Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

I venture to say the proportion would be very small indeed.

For the majority of young men know that nothing worth having is lost in the sharing. They meet in their own circle some modest, home-making girl whom they love so truly that they can tell her exactly what their income is, and then they find out that their own ideas of economy were crude and extravagant compared with the wondrous ways and means which reveal themselves to a loving woman’s comprehension of the subject. The Oranges, Rutherford, and every suburb of New York are full of pretty little homes supported without worry, and with infinite happiness, upon $1,100 a year, and perhaps, indeed, upon less money.

The difficulty with the class of young men whose case Mr. Messinger pleads is one deserving of no sympathy. It is a difficulty evoked by vanity and self-conceit, of which Fashion and Mrs. Grundy are the bugbears. Why should a young man capable of making only $1,100 a year expect to marry a girl whose parents are rich enough to guard her “from every wind of heaven, lest it visit her face too roughly”? “Is it fair treatment of the expected husband,” Mr. Messinger asks, that a girl “should be habituated to live without work and then be handed over to her husband with nothing but her clothing and bric-à-brac?” Yes, it is quite fair treatment. If the husband with his $1,100 a year elects to marry a girl not habituated to work, he does it of his own choice: the father of the girl is probably not at all desirous of his alliance; then why should the father deprive himself of the results of his own labor and economy to undo the folly and vanity of the young man’s selection? As for the girl, if she has deliberately preferred her lover to her father, mother, home, and to all the advantages of wealth, she has the desire of her heart. It may be quite fair that she should have this desire, but it may be very unfair that her father, mother, and perhaps her brothers and sisters, should be robbed to make her desire less self-sacrificing to her. For if the young man with his poverty is acceptable to both the daughter and her parents, the latter may be safely trusted to do all that is right in the circumstances.

The most objectionable part of Mr. Messinger’s argument is the servile and mercenary aspect in which it places marriage. “What equality can exist,” he asks, “where one (the man) supplies all the means of subsistence and performs all the labor?” That a husband should provide the means of subsistence is the very Magna Charta of honorable marriage; and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand so accept it. It is the precise point on which all true husbands feel the most keenly sensitive. They want no other man – no matter what his relationship or friendship – to support their wives. And under no circumstances does the husband perform all the labor resulting from a marriage. That he may be a true man, a father and a citizen, it is necessary that he have a home; and in the care of the home, in the bringing-forth and the bringing-up of the family, in the constant demands upon her love and sympathy, the wife performs a never-ceasing multitude of duties that tax her heart and her body in every direction, – a labor of love in comparison with which her husband’s daily routine over his “entries” or his “orders” is a trifling drain of vitality. For a wife and mother must keep every faculty and feeling “at attention;” but a clerk over his ledger keeps a dozen faculties on the premises to do the work of one. And in behalf of all true and trusted wives I deny in totality the idea that they go to their husbands with “painful shrinking” for the money necessary to carry on the mutual home, or that there is in any beloved wife’s heart the most fleeting thought of “dependence.” Mr. Messinger does a great and shameful wrong to the majority of husbands and wives by such an assertion.

Indeed, this gentleman’s experience seems to have been an unusually sad one, nine out of ten of his friends having died in early middle age from the undue expenditure of nerve and vital force in their efforts to provide for their families in what they doubtless considered a suitable manner; and he evidently thinks that if their wives had been dowered this result would probably have been averted. It is extremely improbable. The wife’s small income would far more likely have led to a still more extravagant way of living; for the genius of the American is to live for to-day and take care for the morrow when the morrow comes.

In many respects it is the genius of the age. Old forms of thought and action are in a state of transition. No one can tell what to-morrow may bring forth. The social conditions which inspired the fathers of the past to save for their posterity are passing away; and I speak from knowledge when I assert that they were often conditions of domestic misery and wrong, and that growing children suffered much under them. Suppose a father has two daughters and three sons; must he curtail the daughters in the education and pleasures of their youth, must he limit the three boys at home and at college, in order to give a sum of money to some unknown young man who will doubtless vow that his daughter’s heart and person are more than all the world to him? If she be not more than all the world to him, he has no right to marry her; and if she be, what can be added to a gift so precious?

