It is obviously deserted and abandoned. A pane already shattered in one of the windows starts the idea. It is far enough back from the street to make the throw a test of skill. If he misses there’s no harm done. If he hits there’ll be a noise, a crash, a shower of flying glass and--Enough! Up goes the arm, away goes the stone with fateful accuracy and the deed is done. It was the act of a sudden impulse. Before the conscience within him could assert itself the missile had struck; and that innate human ambition to produce a visible result was gratified. The deed is done, and the boy doesn’t know why he did it. But returning to the hypothesis of the brick and the bottle, perhaps you, madam, can explain why you would prefer to shoot at the bottle. In these talks I want to tell mothers something of what I know about boys; not all about them, but just a few of the more vital things that every mother of a boy ought to know and every father ought to be reminded of. I say “reminded” advisedly, for the fathers must have known some time, though it would seem that most of them have forgotten now. What I say I know about boys, I know. What I may suggest or advise is another matter. It can stand only as a belief, an opinion, and my sole excuse for presuming to offer it is that I love the boy; I live close to him and I believe in him. I do not believe that the intuitiveness generally accredited to motherhood is in the least degree overestimated or exaggerated. But mere intuitiveness, even in its highest form of development, can hardly be expected to bridge the natural gap of temperamental sex difference between mother and son. Unfortunately, the father, not eager to invade what he believes to be the mother’s sphere, usually is content to leave the management of the boy in the mother’s hands, while the mother, not recognising the deficiency of her position, labours on patiently, lovingly, untiringly, but in many cases blindly, and often with poor success. If mothers only understood this it would be better. If they could be brought to realize the handicap under which they are striving they could fortify themselves against it. They could deepen the interest of the father or, failing that, they could at the least draw upon his experience and knowledge of real boyhood with good effect. But there are no sex distinctions to the average mother. The boys and the girls are just “the children” and the difference of sex is lost in the great catholicity of maternal love. At the very beginning parents must concede the existence of an inherent temperamental difference between the boy and the girl. This, for the mother, is not so easy of adjustment as it may appear. The boy is her baby, just her baby, from swaddling-clothes to long trousers.