And for myself I have often contemplated with wonder and delight the peculiar adaptation of the female body for nursing infants. How aptly, becomingly and gracefully, do even little girls carry infants in their bosom? And with what appropriate gestures do mothers dandle their infants, especially when the crying babe is to be pacified or quieted so as to be laid in the cradle? Only tell a man to do these same things and he will set about it as an elephant would attempt to dance; so awkward are his motions, if he has only to touch a babe with his finger, to say nothing about all those other offices and attentions which a mother only can perform. Whoever therefore rightly views and estimates the sacred matter of marriage will receive all these offices and services of the woman as signs and proofs of the blessing of the Lord, by which God testifies that the female sex, though thus severely punished on account of their original sin, are very dear to him and his peculiar care. Wherefore let these meditations suffice concerning the first part of the divine curse on the original sin of Eve. The other part of the curse lies in the particulars of the marriage union. If Eve had not sinned, her childbirth would not only have been without any pain, but even her union with her husband would have been most pure and utterly free from all shame. There would have been no more shame attached to those connubial circumstances than there is in a man's taking his meal with his wife and conversing with her at the dinner-table. The bringing up of children also would have been most easy and full of pleasure. But all these blessings were lost by the sin of the fall, and in their place are endured by the woman all those too well-known evils of pain and labor in carrying the child, bringing it forth and bringing it up. Wherefore just as a graceful maiden weaves a beautiful chaplet from the flowers of the garden and bears it on her head, not only without any molestation but with the greatest pleasure and the greatest pride; so, if Eve had not sinned, she would have borne her child in her womb not only free from distress or inconvenience, but with the utmost pleasure and pride. Whereas now, in addition to all those pains of bearing the child and giving it birth, she has rendered herself subject to the power of her husband; while before she was wholly free and in no sense inferior to the man, and was an equal partaker of all the endowments bestowed by God on him.