The tendency of the time is to dishonor marriage in every way; but the deepest wrong, the most degrading element that can be introduced, is to make it dependent upon dowries or any other financial consideration. We must remember also that in England, where dowry has been a custom, it was one not particularly affecting those classes whose daughters are likely to marry clerks upon small salaries. It was the provision made by landed gentry for their daughters, and they exacted in return an equally suitable settlement from the expectant husband. If the father gave a sum of money to the bride, the bridegroom generally gave the dower-house, with the furniture, silver, linen, etc., which would make it a proper home for her widowhood. Many a marriage has been broken off because the bridegroom would not make such settlements as the father considered the dower demanded.

Mr. Messinger acknowledges that the cost of living was never so small as at this day, and that the difficulty in the way of young men marrying is “purely one of insane imitation and competition.” But there is no necessity for this insane competition; and why provide an unusual and special remedy for what is purely optional? Nobody compels the young husband to live as if his income was $11,000 instead of $1,100. Of his own free will he sacrifices his life to his vanity, and there is no justice in attempting his relief by dowering his perhaps equally guilty wife out of the results of another man’s industry and economy.

Dowry is an antiquated provision for daughters, behind the genius of the age, incompatible with the dignity of American men and the intelligence and freedom of American women. Besides, there are very likely to be two, three, four, or more daughters in a house; how could a man of moderate means save for all of them? And what would become of the sons? The father who gives his children a loving, sensible mother, who provides them with a comfortable home, and who educates fully all their special faculties, and teaches them the cunning in their ten fingers, dowers his daughters far better than if he gave them money. He has funded for them a provision that neither a bad husband nor an evil fate can squander. He has done his full duty, and every good girl will thankfully so accept it.

As for the young men who could imagine themselves spending, out of $1,100, $700 upon dress and amusements, neither the world, nor any sensible woman in it, will be the worse for their celibacy. For if they take a wife, it will doubtless be some would-be stylish, foolish virgin, whose soft hands are of no earthly use except as ring-stands and glove-stretchers. It is such marriages that are failures. It is in such pretentious homes that love and moderate means cannot live happily together. It is in such weak hands that Pandora’s box shuts, not on hope, but on despair.

The brave, sensible youth does not fear to face life and all its obligations on $1,100 a year. With love it is enough to begin with. Hope, ambition, industry, good fortune, are his sureties for the future. However well educated he may be, he knows that in his own class he will find lovely women equally well educated. They may be teaching, clerking, sewing, but they are his peers. He has no idea of marrying a young lady accustomed to servants and luxury, and the question of dower never occurs to him. The good girl who supplements his industry by her economy, who cheers him with her sympathy, who shares all his thoughts and feelings, and crowns his life with love and consolation, has all the dowry he wants. And this is an opinion founded on a long life of observation, – an opinion that fire cannot burn out of me.

The Ring Upon the Finger

Rings were probably the first ornaments ever worn, though in the earliest ages they had a meaning far beyond mere adornment. The stories of Judah and Tamar, of Pharaoh and Joseph, of Ahasuerus and Haman, show that as pledges of good faith, as marks of favor, and as tokens of authority, they were the recognized symbols. The fashion was an Eastern one, for the Jews were familiar with it before their sojourn in Egypt; indeed, it may have been one of those primeval customs which Shem, Ham, and Japhet saved from the wreck of an earlier world. Certainly the people of Syria and the lords of Palestine and Tyre used rings in the earliest times; and it is remarkable that they bore the same emblem which ancient Mexican rings bear, – the constellation of Pisces. As an ornament, however, the ring is least important; it is an emblem. The charmed circle has potency and romance.

Great faith in all ages has been placed in charmed rings. Greeks and Romans possessed them, and the Scandinavian nations had a superstitious faith in such amulets; indeed, as chronicles declare, it is hard to compute how much William was indebted for his victory over Harold to the influence of the ring he wore, which had been blessed and hallowed. As curative agencies, rings have also played a curious part. Until the Georgian era, rings blessed by the King or Queen on Good Friday were thought to control epilepsy and other complaints, and something of this secret power is still acknowledged by the superstitious, who wear around their necks rings or coins that have been blessed. Rings have also been agencies for death, as well as for life. In all ages they have been receptacles for subtle poisons, and thus Hannibal and Demosthenes armed themselves against an extremity of evil fortune.

