leasure. 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 k