Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His SonButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His Son
Butler, Samuel
Satire; Utopian fiction; Utopias -- Fiction
On his former visit he had seen little of the town, for he was in
prison during his whole stay. He had had a glimpse of it on being
brought there by the people of the village where he had spent his
first night in Erewhon--a village which he had seen at some little
distance on his right hand, but which it would have been out of his way
to visit, even if he had wished to do so; and he had seen the Museum
of old machines, but on leaving the prison he had been blindfolded.
Nevertheless he felt sure that if the towers had been there he should
have seen them, and rightly guessed that they must belong to the temple
which was to be dedicated to himself on Sunday.
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:-
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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