In the life of the English Queen Elizabeth, rings had an extraordinary importance. She was notified of her ascension to the throne by the presentation of Mary’s ring. The withholding of the ring sent by Essex caused her to die in a passion of remorse and re-awakened affection; and no sooner was the great struggle over than her ring was taken from her scarcely cold finger and flung out of the window to Sir John Harrington, who hastened over the Border with it to the Scottish James.

There are some curious traditions regarding the stones usually set in rings. The ruby or carbuncle was thought to guard against illness. The sapphire was the favorite of churchmen, and was thought to inspire pure desires. Epiphanes says the first tables of the Law were written on sapphires. The emerald bestowed cheerfulness and increased wealth. The opal was said to make a man invisible, the jacinth to procure sleep, and the turquoise to appease quarrels between man and wife. Things are much changed, however, since heathen sages and Rosicrucian alchemists defined the qualities and powers of gems. We have commercial “rings” now, which laugh emerald ones to scorn as means of procuring wealth. If the opal could make a man invisible, it might be popular on the first of a month, but we have better narcotics than the jacinth, while the elaborateness of our women’s toilets gives husbands manifold opportunities of peace-making, quite as successful as the turquoise.

The Jews first used it in marriage. For this purpose they required it to have a certain value, and to be finally and fully purchased. If it was bought on credit, or taken as a gift, its power was destroyed. The Christian Church early adopted the custom of the marriage ring. It was placed first on the thumb, in the name of the “Father;” then removed to the first finger, in the name of the “Son;” to the third with the name of the “Holy Ghost;” and the “Amen” fixed its place on the fourth.

Rings were also the emblem of spiritual marriage and dignity as early as the third century. In the Romish Church the Episcopal ring is of gold set with a rich gem. The Pope has two rings, one bearing the likeness of St. Peter, used for ordinary business; the other bearing a cross, and the heads of both Peter and Paul, and the reigning Pope’s name and arms. It is used only for Bulls, and is broken at the death of the Pontiff; and a new one given by the city of Rome to his successor. These rings of spiritual office were frequently worn on the thumb, and when the tomb of Bede was opened in May, 1831, a large thumb-ring was found where the right hand had fallen to dust.

The ring has been used not only for carnal and spiritual weddings, but also for commercial ones. For six hundred years the Doges of Venice married, with a gold ring, the Adriatic and its rich commerce to their city on the sea. As an emblem of delegated or transmitted power, the ring has also played a remarkable part in human affairs. Pharaoh and Ahasuerus in Biblical records are examples. Alexander transferred his kingdom to Perdicas with his ring. When Cæsar received the head of Pompey, he also received his ring, and when Richard the Second resigned his crown to Henry of Lancaster, he did so by giving him his ring. The coronation ring of England is of gold, in which is set a large violet ruby, carved with the cross of St. George. The custom of engraving sacred emblems upon rings for common wear was angrily reproved by so early a sage as Pythagoras; and this heathen’s delicacy about sacred things is commended to the notice of those women of our own day, who toss the holy symbol of our faith around the toilet tables, and wear it in very unconsecrated places.

However, I have said enough to prove that the ring upon our finger is a link between us and the centuries beyond the flood. We cannot escape this tremendous solidarity of the human race. We are part of all that has been, and the generations that follow us will look back to us and say, “They were our fathers, and we are their heirs, and lo, we are all one!”

Flirting Wives

If some good and thoughtful woman who died fifty years ago could return to this world, what in our present life would most astonish her? Would it be the wonders of steam, electricity, and science; the tyranny of the working classes, or the autocracy of servants? No! It would be the amazing development of her own sex, – the preaching, lecturing, political women; the women who are doctors and lawyers; who lose and win money on horses, or in stocks and real estate; the women who talk slang, and think it an accomplishment; who imitate men’s attire and manners; who do their athletic exercises in public; and, perhaps more astonishing than all, the women who make marriage the cloak for much profitable post-nuptial flirtation.

