The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1891-04-03
JACKS MOTHER-IN-LAW.
The Pathetic Tale Of a Victim Of
an Old Joke

Jacks mothcr-in-law was coming 10
make them u visit. Jack had married
Alice down in the country. where he
had gone one summer for the fishing
He had been SO much in love with
Alice that he had not paid much atten-
ton TO her mother during their court
ship; and, to tell the truth. he had al
most forgotten about her since. She
seemed to Jack a good old soul, but
rather tireSone and pOlly. Now. there
was nothing polSy about Jacks set
Even the old women whom he knew
were ''up-and-a-cOning, as he used to
say, SO Alice's mother with her quiet
ways and almost slavish devotion to
her pretty daughter had impressed him
more as an adjunct 10 Alice than any
thing else. And now she was coming
10 visit them. He had not thought of
her since five months before, when he
had made some excuse to get out of &c
companying Alice down to see her
Alice was one of those selfish little
women who often make the most de-
voted of wives Just as her mother
had worshiped and waited upon her
she adored and pctted Jack but there
was no room in her heart for any one
clse-except her baby. They had been
married q year now, and 4 little Jack
had rece ntly come to them-a red-faced,
bald-headed baby-but Alice WAS very
proud of him, and She wrote for his
grandmother to come and see him.
.,acH was the best-hearted fellow in
the world, but he had been brought up
very differently from these simple coun-
try people. Sometimes he was little
bored even by Alice, although he loved
her dearly; but her mother! he was
sure he could not stand that. and SO he
planned to b. at home aS little rs posi-
bic during her stay.
The gentle old lady felt strange and
out of place in Alice's home. The busy
city doctor, the pompous nurse, the
servants We're all SO different from the
people she had known, and Jack-she
was terribly in awe of Jack. Alice was
full of plans and projects for the baby,
and her mother was left great deal to
herself. The poor old lady strayed
about lonely and homesicll in the great
rooms, feeling that they all, even
Alice, seemed like strangers To her-an
but little Jack Babies are babies rich
or poor, city or country-and she had
nursed good many of them in her day
and she did not feel shy with little
Jack. And he was part hers-her little
grandson. She wished that they would
send the nurse away and let her care
for him. She held him in her arms and
rocked him and crooned an old song in
Il cracked little voice, quite forgetting
that the dignifed nurse was in the
room. And the nurses heart softened
toward the dear old lady as she heard
the song-for her own mother had sung
just such songs over her years before
l. L..
of between seasons for the funny men
on the newspapers-that is, too late for
the annual ice Jokes, aid q little early
for the ones about the coal-dealer-so
they ran in all the old mother-in-law
stories Of the last decade Alice's
mother read the daily papers from end
to end There was much in them that
she neither liked nor understood, but
reading helped to pass the time, and
she had so much time. She had always
subscribed for the little sheet that had
come cut at Green's Corners every
Satur lay for forty years, but that was
purely local Another man had once
bid for trade there, but old Johnson,
the Ed" had told him that he had
furnished the brains for that town and
had set his own type for forty years
and that neither his brains nor his
fingers showed any signs of giving out
Tor some time yet So the Bulletin
went on in the old way, giving the
deaths and marriages and town topics,
and the mother-in-law joke had never
penetrated to its columns; and thus it
came that to one reader these para
graphs were a novelty.
She pondered much over them, poor
woman She knew that there were
such women-Andy Clumm's y?ife down
at the Corners was a terror; and the
report was that Joe James mother-in-
law made it SO hot for Joe that he had
to leave. But then Andy was shiftless
and Joe was drunkard. It seemed
cruel to her that the men who wrote
the papers rated all mothers-in-law
with such as they. and she grew so SEN
sitive about her own relation to him
that she hardly dared address Jack lest
he think her meddler.
Jack read these funny stories too and
the fellows jolSed him, and he began to
pose to them as a man with a mother
in-law, for men usually like to pose as
something and he was tired of being
simply good fellow" So he began
to take a great many of his dinners
downtown and stay out late at night,
telling Alice and her mother that his
business worried him terribly and
needed his constant attention. He
didn't lose any flesh over these business