The Young Man and the World Part 5

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.

"How does ---- get along with his father?" was asked of a certain young man of great distinction in letters. "Oh, they are great friends!" was the answer. "Friends through duty or comradery?"

persisted the querist. "Comradery, affection, affinity. They are the greatest chums in the world," was the answer.

I wish I could give you the name of that man. It is known in every civilized country. No wonder he became the great power into which he has developed. His whole life is a blessing and a benediction to all with whom he comes in contact--parents, wife, children, countrymen, the world. No wonder his brain is canny with resourceful wisdom; no wonder that good red human blood pours at full tide through artery and vein.

The man I have in mind, and whom I am describing, is a great man, and his father before him was a great man too. His success has been monumental. Yet his is no candy manhood. His is no smooth conduct. He is "neither sugar nor salt, nor somebody's honey," to get down (or up) to the picturesque phrase of the common household.

He is the sort of man who would confound sharp practises of the crafty; or "call the bluff" of financial gamester; or walk unconcerned where physical danger calls for nerve of steel and lion's heart; or fling at affected fop rapier sentences that cut deep through the very quick of his pretenses.

I cite this example merely to show you that you lose nothing of independence or daring, or any of those qualities which young men so prize (and properly prize), by being on terms of intellectual and heart partnership with your father.

Don't tell us that he won't let you be on such terms with him. Show yourself willing and worth while, and your father would rather spend his extra hours with you than at the theater. But you have got to show yourself worth while. No whining willingness, no soft and pretended desire, no affected making up to "the governor," will answer at all.

You have got to "make good" with the American father, young man.

He has "been through the mill," until the softness is pretty well ground out and little remains but the granite-like muscle of manhood.

He is a pretty stern proposition; and if there is anything he won't stand it is pretense, make-believe. But show yourself worthy of him and willing for his comradeship, and you have begun life with the best, readiest, bravest partner you will ever have.

From all of this you have yourself deduced the fact that you do not "know more than the old folks." If you have not, go ahead and deduce it right now; for you do _not_ know more than they do. They have lived so much longer than you have that the accretion of daily experience has given them a variety of information beside which your book knowledge is a sort of wooden learning, lifeless and artificial.

The very fact that they have had you for a child and brought you along safely thus far is proof enough of this. You have no right to challenge the knowledge or judgment of either of your parents until you demonstrate that you can do as well or better than they. And that will be some years yet, will it not? No, decidedly, don't "get too smart for father."

Even if you really do know more than they, don't let either of the old folks see that you think so. That att.i.tude on your part is almost indecent. Be grateful also. How singular that where young men have everything to be thankful for, they are so seldom grateful.

When parents surround them with every comfort, and make what are luxuries to the millions necessities to their children; when the youth is furnished clothes made by the tailor, and money to spend as he will, and special schools and the most expensive university; when he is given vacations at seash.o.r.e, in mountains, on lake, or abroad, instead of at good hard work, as the sons of the people must spend their vacations; when a year or two of travel follows his day of easy graduation; when all is his that thought, and love, and gold can give, do we not frequently find the young man unappreciative of, and ungrateful for, these blessings?

Such a man usually takes it for granted that he ought to have all these things, and a good deal more; that they are his as a matter of course, and no thanks due to those who gave them; that they are not much, after all, compared with what some other fellow with a richer father, and a mother still more doting, has and spends. "Give a boy too much money to spend and he won't do anything else." There are some exceptions to this, notable and splendid exceptions, but they are so few that they prove the rule.

On the other hand, it is generally true that young fellows who, in comparison with the cla.s.s just described, have nothing to be thankful for; who must earn their own bread and "help support the family"; who "work their way through college," and during vacations put in a good year's labor to get the money for the next college year; who, the day after graduation, thin as a wolf and as hardy, must start right in then and there to earn that very day's meals and that very night's resting-place--such men, as a usual thing, develop the glorious qualities of grat.i.tude, consideration, and deference.

There is "no place like home" to such men, "be it ever so humble."

They look upon life as a wonderful and splendid thing, for which they are indebted to father and mother. Their manhood's morning is very beautiful to them; but its light is not one-hundredth part as beautiful as the radiance which beams upon them from the eyes of one dear woman whom they call mother--a woman wrinkled and worn and wan, perhaps, but to such sons exquisitely lovely, with something in her beauty not quite of this earth.

I don't quite understand the psychology of this phenomenon, and never knew any one who did understand it; but every one of the scores of observers with whom I have talked upon this subject have noted the same fact--the too frequent ingrat.i.tude and lack of appreciation of young fellows who have everything to be grateful for, and the fine appreciation of life shown by young men who, in comparison, have nothing to be grateful for.

Perhaps it is a lack of thought, a want of a.n.a.lysis. If that is so in your case, young man, get to thinking. Instead of comparing yourself with some other man who has more things than you, compare yourself with one who has fewer things than you; or, better still, with one who hasn't anything at all. Then you will have a measure for the debt you owe to the two beings who have given and are giving you all you have or will have for a great many years to come.

And this other thing, too: When you begin to be grateful for these things, by going through some such intellectual process as I have indicated, you will get so much more pleasure out of them than you did before that you will hardly be able to realize that you are the same man.

Indeed, you will not be the same man--you will be another man, a bigger-hearted, saner-minded, gentler, and manlier man. You will begin to be the kind of a man you would like to be if you sat down by yourself and went to work to make yourself over again. And what a wonder you would be if you could make yourself over! Yes, no doubt!

This final word: The day must come when you must leave the old home.

When that hour arrives, do not try to tarry. Go right out into the world. Do not go mournfully. Give the little mother a smile of courage, a word of cheer, that will be her guaranty that her boy is going to be a "grand success," and then--_make good!_

You will hardly get away from the old home gate when you will stumble over an obstacle and fall down. Don't turn back to the old home to be comforted and helped. Get up, brush the dust off, forget your bruises, and go ahead. Go ahead, and look where you are going.

A man who cannot get up when he is knocked down is of no use in the world.