nowledge of every individual, furnishes abundant
testimony that it is not the wife's mother, but the husband's mother,
who is at the bottom of nine-tenths of the domestic misery arising
from this source. The wife's mother with small encouragement will
like, even love, the man who has chosen her daughter above all other
women. The husband's mother never really likes her son's wife. And
young wives are apt to forget how bitterly hard it is for a mother to
give her son up, at once and forever, to a girl whom she does not like
in any way. Perhaps hitherto the son and mother have been every one,
and everything to each other, and it is only human that the latter
should have to battle fiercely and constantly with an involuntary
jealousy, and a cruel quicksightedness for small faults in his wife.
It is only human that she should try to make trouble, and enjoy the
fact that her son is less happy with his wife than he was with her,
and that he comes to her for comfort in his disappointment. The love
of a mother is often a very jealous love; and a jealous mother is just
as unreasonable as a jealous wife; she can make life bitterly hard for
her son's wife, and, to do her justice, she very often does so. Then
if the wife--wounded and imprudent--goes to her own mother with her
sorrows and wrongs, it is the natural attitude of the husband to shift
the blame from his own mother to his wife's mother. There are indeed
so many ways by which this misery can enter a household that it is
impossible to define them; for there is just variety enough in every
case to give an individuality of suffering to each.

What, then, is to be done? Let us admit at once that our relations do
give us half the pain and sorrow we suffer in life; but each may do
something to reduce the liability. We may remember that all such
quarrels come from excess of love, and that a quarrel springing from
love is more hopeful than one springing from hate. As mothers-in-law,
we may tell ourselves that when our children are married we no longer
have the first right in them. The young people must be left to make
the best of their life, and we must never interfere, nor ever give
advice until it is asked for. Another irritation, little suspected, is
the palpable forcing forward of the new relationship. On both sides
it is well to be in no hurry to claim it. A girl takes a man for
better or for worse, but does not therefore take all his relations.
Love for her husband does not i