The marriage of a loved daughter is an event expected and desired, but it is like a birth, a blessing accompanied by tremendous pain. Elect natures feel the pain, but do not show it, lest they should give pain to others, and never convert it into hate. Others, on the contrary, transform every drop of bitterness which they swallow into a feeling of vengeance, which they ruminate on for some time and hatch with cruel patience, to launch it against you when least you expect it. I may suppose you to be patient and good, to be an optimist in your philosophy; you will be deaf to the most mellifluous insinuations, you will say _Thank you_ when your foot is trodden on, and _Thank you_ for the rhubarb lozenge which will be offered you—in short, you will take the points from all the darts launched against you; but there will come a day in which patience, goodness, philosophy, will be scattered to the wind, and you, with so much repressed wrath, will burst out all at once, and placing yourself before your wife, will say: “There must be an end to all this; it must be either I or her!” The proverbs of all European languages, the satires of the poets, the wit of dramatists, have always agreed in compassionating the sons-in-law, and hurling darts against the mothers-in-law. This experience of many centuries has taught us that a good mother-in-law is very rare, and that in marriage she is an element most pregnant with danger, most fruitful in disaster. From all this we ought to learn two things: 1st. Before taking a wife to study the character of the future mother-in-law well, and to try and discover whether we shall find in her an angel or a harpy, an ally or an enemy. 2d. According to the result of our psychological inquiry we ought to declare most decidedly that we will not live with the family of the wife, nor take her mother into our house. If the chosen one of our heart really loves us she will consider this decision of ours quite just, and will help us to gain the victory if a battle there must be. In your own case do not pass it over, do not cede a hand’s breadth of land; keep firm in your intention, being quite convinced that by so doing you will make your own happiness, that of your wife, and of the new family. Between mother-in-law and son-in-law there ought to be affection and respect; a current of benevolent, delicate, and gentle sentiment ought to pass between them, but at a distance, a most respectful distance; so that no sparks, shocks, much less lightning flashes, may appear. Affection, not intimacy; respect, not subjection. ⁂ But the complications do not finish with the problem of the mother-in-law. There is the other problem which arises when the candidate for marriage has lost his first wife, or the woman her first husband, or both of them their first partners, with or without children on one side or on both sides. The possible combinations are these: