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 raging fires, with no escape save through flames, and over hot fagots, which will leave him scarred for life.

Sometimes the wife is in the wrong.  Sometimes a man marries a woman who is so narrow and so selfish and so jealous that she begrudges the husband’s mother her son’s affection.  But I must affirm that, in my observation of humanity, I have seen but one such wife, where I have seen ten jealous and unreasonable mothers.

And with what pleasure and admiration I recall the few beautiful and noble mothers-in-law I have known!  I can count them on the fingers of one hand without including the thumb.  I mean mothers of sons.