rriage, with a strange pilot at the helm.

The really good and loving mother endears herself to that pilot, and
loves him and seeks his affection for her daughter's sake. She hides
her own sorrow in her heart, and does not shadow her daughter's voyage
by her repining.

The man who is worthy of a good girl's love will understand what it must
mean to a mother to give her daughter to him, and he will in every way
seek to recompense her for her loss, by bestowing upon her sympathy,
courteous attentions, and a son's devotion.

Just so will the girl, who is worthy of being a good man's wife, seek to
make his mother love her.

I know how you have tried to win Mrs. Duncan's heart. I know your
amiable, sweet disposition, and your unselfishness and tact, and I know
how you failed.

I can imagine your feelings when you overheard Mrs. Duncan say to a
caller that she was going to leave your house and take rooms elsewhere,
as she could not endure your "billing and cooing."

Do you know, Ruth, that nearly all the trouble between mothers-and
daughters-in-law is due to vanity and jealousy.

Fifty mothers are friends to their daughters' husbands where one is a
friend to her son's wife. That is because, wholly unconsciously to
herself, the mother resents another woman sharing the attention of a man
she loves. The fact that he is her son, and that the love he gives his
wife is a wholly different sentiment, does not prevent blind,
unreasoning jealousy from dominating her nature.

Mrs. Duncan wants to stand always in the centre of the stage, with every
other woman in the play in the background.

It is a most pathetic situation for a man,--this position between a wife
and a jealous mother. My heart always aches for the man in the case even
more than for the woman who is misused.

All young men are reared to think mother-love the most unselfish and
wonderful devotion on earth, even in the face of facts which so often
prove it otherwise; and when a son sees his mother unhappy he is
inclined to make every possible excuse for her, because he feels that to
take issue against her will put him in a false light before the whole
established order of society, and that he will beat his head against
traditions wherever he turns.

So, he ofttimes tries to conciliate the wife he has promised to cherish,
and to convince her that she may exaggerate matters, and that she may
even be the aggressor, and then he finds himself standing between two
r