People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — THEY MUST NOT LOOK. [ARTICLE]

THEY MUST NOT LOOK.

Communities Where It Is a Kin to Gaze at the Face. In the Wyoming territory there is a colony of one hundred and thirty souls in the Cheyenne reservation, who deem it a mortal sin to look upon the face of any human being. Both men and women wear masks day and night and never by chance do they gaze upon the faces of one another. They teach morality in the severest manner, not permitting two sexes tc even dwell in the same valley. This custom is also observed in the islands of New Britain, wfiere a man must not only not speak to hia mother-in-law, but it is considered sinful for the son-in-law or mother-in-law to look each other in the face. If by chance the son-in-law meets the lady in question he must hide himself or cover his face. Suicide of both parties is the outcome if the rule is broken. The White an<i Silent Nuns, known as Bernardines, a religious sisterhood at Bayonne, in the southwest corner of France, close to the Pyrenees, founded by L’Abbe Castac, hold no converse with human beings. Within the Buddhist monasteries there are frequently ascetics who for years to gether have no intercourse with the outside world, but sit in constant silent meditation, receiving their food through a hole in the door. Hermits in China tear out their eyes with the idea that by closing the two gates of love they open the gates of wisdom.