper.