had no doubt about it himself, that misery first came in with mothers-in-law, who he considered, to have been sent on earth to try the resignation of Man, and to prevent the over-population of the world, by setting them up as warnings to persons about to marry--in the same way as the horrors of dyspepsia and gout were designed, simply as a means of keeping persons from the excesses of the table. It was all very well to talk about Job’s extraordinary patience, but what he wanted to know was, had Job ever been scourged with a mother-in-law, because if not, it was very clear that his powers of endurance had not been taxed to the full. And he had the wickedness to say, that it was all a pack of rubbish and a cruel imposition for the law to declare that a man couldn’t marry his grandmother--or his mother--or his wife’s mother--or his wife’s sister--for the plain truth was, that when a man married a woman, he married her whole family. But I couldn’t put up with him any longer, when he protested, that if he had his way, he would have an act passed for the total abolition of all mothers-in-law, and insert a clause, that whenever a couple were joined together in holy matrimony, immediately after the wedding breakfast, the mother of the bride should offer herself up as a willing sacrifice, to perfect the happiness of the bridegroom, in the same way as the Hindoo widows immolated themselves out of regard to the husband. On which I very properly told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself to talk in that way of those poor benighted savages, and I begged that he would hold his tongue if he couldn’t find anything better to talk about, saying that his trip out of town seemed to have turned his head; and asking him how he himself would like what he had proposed, if, supposing I was to be blessed with a daughter, and had to be put out of the way when she got married, all for the sake of completing the happiness, as he called it, of some big-whiskered fellow, that I didn’t care twopence about. But it was useless speaking to him, for he only said that he should be delighted to see me setting so good an example.