Eu. Perhaps so, but where is your little Boy?

Fa. In the next Room.

Eu. What is he doing there, cooking the Pot?

Fa. You Trifler, he’s with his Nurse.

Eu. What Nurse do you talk of?  Has he any Nurse but his Mother?

Fa. Why not?  It is the Fashion.

Eu. You quote the worst Author in the World, Fabulla, the Fashion; ’tis the Fashion to do amiss, to game, to whore, to cheat, to be drunk, and to play the Rake.

Fa. My Friends would have it so; they were of Opinion I ought to favour myself, being young.

Eu. But if Nature gives Strength to conceive, it doubtless gives Strength to give Suck too.

Fa. That may be.

Eu. Prithee tell me, don’t you think Mother is a very pretty Name?

Fa. Yes, I do.

Eu. And if such a Thing were possible, would you endure it, that another Woman should be call’d the Mother of your Child?

Fa. By no Means.

Eu. Why then do you voluntarily make another Woman more than half the Mother of what you have brought into the World?

Fa. O fy! Eutrapelus, I don’t divide my Son in two, I am intirely his Mother, and no Body in the World else.

Eu. Nay, Fabulla, in this Case Nature herself blames you to your Face.  Why is the Earth call’d the Mother of all Things?  Is it because she produces only?  Nay, much rather, because she nourishes those Things she produces:  that which is produced by Water, is fed by Water.  There is not a living Creature or a Plant that grows on the Face of the Earth, that the Earth does not feed with its own Moisture.  Nor is there any living Creature that does not feed its own Offspring.  Owls, Lions, and Vipers, feed their own Young, and does Womankind make her Offspring Offcasts?  Pray, what can be more cruel than they are, that turn their Offspring out of Doors for Laziness, not to supply them with Food?

Fa. That you talk of is abominable.

Eu. But Womankind don’t abominate it.  Is it not a Sort of turning out of Doors, to commit a tender little Infant, yet reaking of the Mother, breathing the very Air of the Mother, imploring the Mother’s Aid and Help with its Voice, which they say will affect even a brute Creature, to a Woman perhaps that is neither wholsome in Body, nor honest, who has more Regard to a little Wages, than to your Child?

Fa. But they have made Choice of a wholsome, sound Woman.

Eu. Of this the Doctors are better Judges than yourself.  But put the Case, she is as healthful as yourself, and more too; do you think there is no Difference between your little tender Infant’s sucking its natural and familiar Milk, and being cherish’d with Warmth it has been accustomed to, and its being forc’d to accustom itself to those of a Stranger?  Wheat being sown in a strange Soil, degenerates into Oats or small Wheat.  A Vine being transplanted into another Hill, changes its Nature.  A Plant when it is pluck’d from its Parent Earth, withers, and as it were dies away, and does in a Manner the same when it is transplanted from its Native Earth.