"Do you have houses as high as those?" he asked, pointing to the human
nests in the trees.
"Yes, indeed," said Cleary. "Near my home there is a house nearly a
quarter of a mile long and twice as high as that tree, and nine hundred
people live in it."
There were murmurs of astonishment as this information was translated.
"What is that great house for?" asked the chief.
"It's a lunatic asylum."
"What is that?"
"A house for lunatics to live in."
"But what is a lunatic?"
Cleary tried in vain to explain what a lunatic was. The Moritos had
never seen one.
"We have plenty of such houses at home," said Sam, "and we have had to
double their size in ten years to hold the lunatics; they are splendid
buildings. There was one not very far from the college where my friend
and I were educated. But some of our prisons are even larger than our
lunatic asylums."
"What is a prison," asked Carlos.
"Oh," said Sam, "don't you understand that either? It's a house in
which we lock up criminals--I mean men who kill us or rob us."
"Oh, I see," replied Carlos. "You mean your enemies whom you take
prisoner in battle."
"No, I don't. I mean our own fellow citizens who murder and steal."
"Do you mean that you sometimes kill each other and steal from each
other, your own tribe?"
"Yes," said Sam. "Of course people who do so are bad men, but there are
some such among us.
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