tions upon mothers-in-law do for the more part emanate, to our shame be it spoken, from the sex to which I, the apologist, belong. And secondly, because the legal-maternity of the wife's mother has a more self-asserting and generally-felt existence than that of her who is simply mother to a husband. Proverbial philosophy has long since recognised and proclaimed this differ ence: "My son is my son, till he gets him a wife : My daughter is my daughter all the days of her life." This distich embodies one great truth at least a truth admitted and undisputed by those who assail with gibe, and flout, and bitterness, the character of the mother-in-law; assumed as elementary and indispensable by those, if there be any besides myself, who boldly proclaim for that impugned character veneration, esteem, and affection. Taking the truth as axiomatic, that "my daughter" remains such "all the days of her life," I call special attention to that possessive pronoun. "Her," that is, "my daughter's life." Of that life the daughter's husband may possibly weary, and his testy denunciations of the existence of a mother-in-law, against whom, perhaps, good woman as she is, he really has no cause of quarrel, nor, in truth, really fancies any, amount simply to a subterfuge. Were he rid of his wife he would be practically rid of his mother-in-law. Therefore, not daring to utter his wish in all its naked cynicism, he veils it under a thin and paltry disguise, forgetful or reckless of the fact that he might cease to be a son-in-law without thereby gaining enlargement from the galling bond, as he feels it, of matrimony. Sneaking cowards, who hate their wives and fear them along with it, or else fear what others would think of themselves for hating them, may often, and I dare say do often, find abuse of their mothers-in-law a convenient waste-pipe for some of the venom they fear to vent honestly against their wives. In petty spites, moreover, no less than in the greater, more hideous, malignity, I am convinced that this is true. The poor mother's breast must bear the stab which is to prick the daughter's heart. If any young lady friend should consult me on the expediency of marrying a widower, one of the first cautions I should give her would run thus :-"Find out, my dear, how he speaks of his late wife's mother. A captious, fractious, censorious son-in-law may be backed at long odds to have been a cranky kind of husband." "My daughter is my daughter all the days of her life." There is much force of apology in the line for those good women who as yet are only meditating the commission of the alleged offence of "mother-inlawhood." "How can they be so eager," ask the impugners, "to get their daughters off their hands,' as the phrase is? Does not their striving to become mothers-in-law speak volumes against their true motherly character?" There seems at first sight to be something in these queries, but it evaporates upon analysis. I grant that when, towards the anniversary of good St. Valentine, a man bethinks himself of nest-building, a human magpie's nest is hardly that whence he would go to fetch a mate. Have you ever seen the old birds of that particoloured plumage expel the fledglings, reader? It's a caution, as the Transatlantics say, to see them get the young ones "off their hands." Something wrong with mother or daughter may be suspected, perhaps, when the former is so forward to part with the latter. but there's the very pith and marrow of the question. What if the parting imply no severance? "My daughter is my daughter all the days of her life." "She feels it and I feel it, without a word spoken about it on either side. And I know what she knows nothow surely her own maternity shall knit new fibres, fresh and living, between her heart and mine. How well I remember it! When her little head nestled for the first time on my bosom, my own head seemed to be pillowed Ay! on my Own dear mother's breast again!" There are, of course, calamitous exceptions; but I am by no means indisposed to maintain the thesis that it is a well-grounded omen of good to the future husband when the mother is honestly and frankly willing to let her daughter wed. Ten to one she has been a happy wife; round her, therefore, has played an atmosphere of trustfulness and love and joyous freedom of the heart, which it is a good thing if thy bride, O reader, hath breathed all her girlhood through. The smile with which a mother greets a daughter's chosen should be counted. by him among the golden treasures of his life. I take him for a currish fellow indeed whose cynicism affects to question the coin's alloy because, forsooth, it is given ungrudgingly. There are a sort of fellows in the world who think of every gift, that the giver gives because he doesn't care to keep what he is giving. On the cynical theory of human thought and feeling-which, after all, should not be called cynical, seeing what faith and trust and devotion the raggedest little cur will often exhibit that