For her own sex engaged in business, she might find excuses or even admiration; and even for the unfeminine girls of the era, she might plead Mrs. Poyser’s opinion, that “the women are made to suit the men.” But for young wives notorious for their flirting and their “followers,” she could have nothing but unqualified scorn and condemnation. For the sentiment demanding absolute fidelity in a wife may be said to have the force of a human instinct; in all ages it has exacted from her an avoidance of the very appearance of evil. Therefore a good woman in the presence of a frivolous flirting wife feels as if a law of nature were being broken before her eyes; since behind the wife stands the possible mother, and the claims of family, race, and caste, as well as of conjugal honor, are all in her keeping.

Without any exaggeration it may be said that wife-errantry is now as common as knight-errantry once was. The young men of to-day have discovered the personal advantage and safety there is in the society of another man’s wife. They transpose an old proverb, and practically say: “Fools marry, and wise men follow their wives.” For, if the husband be only complacent, it is such a safe thing to flirt with a pretty wife. Young girls are dangerous and might lure them into matrimony; but they have no fear of bigamy. They can whisper sweet words to a gay, married flirt; they can walk, and talk, and dance, and ride with her; they can lounge in her dusky drawing-room or in her opera box, and no one will ask them the reason why, or make any suggestion about their “intentions.”

How far this custom affects the morals of the woman is not at first obvious; but we must insist on this recognized premise: “Society has laid down positive rules regarding the modesty of women, and apart from these rules it is hard to believe modesty can exist. For all conventional social laws are founded on principles of good morals and good sense; and to violate them without a sufficient reason destroys nicety of feeling, sweetness of mind, and self-respect.” It is no excuse to say that propriety is old-maidish, and that men like smart women, or that no harm is intended by their flirtations. The question is: Can married women preserve their delicacy of thought and their nobleness of manner; can they be truly loyal to their husbands and to themselves throughout the different phases of a recognized flirtation? It is an impossible thing.

Suppose a beautiful girl to be wooed and won by a man in every way suitable to her desires. She has accepted his love and his name, and vowed to cleave to him, and to him only, till death parts them. The wooing has been mainly done in full dress, at balls and operas, or in hours tingling with the expectancy of such conditions. The aroma of roses, the rustle of silks and laces, the notes of music, the taste of bon-bons and sparkling wines, were the atmosphere; and the days and weeks went by to the sense of flying feet in a ballroom, or to enchanted loiterings in greenhouses, and behind palms and flowers on decorated stairways.

The young wife is unwilling to believe that marriage has other and graver duties. She has been taught to live in the present only, and she is, therefore, cynical and apathetic concerning all things but dress and amusements. The husband has to return to business, which has been somewhat neglected; arrears of duty are to be met. He feels it necessary to attend to the question of supplies; he is, likely, a little embarrassed by the long holiday of wooing and honeymooning, and he would be grateful for some retrenchment and retirement, for the purpose of home-making.

The young wife has no such intentions; she resents and contradicts them on every occasion; and after the first pang of disappointment is over, he finds it the most prudent and comfortable plan to be indifferent to her continued frivolity. He is perhaps even flattered to find her so much admired; perhaps, in his heart, rather thankful to be relieved from the trouble of admiring her. As for any graver thoughts, he concludes that his wife is no worse than A’s and B’s and C’s wives; that she is quite able to take care of herself, and that in a multitude of adorers there is safety.

Thus, in a majority of cases, begins the career of the married flirt. But the character is not a corollary of marriage, if the proper conditions were present when the wife was a young woman. There is no salvation in the Order of Matrimony; no miracles are wrought at the altar of Grace Church, or at St. Thomas’s. She that is frivolous, giddy, and selfish is likely to continue frivolous, giddy, and selfish; and marriage merely supplies her with a wider field and greater opportunities for the indulgence of her vanity and greed.

