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 any one was well or ill till after an intimate acquaintance of months or years.  Even then the shrewdest were constantly mistaken in their judgements, 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 any one 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 was 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 XV:  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.  One rule runs into, and against, another as in a most complicated grammar, or as in Chinese pronunciation, wherein I am told that the slightest change in accentuation or tone of voice alters the meaning of a whole sentence.  Whatever is incoherent in my description must be referred to the fact of my never having attained to a full comprehension of the subject.