Put your own mother--or daughter--in the place of the offender, and act according to the light thrown upon the subject by this shifting of positions.

Say to yourself--"This woman means well, but she does not know me yet well enough to understand just how to put things in the way to which I have been accustomed.

She loves John so well that she seems unjust or inconsiderate to me.

She could not, in the eyes of John's wife, have a better excuse for hasty speech or harsh action." The love you both bear this same oft-perplexed John should be at once solvent and cement, melting hardness, and uniting seemingly antagonistic elements.
Above all things, as John's wife, never criticise his mother to him.
If he sympathizes with you, he is disloyal to his mother; if not, you consider him unfeeling, and immediately accuse him of "taking sides" against you.

Think for one moment of your own boy, perhaps still a mere baby.