r 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 institution 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 happi