as
yet the sculptor has not been able to complete it. There has been no Act to
repress statues that are intended for private consumption, but as I have said,
the custom is falling into desuetude.
    Returning to Erewhonian customs in connection with death, there is one which
I can hardly pass over. When anyone dies, the friends of the family write no
letters of condolence, neither do they attend the scattering, nor wear mourning,
but they send little boxes filled with artificial tears, and with the name of
the sender painted neatly upon the outside of the lid. The tears vary in number
from two to fifteen or sixteen, according to degree of intimacy or relationship;
and people sometimes find it a nice point of etiquette to know the exact number
which they ought to send. Strange as it may appear, this attention is highly
valued, and its omission by those from whom it might be expected is keenly felt.
These tears were formerly stuck with adhesive plaster to the cheeks of the
bereaved, and were worn in public for a few months after the death of a
relative; they were then banished to the hat or bonnet, and are now no longer
worn.
    The birth of a child is looked upon as a painful subject on which it is
kinder not to touch; the illness of the mother is carefully concealed until the
necessity for signing the birth-formula (of which hereafter) renders further
secrecy impossible, and for some months before the event the family live in
retirement, seeing very little company. When the offence is over and done with,
it is condoned by the common want of logic; for this merciful provision of
nature, this buffer against collisions, this friction which upsets our
calculations but without which existence would be intolerable, this crowning
glory of human invention whereby we can be blind and see at one and the same
moment, this blessed inconsistency, exists here as elsewhere; and though the
strictest writers on morality have maintained that it is wicked for a woman to
have children at all, inasmuch as it is wrong to be out of health that good may
come, yet the necessity of the case has caused a general feeling in favour of
passing over such events in silence, and of assuming their non-existence except
in such flagrant cases as force themselves on the public notice. Against these
the condemnation of society is inexorable, and if it is believed that the
illness has been dangerous and protracted, it is almost impossible for a woman
to recover her former position in society.
    The above conventions struck me as arbitrary and cruel, but they put a stop
to many