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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 merely through the fear that he will hurt us. We let him do his
worst upon us, and stand it without a murmur, because we are not scouted
for being ill, and because we know that the doctor is doing his best to
cure us, and that he can judge of our case better than we can; but we
should conceal all illness if we were treated as the Erewhonians are when
they have anything the matter with them; we should do the same as with
moral and intellectual diseases,--we should feign health with the most
consummate art, till we were found out, and should hate a single flogging
given in the way of mere punishment more than the amputation of a limb,
if it were kindly and courteously performed from a wish to help us out of
our difficulty, and with the full consciousness on the part of the doctor
that it was only by an accident of constitution that he was not in the
like plight himself. So the Erewhonians take a flogging once a week, and
a diet of bread and water for two or three months together, whenever
their straightener recommends it.

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