While the home discipline of children, like that in the public schools, was of a very severe type, the relations of the Aztec maiden to her parents, after she had arrived at maturity, were of the closest and tenderest description. They enjoined upon her, with loving solicitude for her well-being and felicity, simplicity of manners and conversation, personal neatness, modesty of demeanor, and reverence for her husband when she became a wife. They showed her an affection and consideration which were in conformity with the highest type of social culture, and in return were regarded and treated with respect and love.
When the maiden finally attained the dignity of wifehood, her condition was hardly changed. She received from her husband the utmost respect of demeanor, and she was--of course we are considering the women of the upper classes--freed from all obligation of service. She had maidens to wait upon her and to do the tasks of the household, over which she ruled much as did a feudal chatelaine in the days of chivalry in Europe; and a favorite amusement with the Aztec wives consisted in listening to their maidens rehearse traditionary tales and ballads. When there came to her the further dignity of motherhood, she was the recipient of congratulatory visits from her friends and neighbors--male as well as female--from whom she received gifts of dresses, ornaments, or flowers, in token of sympathy and regard. These visits of ceremony were regulated by a code, unwritten but as thoroughly understood and binding as that which regulates similar forms in our own social world. In short, the Aztec woman, whether as maiden, wife, or mother, received universal acknowledgment of her rightful place in the structure of society and was in almost all respects the peer of her Caucasian sister in status and indeed in civilization. Most of what has thus far been written is applicable to the women of the lower classes as well as to their richer and more cultured countrywomen, at least so far as concerns the estimation in which they were held and their place in the household and in their appropriate society. Of course, even as with us, the women of the lower classes labored; but their labors were as a rule not severe. The Aztecs were primarily an agricultural people, and their women assisted in the toil necessary to the tillage of the soil, but their labors were of the lighter kinds; they sowed the seed and husked the corn, but they did not reap or garner, while they would doubtless have rebelled in mass had they been required to undertake the more laborious tasks incident to irrigation or actual tillage. Even the slave women, though these of course were doomed to harder service than the wives and daughters of freemen, were not generally condemned to wearing toil. Indeed, the institution of slavery, except in the cases of prisoners taken in war,--a small class of slaves, since such prisoners were usually sacrificed to the gods,--was milder among the Aztecs than among any people of whom there is historical record; the slave could marry at will, could hold property, and could even possess slaves of his own, while, as has been already said, the child of a slave was independent of the status of his parent.
