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 Mexicans were greatly addicted to moral discourses, as may be seen from the work of Sahagun, whole pages of which are devoted to the quotation in full of the orations appropriate to particular occasions of public and private interest. Boys as a rule followed the profession of their father, while girls received a thorough training in the domestic arts, such as spinning and weaving and the preparation of food. The part played by the institutions Calmecac and Telpochcalli in the education of the young has already been mentioned.
Marriage took place at about the age of twenty in the case of men, girls being a trifle younger. Intermarriage was allowed between cousins, but forbidden in the case of nearer relatives. The service of female go-betweens was employed by the parents of the man, and it was not considered consonant with a proper dignity for the woman's family to show too much haste in consenting to the match. On the appointed day, selected owing to the auspicious nature of its sign, the go-between carried the bride to the house of the bridegroom, where, after offering incense, the two
