him as soon as they
have heard his story, and their familiarity with the long names assures
him that they thoroughly understand his case.

The reader will have no difficulty in believing that the laws regarding
ill health were frequently evaded by the help of recognised fictions,
which every one understood, but which it would be considered gross ill-
breeding to even seem to understand. Thus, a day or two after my arrival
at the Nosnibors', one of the many ladies who called on me made excuses
for her husband's only sending his card, on the ground that when going
through the public market-place that morning he had stolen a pair of
socks. I had already been warned that I should never show surprise, so I
merely expressed my sympathy, and said that though I had only been in the
capital so short a time, I had already had a very narrow escape from
stealing a clothes-brush, and that though I had resisted temptation so
far, I was sadly afraid that if I saw any object of special interest that
was neither too hot nor too heavy, I should have to put myself in the
straightener's hands.

Mrs. Nosnibor, who had been keeping an ear on all that I had been saying,
praised me when the lady had gone. Nothing, she said, could have been
more polite according to Erewhonian etiquette. She then explained that
to have stolen a pair of socks, or "to have the socks" (in more
colloquial language), was a recognised way of saying that the person in
question was slightly indisposed.

In spite of all this they have a keen sense of the enjoyment consequent
upon what they call being "well." They admire mental health and love it
in other people, and take all the pains they can (consistently with their
other duties) to secure it for themselves. They have an extreme dislike
to marrying into what they consider unhealthy families. They send for
the straightener at once whenever they have been guilty of anything
seriously flagitious--often even if they think that they are on the point
of committing it; and though his remedies are sometimes exceedingly
painful, involving close confinement for weeks, and in some cases the
most cruel physical tortures, I never heard of a reasonable Erewhonian
refusing to do what his straightener told him, any more than of a
reasonable Englishman refusing to undergo even the most frightful
operation, if his doctors told him it was necessary.

We in England never shrink from telling our doctor what is the matter
with us