Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/52

 The Legal Status of the Mother-in-Law. power to bestow amulets which will turn aside any bullet, and render the wearer im pervious to any of the enemy's weapons. It is true that wearers of the charmed insignia have been shot by bullets from the Crag or Mauser, but the victims uttered the ex clamation, "Ah! ah!" when the bullet struck him, which broke the charm, the wearer of which must preserve silence. The followers of Papa Isio seem to be the destitute, the discontented, the outlaw, per haps refugees from the insurgent bands of neighboring islands, and from the robber bands that have, during the past two years, roamed over the island. They seem to be

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controlled largely by an agrarian sentiment, believing that if the large sugar haciendas are broken up, the land will be divided into small holdings for the benefit of the people. To this end they endeavor to discourage the planters by swooping down on the planta tions, destroying the cane, and burning the sugar mills. Great loss has been sustained by some of the large sugar raisers by these incursions, especially by the Spanish land owners, against whom their attempts seem particularly directed, and who, for some reason, appear to have incurred their special enmity.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW. I UNDERSTAND that it has been finally decided by the Supreme Court of this State that the relation which existed between the whale and Jonah was that of landlord and tenant; and there are a number of very respectable authorities who seem satis fied to put Jonah and the mother-in-law on the same footing. With this I cannot agree. While it is true that many a man looks upon his mother-in-law as a sort of Jonah, that pught to be expelled from the bosom of his family and sent elsewhere to lay down the Gospel, still there are important differences between the two cases. In the first place, a man's mother-in-law enters his house on her own invitation, whereas Jonah was taken in and against his will. In the second place Jonah's entry was preceded by a violent storm, whereas in the case of the mother-inlaw the storm usually follows. In the third

place, Jonah was cast out by the whale after a few days without even the formality of a notice to quit, whereas there is not a case on record where a man ever successfully got rid of his mother-in-law. And finally, the son-in-law is not a whale, but a very small fish, in the presence of his mother-in-law. Because of the ill-feeling sometimes, unfor tunately, existing between the two, some have thought that she sustained her position in the family by a sort of feudal tenure, while others have put her down as a tenantat-will, and this latter is possibly correct, it being understood that the will is her own. But whatever her legal status may be, it is now well settled that the mother-in-law is one of the ordinary hazards of the matrimonial enterprise, and therefore an assumed risk.— Charles N. Travous, before Illinois State Bar Association.