She, poor soul, has had a terrible time, and no one until now has said a good word for her. The red-nosed comedian of the music-hall has used her for his most gross vulgarities, sure that whenever he mentions her name he will raise guffaws from the gallery, and evoke shrieks of ill-natured merriment from young women in the pit. In the pantomimes the man dressed up as a woman indulges in long monologues upon his mother-in-law as the source of all domestic unhappiness, as the origin of all quarrels between husbands and wives, as the greatest nuisance in modern life, and so long as he patters about the mother-in-law the audience enjoys itself vastly. It is idle to pretend that the mother-in-law is a blessing in a small household. I am bound to admit that the success of the rednosed comedian who uses her as his text is due to the truth which lies hidden beneath his absurdity. He raises roars of laughter because the people who make up his audience realize that he is giving a touch of humor to something which is a grim tragedy, and according to the psychology of humor this is irresistibly comic, just as the most primitive and laughter-compelling jokes deal with corpses, and funerals, and death made ridiculous. They have suffered from their own mothers-in-law, those elderly women who sit in the corner with watchful eyes upon the young wives, those critics of their sons’ marriages, those eavesdroppers of the first quarrel, and of all the quarrels that follow the first, those oracles of unwelcome wisdom, whose advice about household affairs, about the way of dealing with the domestic servants, with constant references to _their_ young days, are a daily exasperation to young married women. All that is painfully true. In many cases the mother-in-law becomes so terrible an incubus in small households that domestic servants leave with unfailing regularity before their month is “up,” husbands make a habit of being late at the office, and wives are seriously tempted to take to drink. But what of the mother-in-law herself? Is _she_ to be envied? Did she willingly become a mother-in-law? Alas, her tragedy is as great as that of the young wife upon whose nerves she gets so badly, as great as that of the young husband who finds his home-life insufferable because of her presence. For the mother-in-law is a prisoner of fate. She is the unwanted guest. She is dependent upon the charity of those who find her a daily nuisance. During the days of her own married life she devoted herself to her husband and children, stinted and scraped for them, moulded them according to her ideals of righteousness, exacted obedience to her motherly commands, and was sure of their love. Then, one day, death knocked at the door, and brought black horses into the street. After that day, when her man was taken from her, she became dependent upon her eldest son, but did not yet feel the slavery of the dependence.