spite of their utmost endeavors. The wealthy
classes go into business so as to lose money, but in this they seldom
succeed. It has been calculated that only two per cent in every
community succeed in reaching the pauper class. The tendency is for
all the labors of the working-class to be ultimately turned upon the
unfortunate wealthy class. The workmen being the creators of wealth,
and refusing to take adequate pay, cause a final accumulation of the
wealth of the community in the hands of the mass of the non-producers,
who thus are fixed in their unhappy position, and can hope for no
escape except by death. The farmers till the ground, the fishermen
fish, the laborers toil, and the wealth thus created is pushed from
these incessantly till it all falls upon the lowest class--namely, the
rich, including Athons, Meleks, and Kohens. It is a burden that is
often too heavy to be borne; but there is no help for it, and the
better-minded seek to cultivate resignation.

Women and men are in every respect absolutely equal, holding precisely
the same offices and doing the same work. In general, however, it is
observed that women are a little less fond of death than men, and a
little less unwilling to receive gifts. For this reason they are very
numerous among the wealthy class, and abound in the offices of
administration. Women serve in the army and navy as well as men, and
from their lack of ambition or energetic perseverance they are usually
relegated to the lower ranks, such as officers and generals. To my
mind it seemed as though the women were in all the offices of honor
and dignity, but in reality it was the very opposite. The same is true
in the family. The husbands insist on giving everything to the wives
and doing everything for them. The wives are therefore universally the
rulers of the household while the husbands have an apparently
subordinate, but, to the Kosekin, a more honorable position.

As to the religion of the Kosekin, I could make nothing of it. They
believe that after death they go to what they call the world of
darkness. The death they long for leads to the darkness that they
love; and the death and the darkness are eternal. Still, they persist
in saying that the death and the darkness together form a state of
bliss. They are eloquent about the happiness that awaits them there in
the sunless land--the world of darkness; but for my own part, it
always seemed to me a state of nothingness.

CHAPTER XVII