On the whole I am glad our family is no larger than it is.  It is a very excellent family as families go, but the infinite capacity of each individual in it for making trouble, and adding to complications already sufficiently complex, surpasses anything that has ever before come into my personal or professional experience.  If I handle my end of this miserable affair without making a break of some kind or other, I shall apply to the Secretary of State for a high place in the diplomatic service, for mere international complications are child’s-play compared to this embroglio in which Goward and Aunt Elizabeth have landed us all.  I think I shall take up politics and try to get myself elected to the legislature, anyhow, and see if I can’t get a bill through providing that when a man marries it is distinctly understood that he marries his wife and not the whole of his wife’s family, from her grandmother down through her maiden aunts, sisters, cousins, little brothers, et al., including the latest arrivals in kittens.  In my judgment it ought to be made a penal offence for any member of a man’s wife’s family to live on the same continent with him, and if I had to get married all over again to Maria—­and I’d do it with as much delighted happiness as ever—­I should insist upon the interpolation of a line in the marriage ceremony, “Do you promise to love, honor, and obey your wife’s relatives,” and when I came to it I’d turn and face the congregation and answer “No,” through a megaphone, so loud that there could be no possibility of a misunderstanding as to precisely where I stood.

If anybody thinks I speak with an unusual degree of feeling, I beg to inform him or her, as the case may be, that in the matter of wife’s relations I have an unusually full set, and, as my small brother-in-law says when he orates about his postage-stamp collection, they’re all uncancelled.  Into all lives a certain amount of mother-in-law must fall, but I not only have that, but a grandmother-in-law as well, and maiden-aunt-in-law, and the Lord knows what else-in-law besides.  I must say that as far as my mother-in-law is concerned I’ve had more luck than most men, because Mrs. Talbert comes pretty close to the ideal in mother-in-legal matters.  She is gentle and unoffending.  She prefers minding her own business to assuming a trust control of other people’s affairs, but her mother—­well, I don’t wish any ill to Mrs. Evarts, but if anybody is ambitious to adopt an orphan lady, with advice on tap at all hours in all matters from winter flannels to the conversion of the Hottentots, I will cheerfully lead him to the goal of his desires, and with alacrity surrender to him all my right, title, and interest in her.  At the same time I will give him a quit-claim deed to my maiden-aunt-in-law—­not that Aunt Elizabeth isn’t good fun, for she is, and I enjoy talking to her, and wondering what she will do next fills my days with a living interest, but I’d like her better if she belonged in some other fellow’s family.