She re-enters society with every advantage of youth, beauty, wealth, and liberty; released from the disabilities under which unmarried girls lie; armed with new powers to dazzle and to conquer. No longer a competitor for a matrimonial prize, she is a rival ten times more dangerous than she was. Setting aside the wrong done to the sacredness of the connubial relation, she now becomes the most subtle enemy to the prospects of all the unmarried girls in her set. What is the bud to the perfect rose? The timid, blushing maiden pales and subsides before the married siren who has the audacity and charm of a conscious intelligence. It is not without good reason that special balls and parties have come into fashion for social buds; they are the necessary sequence to the predominance of married sirens, with whom in a mixed society no young girl can cope. They have the floor and the partners; they monopolize all the attention, and their pleasure is of the greatest importance. And their pleasure is to flirt – to flirt in all places and at all hours.

In vain will some young aspirant to marriage display in the presence of the married flirt her pretty accomplishments. She may sing her songs, and play her mandolin never so sweetly, but the young men slip away with some one or other of the piquant brides of the past year. And in the privacy of the smoking-room it is the brides, and not the young girls, who are talked about – what dresses they wear or are likely to wear, how their hair is done, the history of the jewels which adorn them, and the clever things they have said or implied.

Before we condemn too much the society girls of the time, we ought to consider the new enemy who stands in the way of their advancement to marriage. Is it not quite natural that the most courageous girls should refuse the secondary place to which married flirts assign them, and endeavor to meet these invaders with their own weapons? If so, much of the forwardness of the present young girl is traceable to the necessity forced upon her by these married competitors. For it is a fact that young men go to the latter for advice and sympathy. They tell them about the girls they like, and their fancies are nipped in the bud. For the married flirt’s first instinct is to divest all other women of that air of romance with which the nobility and chivalry of men have invested womanhood for centuries. So she points out with a pitiless exactness all the small arts which other women use; and is not only a rival to some young girl, but a traitor to her whole sex.

And yet she is not only tolerated but indulged. People giving entertainments know that their success will be in a large measure dependent upon the number of beautiful young wives present. They know the situation is all wrong, but they are sure they cannot either fight the wrong, or put it right; and in the meantime their particular ball will not increase the evil very much. Not fifty years ago it was the young beauties that were considered and looked after, and the gentlemen asked to an entertainment were asked with reference to the unmarried girls; for it was understood that any married women present would, of course, be wrapped up in their own husbands. Then a wife accepting attentions from one young man after another would have aroused the contempt and disapproval of every man and woman present.

Vanity in the first place leads young wives to flirting, but grosser motives soon follow. For whatever other experiences matrimony brings, it generally stimulates a woman’s love of money; and the married siren soon makes her “followers” understand that she is “a very practical little woman, and does not care for a sonnet, or a serenade, or a bouquet of fresh flowers.” A summer’s cruise in a fine yacht, a seat on a coach, an opera box, a jewel, dinners, drives, and luncheons, are the blackmail which the married flirt expects, in return for her sighs, sentiment, and advice.

It is indeed curious to note the change of fashion in this respect. Let any one turn over the novels of half a century ago, and he will see that the favorite plan for compromising a woman’s honor was to induce her to accept the loan of money, or the gift of jewels. If the unfortunate heroine did so, no novelist would have dared to offer an apology for her. But this age of luxury and laxity has exploded the scrupulous delicacy of the Evelinas and Cecilias of the old tales, and the splendidly free feminine Uhlans of our modern society laugh to scorn the prim modesty of the Richardsonian standard. They assert, if not in words yet by their actions, the right of a woman to make her fascinations serviceable to her.

Some married women contend that their flirtations are absolutely innocent friendships. But in all stations of society it is a dangerous thing for two people of the opposite sex to chant together the litany of the church of Plato. The two who could do it safely would be the very two who would never dream of such an imprudence. Those who enter into “friendships” of this kind, with what they think are the most innocent intentions, should sharply arrest themselves as soon as they are “talked about.” For in social judgments, the dictum that “people talked about generally get what they deserve” is true, however unjust it may appear to be.

