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 noblest 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.