B1023 <=> B1025 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1024]

“The disease which the Great Moses devoted half his existence to eradicating from among children, a host of your contemporary favorites of responsible age have, almost deliberately, resurrected again and spread not only among children and the general mass of adults but also even among the aged as well.

“These good customs for ordinary existence reached your contemporary favorites from ancient three-brained beings of your planet, and very many now still exist there among the beings of various communities of the continent Asia.

“Certain of these customs existing there now, appear when first witnessed as absurdly strange and barbaric, but on a close and impartial investigation of the inner meaning of any of these customs, one can see how skillfully there has been incorporated in them for the people who follow them one or another moral or hygienic benefit.

“Take, as an example, one of the most seemingly senseless of the customs there – one existing among a certain tribe of Asiatic beings called Kolenian Loors’ or ‘Kolenian gypsies’ dwelling between Persia and Afghanistan, and which other beings there call ‘Gypsy self-fumigation.’

“Exactly the same end is served by this seemingly stupid custom as by the Persian custom of ablution or abdest. This gypsy tribe is regarded as the lowest and filthiest of all the tribes existing on the Earth; and indeed they are so filthy that their clothes are always swarming with the insects called lice.