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. I don't know what the bad language was that Mr Kirk had used, but it couldn't have been too bad, as all Deacon Brumby could give him was one dawn-to-dusk.
That night at the Captain's table in the K6nge Knut I heard a sweet lady of the favorite-grandmother sort address her husband in a pattern of forbidden words involving blasphemy and certain criminal sensual acts. Had she spoken that way in public in my home town she would have received maximum exposure in stocks followed by being ridden out of town. (Our town did not use tar and feathers; that was regarded as brutal.)
Yet this dear lady in the ship was not even chided. Her husband simply- smiled and told her that she worried too much.
Between shocking speech, incredible immodest exposure, and effects of two sorts of strange and deceptive potions lavishly administered, I was utterly confused. A stranger in a strange land, I was overcome by customs new and shocking. But through it all I clung to the conviction that I must appear to be sophisticated, at home, unsurprised. I must not let anyone suspect that I was not Alec Graham, shipmate, but instead Alexander Hergensheimer, total stranger... or something terrible might happen.
Of course I was wrong; something terrible had already happened. I was indeed a total stranger in an utterly strange and confusing land... but I do not think, in retrospect, that I would have made my condition worse had I simply blurted out my predicament
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