Another class of married flirts scorn to make any apology, or any pretence of mere friendship. They stand upon the emancipation of women, and the right of one sex to as much liberty as the other. This kind of siren boldly says, “she does not intend to be a slave like her mother, and her grand-mother. She does not propose to tie herself, either to a house or a cradle.” She travels, she lives in yachts and hotels, and she does not include a nursery in her plans. She talks of elective affinities, natural emotions of the heart, and contrasts the opportunities of such conditions with the limitations and the monotony of domestic relations. She makes herself valueless for the very highest natural duties of womanhood, and then talks of her enfranchisement! Yes, she has her freedom, and what does it mean? More dresses and jewelry, more visits and journeys; while the whole world of parental duties and domestic tendernesses lies in ruins at her feet.

The relegation of the married flirt to her proper sphere and duties is beyond the power of any single individual. Society could make the necessary protest, but it does not; for if Society is anything, it is non-interfering. It looks well to it that the outside, the general public appearance of its members is respectable; with faults not found out it does not trouble itself. A charge must be definitely made before it feels any necessity to take cognizance of it. And Society knows well that these married sirens draw like magnets. Besides, each entertainer declares: “I am not my sister’s keeper, nor am I her Inquisitor or Confessor. If her husband tolerates the pretty woman’s vagaries, what right have I, what right has any one, to say a word about her?”

But it is a fact that, if Society frowned on wives who arrogate to themselves the privileges both of young girls and of wives, the custom would become stale and offensive. If it would cease to recognize young married women who are on the terms with their husbands described by Millamant in “The Way of the World,” – “as strange as if they had been married a long time, and as well bred as if they had never been married at all,” – young married women would behave themselves better. It is generally thought that Mr. Congreve wrote his plays for a very dissolute age; in reality, they seem to have been written for a decorous, rather strait-laced generation, if we compare it with our own.

Mothers-in-Law

Mothers-in-Law are the mothers for whom there is no law, no justice, no sympathy, nor yet that share of fair play which an average American is willing to grant, even to an open adversary. Every petty punster, every silly witling, considers them as a ready-made joke; and the wonder and the pity of it is that abuse so unmerited and so long continued has called forth no champions from that sex which owes so much to woman, in every relation of life.

The condition of mother-in-law is one full of pathos and self-abnegation, and all the reproach attached to it comes from those whose selfishness and egotism ought to render their testimony of small value. A young man, for instance, falls in love with a girl who appears to him the sum of all perfections, – perfections, partly inherited from, and partly cultivated by, the mother at whose side she has lived for twenty years. She is the delight of her mother’s heart, she fills all her hopes and dreams for the future; and the girl herself, believes that nothing can separate her from a mother so dear and so devoted.

While the man is wooing the daughter, this wondrous capability for an absorbing affection strikes him as a very pretty thing. In the first place, it keeps the mother on his side; in the second, he looks forward to supplying this capability with a strictly personal object. At this stage his future mother-in-law is a very pleasant person, for he is uncomfortably conscious of the Beloved One’s father and brothers. He is then thankful for any encouragement she may give him. He gladly takes counsel with her; flatters her opinions, makes her presents, and so works upon her womanly instincts concerning love affairs that she stands by his side when he has to “speak to papa,” and through her favor and tact the rough places are made smooth, and the crooked places plain. Until the marriage is over, and the longed-for girl his wife, there is no one so important in the lover’s eyes as the girl’s mother.

Suddenly all is changed. When the young people return from the bridal trip there is a different tone and a different atmosphere. The young husband is now in his own house, and spreading himself like a peacock in full feather. He thinks “mamma” too interfering. He resents the familiarity with which she speaks to his wife. He feels as if her speculation about their future movements was an impertinence. He says without a blush that her visit was “a bore.” And the bride, being flattered by his desire for no company but her own, admits that “dear mamma is fussy and effusive.” Both have forgotten the days in which the young husband was a great deal of a bore to his mother-in-law, – when indeed it was very hard for her to tolerate his presence; and both have forgotten how she, to secure their happiness, sacrificed her own wishes and prejudices.

