MARK TWAIN

offense. In Japan formerly both sexes bathed naked in
public. The newly arrived white people were disgusted.
The innocent Japanese said—"What dirty minds these
white people have." By their social creed all the details of
the body were worthy of respect since the gods made them
and no detail of it is contemptible or indecent. Each race
determines for itself what indecencies are. Nature knows
no indecencies; man invents them.

At Sea

How seldom one glances at the sea on this voyage. We
sit on the promenade deck under the awnings from 7 A.M.
till ii P.M. and sometimes upon going to bed I realize
that I have not consciously seen the sea the whole day.

The creatures that fly are by far the Lord's most im-
portant creation. He has provided for them a domain
(home) forty miles deep which envelops the whole globe.
The creatures that live in salt water are next in impor-
tance. He has provided for them a domain some miles
deep which covers three-fifths of the globe's surface. Next
in importance is Man, for to man he has given the skin
which thinly covers two-fifths of the globe's surface. On
one-fifth of it he can raise snow, icicles, sand, rocks, and
nothing else; and on the other fifth he can raise enough
food to keep his race alive, but it takes hard grubbing to
do it, and then the weather that he must fight—the
drought, the flood, the hail, the hurricane.

Macauley speaks of the public executioner's "odious"
office. If it is an odious office, then of necessity the law
that creates the office is an odious law, the law that creates
death penalties is an odious law, the jury that applies the
law penalty is an odious institution and the judge who
pronounces the death sentence exercises an odious func-
tion; and the entire lot are legitimate objects of contempt

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