When he had passed through the suburbs he found himself in the main street.  Space will not allow me to dwell on more than a few of the things which caught his eye, and assured him that the change in Erewhonian habits and opinions had been even more cataclysmic than he had already divined.  The first important building that he came to proclaimed itself as the College of Spiritual Athletics, and in the window of a shop that was evidently affiliated to the college he saw an announcement that moral try-your-strengths, suitable for every kind of ordinary temptation, would be provided on the shortest notice.  Some of those that aimed at the more common kinds of temptation were kept in stock, but these consisted chiefly of trials to the temper.  On dropping, for example, a penny into a slot, you could have a jet of fine pepper, flour, or brickdust, whichever you might prefer, thrown on to your face, and thus discover whether your composure stood in need of further development or no.  My father gathered this from the writing that was pasted on to the try-your-strength, but he had no time to go inside the shop and test either the machine or his own temper.  Other temptations to irritability required the agency of living people, or at any rate living beings.  Crying children, screaming parrots, a spiteful monkey, might be hired on ridiculously easy terms.  He saw one advertisement, nicely framed, which ran as follows:-

   “Mrs. Tantrums, Nagger, certificated by the College of Spiritual
   Athletics.  Terms for ordinary nagging, two shillings and sixpence per
   hour.  Hysterics extra.”

Then followed a series of testimonials—­for example:-

“Dear Mrs. Tantrums,—­I have for years been tortured with a husband of unusually peevish, irritable temper, who made my life so intolerable that I sometimes answered him in a way that led to his using personal violence towards me.  After taking a course of twelve sittings from you, I found my husband’s temper comparatively angelic, and we have ever since lived together in complete harmony.”

Another was from a husband:-

“Mr. —–­ presents his compliments to Mrs. Tantrums, and begs to assure her that her extra special hysterics have so far surpassed anything his wife can do, as to render him callous to those attacks which he had formerly found so distressing.”

There were many others of a like purport, but time did not permit my father to do more than glance at them.  He contented himself with the two following, of which the first ran:-

“He did try it at last.  A little correction of the right kind taken at the right moment is invaluable.  No more swearing.  No more bad language of any kind.  A lamb-like temper ensured in about twenty minutes, by a single dose of one of our spiritual indigestion tabloids.  In cases of all the more ordinary moral ailments, from simple lying, to homicidal mania, in cases