n should be to
keep the old young as long as possible. They say that each age should
take it turn in turn about, week by week, one week the old to be
topsawyers, and the other the young, drawing the line at thirty-five
years of age; but they insist that the young should be allowed to inflict
corporal chastisement on the old, without which the old would be quite
incorrigible. In any European country this would be out of the question;
but it is not so there, for the straighteners are constantly ordering
people to be flogged, so that they are familiar with the notion. I do
not suppose that the idea will be ever acted upon; but its having been
even mooted is enough to show the utter perversion of the Erewhonian
mind.

CHAPTER XXI: THE COLLEGES OF UNREASON

I had now been a visitor with the Nosnibors for some five or six months,
and though I had frequently proposed to leave them and take apartments of
my own, they would not hear of my doing so. I suppose they thought I
should be more likely to fall in love with Zulora if I remained, but it
was my affection for Arowhena that kept me.

During all this time both Arowhena and myself had been dreaming, and
drifting towards an avowed attachment, but had not dared to face the real
difficulties of the position. Gradually, however, matters came to a
crisis in spite of ourselves, and we got to see the true state of the
case, all too clearly.

One evening we were sitting in the garden, and I had been trying in every
stupid roundabout way to get her to say that she should be at any rate
sorry for a man, if he really loved a woman who would not marry him. I
had been stammering and blushing, and been as silly as any one could be,
and I suppose had pained her by fishing for pity for myself in such a
transparent way, and saying nothing about her own need of it; at any
rate, she turned all upon me with a sweet sad smile and said, "Sorry? I
am sorry for myself; I am sorry for you; and I am sorry for every one."
The words had no sooner crossed her lips than she bowed her head, gave me
a look as though I were to make no answer, and left me.

The words were few and simple, but the manner with which they were
uttered was ineffable: the scales fell from my eyes, and I felt that I
had no right to try and induce her to infringe one of the most inviolable
customs of her country, as she needs must do if she were to marry me. I
sat for a long while thinking, and when I remembered t