f lowering your standard of behaviour, because he is
constantly expecting you to. Tell him it mortifies you to find greater
pleasure away from him than in his presence, yet when he insults you
with his suspicions, and destroys your comfort with his moods, you can
no longer think of him as your girlhood's ideal.

Ask him to try, for your sake, to use more common sense and self-control
in this matter, and to help you to restore the happiness which seems
flying from your wedded lives.

Do nothing to aggravate or irritate him, but do not give up your friends
of either sex; this is but to increase his inclination to petty tyranny,
while it will in no sense lessen his jealousy.

And when you are alone, endeavour to think of him always as sensible,
reasonable, and kind.

By your mental picture you can help to cure him of the blight he
received before his birth. It is the task set many a wife, to counteract
the errors and neglect of mothers.

Look to the Divine source for help in your work, and remember the lovely
qualities Clarence possesses when he is not under the ban of this
prenatal mark.

Love him out into the light if you can--and I believe you can if you are
not too soon discouraged.

It is a nobler effort to try and create in your husband the ideal you
have in your mind, than to go seeking him elsewhere.

Be patient and wait awhile. Such love as you and Clarence felt in your
courtship and early marriage cannot so soon have died. It is only
sleeping, and suffering from a nightmare. Awaken it to life and reality
and happiness.

To Young Mrs. Duncan

_Regarding Mothers-in-Law_

And so the serpent has appeared in your Eden, attired in widow's weeds,
and talking the usual jargon of "devoted mother love." I do not like to
say I told you so, but you must remember our rather spirited discussion
of this very serpent, when you announced your engagement and said Mr.
Duncan's mother was to make her home with you after your return from
abroad.

I had met Mrs. Duncan, and I knew her type all too well. Alfred is her
only child, and she adores him, naturally, but it is adoration so
mingled with selfishness and tyranny that it is incapable of considering
the welfare of its object.

Mrs. Duncan was always jealous of any happiness which came to her son
through another source than herself. That type of mother love is to be
encountered every day, and that type of mother believes herself to be
the most devoted crea