The birth of a child was awaited with great expectancy, and the prospective mother was carefully guarded from all material and supernatural dangers. The steam-bath was an important institution in promoting ease of delivery, and invocations were made to the gods presiding over birth and creation. The child born, the midwife raised the triumph-cry of the warriors, since the woman who bore a child was regarded as the feminine counterpart of such, and congratulatory visits were paid by friends and relations. A fire was lighted in the house and kept burning for four days; great care was observed that no light from this should be taken outside the house, since it was believed that the luck of the household would follow it, and a number of other precautions were observed. The horoscope of the infant, a most important matter, was cast by a priest, and a day appointed for the baptismal ceremony, a lucky date being carefully selected. This ceremony consisted in sprinkling the infant with water, and giving it a name. Although the water was supposed to have the effect of purifying the child and fortifying it against the perils of life, yet the Mexicans held no doctrine of “original sin,” in fact, the midwife addressed the newly born in the terms, “When you were created and sent into this world you were made without stain, and your father and mother Quetzalcoatl formed you even as a precious stone and as a jewel of gold of great price.” In the case of a boy, miniature weapons were prepared for the ceremony, as an indication that he was born a warrior, while for a girl a small set of weaving-utensils was made, the symbols of her future status as a housewife. Sahagun states that some ancestral name was given by the midwife, and other accounts allege that the name was first pronounced by certain small children invited for the purpose. Calendrical names, taken from the child’s birthday, were very common, especially among the Mixtec, but names of animals were often conferred upon boys, of flowers upon girls. Animal names were especially common among the Tarascans. Children, no matter what their rank, were usually nursed by the mother for three or four years, but in cases of inability, a wet-nurse was carefully chosen. Children were educated with great care and according to certain rules. One manuscript shows the progress of children of both sexes, together with the number of bread-cakes allowed for their diet, from the ages of three to fifteen (Fig. 29). The punishments applicable to each year are also shown, starting with a warning, and proceeding to pricking with aloe-spines, beating, holding over a fire on which pepper had been thrown, and tying hand and foot. Parents were in the habit of preaching long homilies to their children, which, however interesting they may be as illustrating the extremely high moral tone of Mexican educational ideas, must have been excessively boring to the child. The