ed. She
is the poster attached to the matrimonial magazine which inspires
would-be purchasers with awe. Many an engaged girl confides to her best
friend that her fiance's mother is "an old cat." She usually goes still
further, and gives jealousy as the cause of it.

No right-minded mother was ever jealous of the woman her son chose for
his wife. But she has seen how marriage changes men and naturally fears
the result. The altar is the grave of many a boy's love for his mother.
Neither of the women most intimately concerned is blind to the impending
possibilities; it is only man who cannot see.

[Sidenote: One in a Thousand]

There are some girls who realise what it means, but they are few and far
between. One in a thousand, perhaps, will openly acknowledge her debt to
the woman who for twenty-five or thirty years has given her best thought
to the man she is about to marry.

Is he strong and active, healthy and finely moulded? It is his mother's
care for the first sixteen years of his life. It is the result of her
anxious days and of many a sleepless night, while the potential man was
racked with fever and childish ills. His chivalrous devotion to the girl
he loves is wholly due to his mother's influence. His clean and
open-hearted manliness is a free gift to her, from the woman now
characterised as "an old cat."

It is seldom that the mother receives credit for his virtues, but she is
invariably blamed for his faults. Too many women expect a man to be cut
out by their pattern. The supreme mental achievement is the ability to
judge other people by their own standards, and a crank is not
necessarily a person whose rules of life and conduct do not coincide
with our own.

[Sidenote: The Thirst for Power]

To this thirst for power may be traced all of woman's vanity. It is
commonly supposed that she dresses to please others, but she often
values fine raiment principally because it shows how much her husband
thinks of her. If a man's coat is shiny at the seams and he postpones
the new one that his wife may have an extra hat, she is delicately
flattered by this unselfish tribute to her charm.

From a single root vanity spreads and flowers until its poisonous blooms
affect all social life. A woman becomes vain of her house, her rugs, her
tapestries, her jewels, horses, and even of the livery of her footman.
The things which should be valued for their intrinsic beauty and the
pleasure-giving quality, which is not by an