THE MUSICAL BANKS. (CHAPTER XIV. OF EREWHON.)
On my return to the drawing-room, I found the ladies were just putting
away their work and preparing to go out. I asked them where they were
going. They answered with a certain air of reserve that they were going
to the bank to get some money.
Now I had already collected that the mercantile affairs of the
Erewhonians were conducted on a totally different system from our own; I
had however gathered little hitherto, except that they had two distinct
commercial systems, of which the one appealed more strongly to the
imagination than anything to which we are accustomed in Europe, inasmuch
as the banks conducted upon this system were decorated in the most
profuse fashion, and all mercantile transactions were accompanied with
music, so that they were called musical banks though the music was
hideous to a European ear.
As for the system itself I never understood it, neither can I do so now:
they have a code in connection with it, which I have no doubt they
themselves understand, but no foreigner can hope to do so. One rule runs
into and against another as in a most complicated grammar, or as in
Chinese pronunciation, wherein I am told the slightest change in
accentuation or tone of voice alters the meaning of a whole sentence.
Whatever is incoherent in my description must be referred to the fact of
my never having attained to a full comprehension of the subject.
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