Who can describe it? It makes one ill to think of it.
Throughout my journeyings it was necessary for my toileting, in fact,
everything, to be performed in absolute unalloyed publicity. Three days
out my boy fixed up a cold bath for me, and barricaded a room which had
a certain amount of privacy about it, owing to its secluded position;
but even grown men and women, anxious to see what _it_ was like when it
had no clothes on, came forward, poked their fingers through the paper
in the windows (of course, glass is hardly known in the interior), and
greedily peeped in. This and the profound curiosity the people evince in
one's every action and movement I found most trying.
It was my misfortune each day at this stage to come into a town or
village where market was in progress. Catching a sight of the foreign
visage, people opened their eyes widely, turned from me, faced me again
with a little less of fear, and then came to me, not in dozens, but in
hundreds, with open arms. They shouted and made signs, and walking
excitedly by my side, they examined at will the texture of my clothes,
and touched my boots with sticks to see whether the feet were encased or
not. For the time I was their hero.
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