“Where nothing is expected of the mother-in-law, she can expect nothing in return. I am reduced to an eating, drinking, sleeping non-entity. I once overheard Bessie tell a caller that I was getting queer. Maybe I am, for I certainly feel queer under present conditions. Neither responsibility nor authority rests on me. I am on the scrap pile, an unwilling supernumerary.
“But oh, Mr. Haiden, I am so much more fortunate than some mothers-in-law I know of! I know a poor old mother who is obliged to live with her son’s wife in the home that belongs to the daughter-in-law. And the poor old mother is told of this every day. The daughter-in-law is an unnatural, ungrateful tyrant, and she plays tyrant all the year ’round. And the son is obliged to take sides with his wife, for the sake of peace. When I talk to that poor old mother I feel that I ought to be thankful, and that my daughter-in-law is a saint; but she ought to consult me now and then on household matters. She ought to give me some of the responsibilities and cares. She should at least make me vice-president of the home, since she usurped the presidency. Two women can not live happily in the same house unless they share the cares and responsibilities, and the honors. Every young woman going into her mother-in-law’s home should be taught this fact. It would save many a tear and heartache on the part of the poor old mothers.”
BOB WHITE
Passing by a country graveyard one day last summer I noticed an old man throwing stones at a bird. When I asked him why he did so he stammered: “I—I thought it was a Bob White, but it was only a thrush. There is a Bob White comes here every day through the summer time and calls the one name I so bitterly despise, and I chase him away. I don’t want the dead to hear him call that name.”
I passed on, but at the first house west of the old country graveyard, where I stopped to get a drink, a woman told me the old man’s story. He was engaged to a beautiful young girl, but an Englishman came into the neighborhood, pretending to be very wealthy, and turned the girl’s head. She was attracted by his supposed wealth, and eloped with him to New York. Less than a year afterward her dead body was sent home for burial in the old home graveyard, her husband having deserted her a few months after their unholy marriage.
The Englishman’s name was Robert White. The old man I saw stoning the birds, had never married after losing his promised bride, and the neighbors say he acted very queerly from the day the girl ran away with the Englishman, and has been watching her grave ever since her body was brought home for burial. He imagines the quail is mocking him, or taunting the dead woman with the repetition of the man’s name who wronged both in the long ago.
Hark, I hear the Bob White call!
I wonder where he can be?
Ah, sitting on the old stone wall