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Near to this is the little city Seplasium, which admits of no tradesmen but perfumers. It is a town of great commerce with the people of Viraginia, especially the Locanians, who use to change their looking-glass with them for oils and pastils.
The women sit while the men serve, sleep when the men are roused to get up, scold them when they complain, and beat them. That day is worthy to be marked with a white stone to which men can say good-bye with a whole skin. Contrary to the custom with us, the women in Viraginia cut their hair and let their nails grow.
The sober man who hurts a drunkard, shall be cut off from wine for ever: if he kill a drunkard, he shall die by thirst. To walk from supper in a right line shall be criminal. He who adds water to wine shall be degraded to the table of the dogs. Yvronia having been described in seven chapters, the traveller in this Other-and-Same World passes on to Viraginia, the land of the Viragoes.
As to its form of government, the state seemed to be a democracy, in which all governed and none obeyed. They settled affairs at public meetings, in which all spoke and none listened; and they had a perpetual Parliament. The men in Viraginia are subject to the women.
In Viraginia the traveller was at once made prisoner, but permitted to see the land after he had subscribed to certain articles, as, That in word or deed he would work no ill to the nobler sex; That he would never interpose a word when a woman was speaking; That wherever he might be he would concede domestic rule to the woman; That he would never deny to a wife any ornament of dress she looked at.
Some of them also practise with profit the gymnastic art, so that they can make beautiful use of teeth, nails, and heels. A nobler and more cleanly polished place is not to be seen than Viraginia, where everything is washed, cooked and cared for by the men, and there is nothing unbecoming but the garments of the men themselves.
When he came across Joseph Hall's satire, he found it so much to his mind that he began to translate as follows: The Situation of the Country. Crapulia is a very fair and large territory, which on the north is bounded with the Æthiopic Ocean, on the east with Laconia and Viraginia, on the south by Moronia Felix, and westward with the Tryphonian Fens.
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