mother's smile is capable of evil interpretation, I allow. "Ha! I have had to board and lodge and clothe this girl of mine these eighteen or twenty years, and you have come, you son of youth and folly, to take that trouble and expense upon yourself." If there were much truth in this interpretation, why should the wooer, even in the most ignoble farce, look always for frowns rather upon the other parent's brow? Obdurate fathers are stock characters from tragedy to pantomime. Why not obdurate mothers? For this reason among others, this good reason, as I think that, whereas father and mother both keenly feel the sacrifice, the mother has in her own heart a stronger auxiliary than her husband against its selfishness. On this wise :Wifehood and maternity have been, spite of all pain, care, and sorrow, the joy and glory of her own life. She feels in such sense as even the truest husband complete her life had been without them. Her daughter will gain-unless it go sadly with her, more sadly than a mother's calculation will bear to sum up-incomparably more than she herself can lose, even in losing one dearer than words can tell. The father-if he be good man and true, however consciously he may have striven to do kindly by the mother of his childknows not in his modest, manly selfesteem all that he has been to her; therefore the hope and confident expectation of what his daughter's husband shall be to the darling child, weighs not so heavily in the scale of willingness to let him take her. He knows what a priceless treasure a dear wife is; therefore he is more willing and eager most times to see his son mate than his daughter; and, if I were to write the praise of fathers-in-law, I would certainly base it upon the relationship of husband's father. Or, rather, I should beg my wife to furnish material for the essay. I say then, again, that the gold of a mother's smile on her girl's chosen is most times pure gold, smelted in the fire of self-denial, stamped with the image of a glad hope, allowed to be lawful coin by that sharp and stern mint-master whose name is " Experience. If it's not worth casting thankfully into the treasury of life, few coins can be. But I have lingered perhaps too long over the mother-in-law contingent; let me come to the actual. They who are loudest in asserting her existence to be a grievance must admit, I suppose, that the evil is at least necessary. It would seem hard, if not impossible, to eliminate mothers-in-law totally from the constitution of society. A girl must have had a mother, in the strict sense of the word "must;" not with a contingent modification, as when we say that she must have had measles, hoopingcough, and other infantile miseries. But it may be suggested that, as those quasineedful inconveniences are transitory, so might it be with that of which I treat. amongst us, it seems hard to secure this desirable transitoriness of one's wife's daughterly relationship. If all mothers were to die forthwith upon bringing a female infant into the world, the rearing and education of our now wives, and other men's to-be wives, would suffer serious loss. Besides which, as husbands, we might come to think such a law of nature harsh and premature in its operation. What if we should not be tired of our partners at the end of the first year's partnership, and if the result of that partnership should be by that time embodied in a baby girl? Shall we say, then, that some such institution as the suttee of Hindostan should artificially remedy the defective action of nature at a later period? Would it be well that, as the Hindoo widow is not suffered to survive her husband's death, so the British matron should be bound, by social propriety, to close her mortal career upon her daughter's marriage? Should the torch of the daughter's hymen light a funereal pyre for her mother-should the flame which figuratively consumes the bridegroom literally reduce to ashes her who otherwise would inevitably become his mother-in-law ? A man who has married an eldest daughter might possibly close with this proposed solution of the difficulty; but what would he say to it who should have married the youngest of a long family of girls? The very existence, no less than the rearing and education of his dear Maria, Jane, or Caroline, might have been compromised by such an otherwise salutary custom and enactment. I think that, in many cases, the necessity must be conceded not only of the existence of the evil but even of its permanence. At all events, its abolition by suttee must be deferred until the settlement in life of the youngest daughter of any particular household; and, whatever willingness the suitor of the first-born daughter found in Materfamilias to forward his suit, the candidate for the hand of the latest-born sister would have a hard battle to secure his prize. Now that Gretna-green hymeneals are impossible, few younger daughters could, under the action of a suttee law, look to be married till their early