Do you think, then, that goodly children would not result from such formal unitings? For answer you would need but to look at the rosy, heavy little cupids which the mothers of the place carried or led by the hand. Every one of those mothers would have insisted that their little ones were the plumpest, the whitest, and the healthiest children possible. Another local custom was to make a lark-pie as soon as spring came in. Without it spring would not have been spring at all, for observances of this kind comprised the whole life, the whole scientific knowledge, of the inhabitants, all of whose joys and sorrows were bound up with Oblomovka, and whose hearts beat high at the anticipation of such local rites and feasts and ceremonies. Yet no sooner had they christened, married, or buried an individual than they forgot both the latter and his (or her) fate, and relapsed into their usual apathy until aroused by a new occasion--by a baptism, a wedding, or other happening of the kind. Directly a child was born the parents made it their first care to perform over the little one every ceremony prescribed by decorum, and then to follow up the christening with a banquet. Thereafter the child’s bringing up began according to a system dictated by the mother and the nurse for his healthy development, and for his protection from cold, from the evil eye, and from sundry other inimical influences. Indeed, no pains were spared to keep the youngster in good appetite and spirits. Also as soon as he was able to fend for himself, and a nurse had become a superfluity, his mother would be seized with a desire to procure for him a helpmeet as strong and as ruddy as himself; whereupon there would ensue a further epoch of rites and feastings, until eventually a marriage had been arranged. Always this consummation represented the epitome of life’s incidents, and as soon as it was reached there began a repetition of births, rites, and banquets, until, finally, a funeral ceremony interrupted the festivities--though not for long, since other faces would appear to succeed the old ones, and children would become youths and maidens, and plight their troth to one another, and marry one another, and produce individuals similar to themselves. Thus life stretched out in a continuous, uniform chain which broke off imperceptibly only when the tomb had been reached.