I happen to know that this woman’s husband’s family think that “Charlie has a none-such of a wife,” and that they are all fond of her.

If tact and diplomacy are ever exercised, it must be in the management of relations-in-law.  The thought that so often the state is one of hatred, or, at best, tolerance, makes the position of all concerned strained and delicate.  To many a mother the term “mother-in-law” is a much-dreaded appellation.  A woman upon whom this doubtful honor has recently been laid, said to me: 

“I hope my boy will never set his wife against me by asking her to ’do things as his mother did.’  I shudder to think of it.  I want him to tell her that the mince and pumpkin pies, biscuits, muffins, and even gingerbread, made by his wife are vastly superior to any ever produced by his mother.  I would rather take the second place in my son’s affections than have my new daughter for one moment think of me as her ‘mother-in-law.’”

I believe that this is the sincere sentiment of more than one fond mother, as I am also sure that many a fond wife would rather have her husband loved by her own family than to receive so much affection herself.  She is sure of her position, but John is a dreadful “relation-in-law,” and it is hard to love such.  It is sad to think such a mother or wife makes a fatal mistake from the very start, and herself brings about the state of affairs she dreads.

The recognition of a fact often seems to make it doubly true.  The knowledge that relations-in-law are frequently relations-at-war, predisposes both parties to unjust judgment.  Did each determine to see all the good possible in the other, connections-by-marriage might become kin-at-heart.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A TIMID WORD FOR THE STEP-MOTHER.

At a luncheon party of a dozen women which I attended last winter, this very topic was introduced.  Strangely enough, there were present three women whose mothers had died while the children were still infants, and whose fathers had married again, and two women who were themselves step-mothers.  Each of the three who could not remember her own mother agreed that she who took her place had filled it so conscientiously that the child hardly felt the lack.  The two step-mothers confessed that they loved their husbands’ children as dearly as their own.  Said one woman: 

“When people speak to me of my step-daughter I have to stop and think which one of the children I did not bring into the world.  She is as dear to me as my own flesh and blood.”

After we had gleaned all the evidence of truth from the chaff to which we are sometimes treated, a lively member of the company remarked ruefully: 

“I declare, all that I have just heard makes me positively ashamed that I did not have a step-mother, or that there is no prospect as far as I can see into the dim future, of my ever becoming one.”