marriage system might, perhaps, full majority. Furious opponents of the proposal for the passing of such a Bill on this ground, be found to back up a through Parliament. Granting, therefore, the necessity of the evil, might it not be wise to make practical wisdom of the saw : the best of it, and to fall back upon the often complain that, after the first few can't be cured must be endured"? Men "What glowing years of extreme youth are past, it is hard in truth to win one's any person's sincere affection. Perhaps way into there is some reason for the complaint as things go. If, then, one sees the mother-in-law's, is it wise to disdain door of any heart open to one, even a have more than hinted that, even beentrance and lodgment there? Now I forehand, the door of that abode is set open by the woman's own kindly nature to her son-in-law; and, even if it be not thus left a-jar for him, the soft hand of his wife upon the latch of it-supposing him only to make a decent husband—is sure to open it wide. The entire, genuine, hearty adoption of him to a sonship, which is no mere legal figment, is neither uneasy nor uncommon. men's sons-in-law, perhaps, become to Few However grateful the father may be them truly sons; but many women's do. for the loyalty and tenderness of his daughter's husband to her, it is not easy to grant him entire absolution for having stolen her from home. If he have not robbed the father more completely of the girl's affection than he has robbed certainly robbed him of a certain special the mother, yet this is to be said he has pre-eminence, which in the mother's case remain, undisturbed. may have remained, and probably does. her mother may still stand in the bride's After marriage estimation first and dearest of womenher father falls to second, second-best, second-dearest of men. There is no help for it. There was a multiform homage she paid him of old, which, in all its multiform expression, is transferred to on my Own dear mother's breast again!" There are, of course, calamitous exceptions; but I am by no means indisposed to maintain the thesis that it is a well-grounded omen of good to the future husband when the mother is honestly and frankly willing to let her daughter wed. Ten to one she has been a happy wife; round her, therefore, has played an atmosphere of trustfulness and love and joyous freedom of the heart, which it is a good thing if thy bride, O reader, hath breathed all her girlhood through. The smile with which a mother greets a daughter's chosen should be counted by him among the golden treasures of his life. I take him for a currish fellow indeed whose cynicism affects to question the coin's alloy because, forsooth, it is given ungrudgingly. There are a sort of fellows in the world who think of every gift, that the giver gives because he doesn't care to keep what he is giving. On the cynical theory of human thought and feeling-which, after all, should not be called cynical, seeing what faith and trust and devotion the raggedest little cur will often exhibit that mother's smile is capable of evil interpretation, I allow. "Ha! I have had to board and lodge and clothe this girl of mine these eighteen or twenty years, and you have come, you son of youth and folly, to take that trouble and expense upon yourself." If there were much truth in this interpretation, why should the wooer, even in the most ignoble farce, look always for frowns rather upon the other parent's brow? Obdurate fathers are stock characters from tragedy to pantomime. Why not obdurate mothers? For this reason among others, this good reason, as I think that, whereas father and mother both keenly feel the sacrifice, the mother has in her own heart a stronger auxiliary than her husband against its selfishness. On this wise:Wifehood and maternity have been, spite of all pain, care, and sorrow, the joy and glory of her own life. She feels in such sense as even the truest husband -: complete her life had been without them. Her daughter will gain-unless it go sadly with her, more sadly than a mother's calculation will bear to sum up-incomparably more than she herself can lose, even in losing one dearer than words can tell. The father-if he be good man and true, however consciously he may have striven to do kindly by the mother of his childknows not in his modest, manly selfesteem all that he has been to her; therefore the hope and confident expectation of what his daughter's husband shall be to the darling child, weighs not so heavily in the scale of willingness to let him take her. He knows what a priceless treasure a dear wife is; therefore he is more willing and eager most times to see his son mate than his daughter; and, if I were to write the praise of fathers-in-law, I would certainly base it upon the relationship of husband's father. Or, rather, I should beg my wife to furnish material for the essay. I say then, again, that the gold of a mother's smile on her girl's chosen is most times pure gold, smelted in the fire