concealing them? In their
eagerness to stamp out disease, these people overshot their mark; for people had
become so clever at dissembling - they painted their faces with such consummate
skill - they repaired the decay of time and the effects of mischance with such
profound dissimulation - that it was really impossible to say whether anyone was
well or ill till after an intimate acquaintance of months or years. Even then
the shrewdest were constantly mistaken in their judgments, and marriages were
often contracted with most deplorable results, owing to the art with which
infirmity had been concealed.
    It appeared to me that the first step towards the cure of disease should be
the announcement of the fact to a person's near relations and friends. If anyone
had a headache, he ought to be permitted within reasonable limits to say so at
once, and to retire to his own bedroom and take a pill, without every one's
looking grave and tears being shed and all the rest of it. As it was, even upon
hearing it whispered that somebody else was subject to headaches, a whole
company must look as though they had never had a headache in their lives. It is
true they were not very prevalent, for the people were the healthiest and most
comely imaginable, owing to the severity with which ill health as treated;
still, even the best were liable to be out of sorts sometimes, and there were
few families that had not a medicine-chest in a cupboard somewhere.
 

                                Chapter Fifteen

                               The Musical Banks

On my return to the drawing-room, I found that the Mahaina current had expended
itself. The ladies were just putting away their work and preparing to go out. I
asked them where they were going. They answered with a certain air of reserve
that they were going to the bank to get some money.
    Now I had already collected that the mercantile affairs of the Erewhonians
were conducted on a totally different system from our own; I had, however,
gathered little hitherto, except that they had two distinct commercial systems,
of which the one appealed more strongly to the imagination than anything to
which we are accustomed in Europe, inasmuch as the banks that were conducted
upon this system were decorated in the most profuse fashion, and all mercantile
transactions were accompanied with music, so that they were called Musical
Banks, though the music was hideous to a European ear.
    As for the system itself I never understood it, neither can I do so now;
they have a code in connection with it, which I have not the slightest doubt
that they understand, but no foreigner can hope to do so.