tell you what to do.

'To-morrow summon a council of all the chief men of the land of Ithaka,
and stand up in that council and declare that the time has come for the
wooers who waste your substance to scatter, each man to his own home.
And after the council has been held I would have you voyage to find out
tidings of your father, whether he still lives and where he might be. Go
to Pylos first, to the home of Nestor, that old King who was with your
father in the war of Troy. Beg Nestor to give you whatever tidings he
has of Odysseus. And from Pylos go to Sparta, to the home of Menelaus
and Helen, and beg tidings of your father from them too. And if you get
news of his being alive, return: It will be easy for you then to endure
for another year the wasting of your substance by those wooers. But if
you learn that your father, the renowned Odysseus, is indeed dead and
gone, then come back, and in your own country raise a great funeral
mound to his memory, and over it pay all funeral rites. Then let your
mother choose a good man to be her husband and let her marry him,
knowing for a certainty that Odysseus will never come back to his own
house. After that something will remain for you to do: You will have to
punish those wooers who destroy the goods your father gathered and who
insult his house by their presence. And when all these things have been
done, you, Telemachus, will be free to seek out your own fortune: you
will rise to fame, for I mark that you are handsome and strong and most
likely to be a wise and valiant man. But now I must fare on my journey.'

The stranger rose up from where he sat and went with Telemachus from the
hall and through the court and to the outer gate. Telemachus said: 'What
you have told me I shall not forget. I know you have spoken out of a
wise and a friendly heart, and as a father to his son.'