steps taken in the bringing up of the children. One goes to the war, with his father, to learn the use of arms and to be courageous; another carries a small pack upon his back to market with his father; the little girls are early taught to spin and weave.
They abhorred a lie, and the child that told one had its lips pricked with a thorn of the aloe; if it persisted in lying, its lip was slightly split. Girls were instructed to remain at home, and if prone to walk about, their feet were tied. These Aztec fathers understood the beneficial effect of a "dose of birch," and in one of the paintings is a representation of a loving parent holding a rod over his son's back. If the boys were very refractory they were held over the smoke of burning paper until nearly suffocated. They were obliged at all times to sleep upon a hard bed, a mat spread on the floor, and to eat the plainest food.
At the seminaries, the priests seem to have had it all their own way with the boys, pricking them with aloes thorns and throwing firebrands at their heads if they were disobedient. It was not all a pastime, going to school in those days. Corporal punishment, as the Aztecs understood it, meant something more than a few strokes of a ferule! In one of the paintings we see a naughty boy of twelve, bound hand and foot; and a bad girl was obliged to rise in the night and sweep the house—no great task, by the way, as the houses of the poorer classes consisted of only a single room. Between thirteen and fifteen, the boys brought wood from the mountains, made trips across the lakes in canoes, and supplied the family with fish; the girls ground corn, did the cooking and weaving.
Schools were established for children of either sex; they were always kept apart; they were hardly allowed to speak to one another. In the colleges, the boys and girls re-
