Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/360

 and more direct line with Jupiter's and their own lesser world's gravity. Thus this practical people got acquainted with gravity, through its business inconvenience to themselves; and they were interested in our explanations of the law of its action, and more especially of the obviating processes, through our ordinary force-convertibility. But this latter was much too deep a subject, and, above all, much too costly an agent, for the Ioans to think of it.

Their regular bathing habit is connected with one of their most remarkable peculiarities. They all bathe quite publicly, and usually without a particle of clothing to either young or old, male or female. But this is simply because bathing is most pleasant and beneficial in this free way, and in no sense whatever from any want of modesty or true propriety of feeling. On the contrary, the Jovian lady, and especially the young maiden, would shrink, more even than our own females, from advances of the other sex. The Jovian peculiarity is, that no importance whatever is attached to the mere seeing of each other. The most modest of Jovian damsels, so far as a question of modesty is concerned, would not have the slightest objection to be merely seen, whether clothed or naked, and by any number of persons of either sex, provided she is secure against touch or contact. These simple Jovians, on the other hand, are much scandalized by the account of certain of our customs—asking, for instance, how our females can be deemed modest and respectable who freely shake hands with the other