of self-denial, stamped with the image of a glad hope, allowed to be lawful coin by that sharp and stern mint-master whose name is " Experience." If it's not worth casting thankfully into the treasury of life, few coins can be. But I have lingered perhaps too long over the mother-in-law contingent; let me come to the actual. They who are loudest in asserting her existence to be a grievance must admit, I suppose, that the evil is at least necessary. It would seem hard, if not impossible, to eliminate mothers-in-law totally from the constitution of society. A girl must have had a mother, in the strict sense of the word "must;" not with a contingent modification, as when we say that she must have had measles, hoopingcough, and other infantile miseries. But it may be suggested that, as those quasineedful inconveniences are transitory, so might it be with that of which I treat. amongst us, it seems hard to secure this desirable transitoriness of one's wife's daughterly relationship. If all mothers were to die forthwith upon bringing a female infant into the world, the rearing and education of our now wives, and other men's to-be wives, would suffer serious loss. Besides which, as husbands, we might come to think such a law of nature harsh and premature in its operation. What if we should not be tired of our partners at the end of the first year's partnership, and if the result of that partnership should be by that time embodied in a baby girl? Shall we say, then, that some such institution as the suttee of Hindostan should artificially remedy the defec tive action of nature at a later period? Would it be well that, as the Hindoo widow is not suffered to survive her husband's death, so the British matron should be bound, by social propriety, to close her mortal career upon her daughter's marriage? Should the torch of the daughter's hymen light a funereal pyre for her mother-should the flame which figuratively consumes the bridegroom literally reduce to ashes her who otherwise would inevitably become his mother-in-law ? A man who has married an eldest daughter might possibly close with this proposed solution of the difficulty; but what would he say to it who should have married the youngest of a long family of girls? The very existence, no less than the rearing and education of his dear Maria, Jane, or Caroline, might have been compromised by such an otherwise salutary custom and enactment. I think that, in many cases, the necessity must be conceded not only of the existence of the evil but even of its permanence. At all events, its abolition by suttee must be deferred until the settlement in life of the youngest daughter of any particular household; and, whatever willingness the suitor of the first-born daughter found in Materfamilias to forward his suit, the candidate for the hand of the latest-born sister would have a hard battle to secure his prize. Now that Gretna-green hymeneals are impossible, few younger daughters could, under the action of a suttee law, look to be married till their full majority. Furious opponents of the early marriage system might, perhaps, on this ground, be found to back up a proposal for the passing of such a Bill through Parliament. Granting, therefore, the necessity of the evil, might it not be wise to make the best of it, and to fall back upon the practical wisdom of the saw : "What can't be cured must be endured"? Men often complain that, after the first few glowing years of extreme youth are past, it is hard in truth to win one's way into any person's sincere affection. Perhaps there is some reason for the complaint as things go. If, then, one sees the door of any heart open to one, even a mother-in-law's, is it wise to disdain entrance and lodgment there? Now I have more than hinted that, even beforehand, the door of that abode is set open by the woman's own kindly nature to her son-in-law; and, even if it be not thus left a-jar for him, the soft hand of his wife upon the latch of it-supposing him only to make a decent husband-is sure to open it wide. The entire, genuine, hearty adoption of him to a sonship, which is no mere legal figment, is neither uneasy nor uncommon. Few men's sons-in-law, perhaps, become to them truly sons; but many women's do. However grateful the father may be for the loyalty and tenderness of his daughter's husband to her, it is not easy to grant him entire absolution for having stolen her from home. If he have not robbed the father more completely of the girl's affection than he has robbed the mother, yet this is to be said he has certainly robbed him of a certain special pre-eminence, which in the mother's case may have remained, and probably does remain, undisturbed. After marriage her mother may still stand in the bride's estimation first and dearest of womenher father falls to second, second-best, second-dearest of men. There is no help for it. There was a multiform homage she paid him of old, which, in all its multiform expression, is transferred to |