Daughters, who are naturally and necessarily tied up to the mother's apron-string, suffer occasionally from too tight a strain; though certainly it is not the fault of the present day that girls are too closely fettered, too home-staying or subdued. Still, every now and then one comes across a matron who has crushed all individuality out of her family, and whose grown-up daughters are still children to her in moral go-carts and intellectual leading-strings. They may be the least attractive of their sex, but a mother of this kind has one fixed delusion respecting them--namely, that the world is full of wolves eager to devour her lambs, and that they are only safe when close to the maternal apron and browsing within an inch of the tether stake. These are the girls who become hopeless old maids. Men have an instinctive dread of the maternal apron-string. They do not want to marry a mother as well as a wife, and to live under a double dominion and a reduplicated opposition. It is all very well to say that a girl so brought up is broken in already, and therefore more likely to make a good wife than many others, seeing that it is only a transfer of obedience. That may do for slaves who cannot be other than slaves whoever is the master; but it does not do for women who, seeing their friends freer than themselves, reflect with grief and longing that, had fate so ordered it, they might have been free too. The chances here, as with the mothers' boys, are, that the girl kept too close to the apron-string during her spinsterhood goes all abroad so soon as she gets on the free ground of matrimony, and lets her liberty run into license. Or she keeps her old allegiance to her mother intact, and her husband is never more than the younger branch at best. Most likely he is a usurper, whom it is her duty to disobey in favour of the rightful ruler when they chance to come into collision.