The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small, wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many, would flow on, and the void would soon be filled.

ILITHYIA, the Greek goddess who presided over the travail of woman at childbirth, promoting or retarding the birth as the Fates might ordain.