Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-09
MOTHER-IN -IN.LAW

HN HEATRICAL censors have con-
demned the motherin-law joke,
Il and it is not improbable it will
be excluded from press as well as from
stage, The proprietor Of a big variety
circuit has announced jokes against
mothers-in-law will be banished. Thus
declines and falls the mother-in-law
joke, and the champion of Wife's
mamma has received so many letters
of thanks he has not been able to an
swer more than a small proportion of
them.
The mother-in-law joke is one of the
shortly before the flood and it's Oft
repetition was one Of the provocatiyes
of that catastrophe. Persistent moth
er-in-law jolesmiths were among the
causes OF the fact the Lord repented
he had made man. We don't know
the name of the bold post-diluvian who
had the audacity to revive the joke
after it had been submerged by the
waters Of the food. We think it would
have been well if it had been left inn
bedded in the ooze, then modern geolo-
gists would have found 1t in a fossil
lied condition and would have given
it a name like an Indian war whoop,
and it would have been respectable,
But the joke marched out Of the Ark
as robust as Noah himself, and down
the long centuries no matter where
man wandered or what he did, the
mother-in-law joke abode with him.
Did he reclaim new territories? 10,
the mother-in-law joke came up with
| the first spring crop. Did he explore
new lands? He found the mother-in-
law joke had been cultivated by the
aborigines.
once upon a time there was great
explorer with a world-renoWned name.
He was a member of seventy learned
societies and forty or fifty clubs. He
had so many university degrees that
he had to pack them in a specially
made Saratoga trunk. Like many
other explorers he was also an arCheol-
ogfst. Whenever he found new coun-
| try he proceeded to prove it was an
unusually old country. Well, one day
!
all covered with alluring ruins, which
made fine photographs. After a super
| fetal examination he began to dig, and
down in the polycolinthic strata, on a
! geological mezzanine floor, he stumbled
| across a chastely Illustrated rock of
the propolywiIIferous era. With in
finite pains he uncovered it, and IS ii
was much too heavy for him to carry
he concluded to sell it to the British
| government or some other oasymark
! that had been stung for Egyptian obe-
| isks ana such like junk.
A warship was sent for the rock and
it was taken TO the cuneiform room OF
the British museum, where six learned
men received $1,000 apiece per annum
for five years while they were deciph-
ering it, And the inscription they
! found read as follows: "The mother of
| the wife of Conocthes the XIV being
about to visit him, he invoketh the god
Anubis to tie her tongue until after
| that visit and lest she should tarry
! too long to send a large rat into her
bedroom to plague her
Beyond establishing the antiquity OF
/ the mother-in-law joke, and the fact
/ it was as humorous CD forty or fifty
/ centuries ago as it is today, the eXpe
dition added nothing to the sum of hui
man knowledge. However, the moth
er-in-law of Conocthes had her revenge
on her Iibeler; and the antiquity Of the
silly joke which has been blacklisted
by the variety shows was established
beyond reasonable doubt-if indeed
anyone had ever doubted it.