How often does this poor mother go to see her child before she realizes she is a bore? How many snubs and heart-aches does she bear ere she comprehends the position? She hopes against despair. She weeps, and wipes her tears away; she tries again, only to be again wounded. Her own husband frets a little with her, and then with a touch of anger at his ungrateful child, advises the mother “to let her alone.” But by and by there is a baby, and she can no longer keep away. She has a world of loving cares about the child and its mother. She is sure no one can take her place now. She is very much mistaken. The baby is a new kind of baby; there has never been one quite such a perfect pattern before; and the parents – exalted above measure at the perfection they alone are responsible for – regard her pride and delight as some infringement of their new honors and responsibilities. Happiness has only hardened them; and after a little, the mother and the mother-in-law understands her loss, and humbly refrains from interfering. Or, if she has an imprudent tongue, she speaks unadvisedly with it, and her words bite home, and the “mother” is forgotten, and the “in-law” remains, to barb every ill-natured word and account for every selfish unkindness.

Of course, in a relationship which admits of endless varieties, this description fits only a certain number. But it is a very large number; for there are few families who will not be able to recall some such case among their members or their acquaintances. Still, many daughters do more virtuously, and cherish a loyal affection for their old home. If they are wise and loving and specially unselfish, they will likely carry their matrimonial bark safely through those narrow shallows which separate the two households. But the trouble is that newly married people are both selfish and foolish. They feel themselves to be the only persons of consequence, and think that all things ought to be arranged for their pleasure. The solemn majesty of the young wife’s housekeeping is not to be criticised, qualified, or inspected; the new-made householder does not believe that the “earth is the Lord’s,” or even the children of men’s; it is all his own. And their friends tacitly agree to smile at this egotism awhile, because all the world really does love a lover; and every one is willing to grant the bride and bridegroom some short respite from the dreary cares and every-day business of life.

Two points are remarkable in this persistent antagonism to the mother-in-law. The first is that the husband who is often specially vindictive against his wife’s mother has very little to say against her male relatives. If the girl he marries is motherless, he does not quarrel with his father-in-law; though he may be quite as interfering as any mother-in-law could be. Yet if the girl, instead of being motherless, is fatherless, the husband at once begins to show his love for his wife by a systematic disrespect towards her mother. Yet perhaps a month previously he had considered her a very amiable lady, he had shown her many courtesies, he had asked her advice about all the details of his marriage. What makes him, a little later, accuse her of every domestic fault? How is it that she has suddenly become “so self-opinionated”? Never before had he discovered that she treats his wife like a child, and himself as an appendage. And how does he manage to make his bride also feel that “dear mamma is trying, and so unable to understand things.” It is a mystery that ends, however, in the mother-in-law being made to feel that her new relative totally disapproves of her. The truth is, the lover was afraid of the men of his wife’s family before marriage. They might seriously have interfered with his intentions. After marriage he knows they will be civil to him for the sake of his wife. Then, the women of the family were useful to him before marriage, after it he can do without them. He has got the woman he was so eager to get by any means, and he wishes to have her entirely. A smile, or a word, or an act of kindness to any one else, is so much taken from his rights. He desires not only to usurp her present and her future, but also her past.

The other remarkable point is the unjust shifting of all the mother-in-law’s shortcomings to the shoulders of the wife’s mother; this is especially unjust, because not only the newspapers of the day, but also the private knowledge 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 include admiration for all within his kindred; nor will it, until the millennium makes all tempers perfect. And, again, a man does not like to be dragooned into a filial feeling for his wife’s family. Many a man would like his new relatives better if they left him with a sense of perfect freedom in the matter.

The main point is that men should put a stop to a traditional abuse that affects every woman in every household. They can do it! Many an honest, manly fellow would burn with shame if he would only consider how often he has not only permitted, but also joined in, the silly, unjust laughter which miserable punsters and negro minstrels and disappointed lovers and other incapables fling at the women of his own household. For if a man is married, or ever hopes to be married, his own mother is, or must be, a mother-in-law. If he has sisters their destiny will likely put them in the same position. The fairest young bride has the prospect before her; the baby daughter in the cradle may live to think her own mother a bore, or to think some other mother one, if there is not a better understanding about a relationship which is far indeed from being a laughable one. On the contrary, the initiation to it is generally a sacrifice, made with infinite heart-ache and anxiety, and with many sorrowful tears.