"Don't let her."
"How can I help it?"
"By keeping the peace with her."
"Oh, I've tried that before; I've done everything I could for her, and deferred to her, and ignored myself until I seemed to fade out of existence, but it didn't work."
"Oh, yes, it did, for it made her ten times as troublesome as before."
"It certainly did, but what do you mean?"
"I mean that a mother-in-law is like a child, in that she is spoiled by having her own way."
"But what can I do?"
"Walk calmly on, doing the best you can, but recognizing your own authority and dignity, and finally she will come to recognize it. Be mistress of your own household, and director of your own children--all this quietly and pleasantly, but without wavering, and in the end she will respect and probably admire you, though she will never think you do just right, or are just the woman who ought to have married her son."
"But I've always been in hopes of making her love me as she loves her own daughter."
"That is what every romantic woman starts out with, but by and by, in the storm and stress of domestic life, that ideal is cast overboard, as a struggling ship throws its extra cargo over the rail."
"Why is it, I wonder, a man never fights with his father-in-law. Men are said to be naturally pugnacious."
"That's a mistake, my dear; a man would go several miles any day to avoid a fuss; it is we women who delight in scraps. A man occasionally has a little set-to with the girl's father, before he gains his consent to the engagement, but once he's married, it's the old lady he has to train for, or I should say who trains for him, because as a general thing it is she who gives battle, not he. The real conflict, however, takes place between the two women--the wife and her mother-in-law. If you want to see 'de fur fly,' as the darkies say, you must always come over to the feminine side of the house. Then you'll have your fill of explanations, expostulations, and recriminations."
"Well, certainly I never had any trouble with my father-in-law."
"Trouble! Do you know what I'd do, if I had a troublesome father-in-law?"
"No--murder him?"
"Murder him, indeed! Woman, have you no mercantile instinct? That would be like killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Why, the first showman would take the old gentleman off my hands, and pay me a handsome price for him. You must know that a troublesome father-in-law is so rare that the public would flock to see him. But you couldn't get anything for a troublesome mother-in-law. There are too many families trying to get rid of them, at any price. The sale of parents-in-law is governed by the same laws as other commodities, and these interfering, mischief-making mothers-in-law have become a drug in the market."