Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/322

300 love doth still so bend, incline and lead her, that notwithstanding she be in a heat still upon her travail, full of pains and after-throes, panting, trembling, and shaking for very anguish, yet she neglecteth not her sweet babe, nor windeth or shrinketh away from it; but she turneth toward it, she maketh to it, she smileth and laugheth upon it, she taketh it into her arms, she huggleth it in her bosom, and kisseth it full kindly: neither all this whiles gathereth she any fruits of pleasure or profit, but painfully (God wot) and carefully Now tell me (I pray you) what reward, recompense, and profit do women reap for all this trouble and painful hand about their little ones? None at all (surely) for the present, and as little in future expectance another day, considering their hopes are so far off, and the same so uncertain. The husbandman that diggeth and laboureth about his vine at the equinox in the spring, presseth grapes out of it and maketh his vintage at the equinox of the autumn. He that soweth his corn when the stars called Pleiades do couch and go down, reapeth and hath his harvest afterwards when they rise and appear again; kine calve, mares foal, hens hatch, and soon after there cometh profit of their calves, their colts and their chickens: but the rearing and education of a man is laborious, his growth is very slow and late; and whereas long it is ere he cometh to prove and make any shew of virtue, commonly most fathers die before that day. Neocles lived not to see the noble victory before Salanus that Themistocles his son achieved: neither saw Miltiades the happy day wherein Simon his son won the field at the famous battle near the river Eurynidon: Xantippus was not so happy as to hear Pericles his son out of the pulpit preaching and making orations to the people; neither was it the good fortune of Ariston to be at any of his son Plato's lectures and disputations in philosophy: the fathers of Euripides and Sophocles, two renowned poets, never knew of the victories which they obtained for pronouncing and rehearsing their tragedies in open theatre, they might hear them peradventure when they were little ones to stammer, to lisp, to spell and put syllables together, or to speak broken Greek, and that was all. But ordinary it is