On mentioning this, which I heard when taken to Italy as a boy by my father, the person to whom I told it showed no surprise.  He said that he had been driven for two or three years in a certain city by a young Sicilian cabdriver of prepossessing manners and appearance, but then lost sight of him.  On asking what had become of him, he was told that he was in prison for having shot at his father with intent to kill him—­happily without serious result.  Some years later my informant again found himself warmly accosted by the prepossessing young cabdriver.  “Ah, caro signore,” he exclaimed, “sono cinque anni che non lo vedo—­tre anni di militare, e due anni di disgrazia,” &c. ("My dear sir, it is five years since I saw you—­three years of military service, and two of misfortune")—­during which last the poor fellow had been in prison.  Of moral sense he showed not so much as a trace.  He and his father were now on excellent terms, and were likely to remain so unless either of them should again have the misfortune mortally to offend the other.

In the following chapter I will give a few examples of the way in which what we should call misfortune, hardship, or disease are dealt with by the Erewhonians, but for the moment will return to their treatment of cases that with us are criminal.  As I have already said, these, though not judicially punishable, are recognised as requiring correction.  Accordingly, there exists a class of men trained in soul-craft, whom they call straighteners, as nearly as I can translate a word which literally means “one who bends back the crooked.”  These men practise much as medical men in England, and receive a quasi-surreptitious fee on every visit.  They are treated with the same unreserve, and obeyed as readily, as our own doctors—­that is to say, on the whole sufficiently—­because people know that it is their interest to get well as soon as they can, and that they will not be scouted as they would be if their bodies were out of order, even though they may have to undergo a very painful course of treatment.

When I say that they will not be scouted, I do not mean that an Erewhonian will suffer no social inconvenience in consequence, we will say, of having committed fraud.  Friends will fall away from him because of his being less pleasant company, just as we ourselves are disinclined to make companions of those who are either poor or poorly.  No one with any sense of self-respect will place himself on an equality in the matter of affection with those who are less lucky than himself in birth, health, money, good looks, capacity, or anything else.  Indeed, that dislike and even disgust should be felt by the fortunate for the unfortunate, or at any rate for those who have been discovered to have met with any of the more serious and less familiar misfortunes, is not only natural, but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute.