just as some today feel that man is 
committing a blasphemy in reaching 
for the stars. Yet so deep-seated is 
this yearning for a sense of intimacy 
with all other living things that even 
today, when we would laugh at the 
notion of consorting with the Devil 
or of acquiring supranatural powers 
through the use of a familiar (a spirit, 
often in animal form), we still persist 
in the attempt to bridge the gap be- 
tween the two worlds. The depictions 
of animals in children’s books, comic 
strips, and animated films are only 
some of the ways we make contact, 
under pretense of fantasy. What did 
those Californians mean when they 
said that Disneyland was both more 
“real” and more “natural” other than 
that, for them, it united the two worlds 
more readily than mere observation 
of live animals in a game park? Dis- 
neyland gives life to the ancient fan- 
tasy of oneness, but in a way that 
is respectable. It makes the gap be- 
tween the two worlds seem less im- 
portant, if not nonexistent. 
Is it really too much to suggest a 
connection between medieval concepts 
of witchcraft power and contemporary 
fascination with animal imagery as 
represented by Disneyland? What of 
the deeply entrenched custom of keep- 
ing pets? Consider the possibility that 
we all have our own familiars; it is 
not difficult to see that in our favored 
animal form we find qualities that we 
admire or envy or fear, that we feel 
to be latent within us and that, through 
association and proximity, we hope to 
control or bring to the surface. For 
many, the pet becomes almost an alter 
ego. 
Everywhere we look, from the cave 
paintings of the remote past through 
the mythology of the ancients, in the 
witchcraft beliefs of our immediate 
ancestors, and even in our own con- 
temporary customs and usages, we are 
surrounded by animal imagery, whose 
significance we dismiss only today. 
The tourist in East Africa can hardly 
avoid being affected by this pervasive 
imagery and may well be trying, how- 
ever unconsciously, to abolish the dis- 
tance and separation that modern man 
has created, a distance that far from 
ennobling us seems to diminish us. 
In seeking proximity to that other 
world or that other part of our own 
world, tourists may not be in search 
of supranatural power but are surely 
seeking to enlarge their own sense of 
being. And in those rare moments of 
solitude, the tourist can scarcely fail 
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THEIR SISTERS’ KEEPERS 
Women's Prison Reform 
in America. 1830-1930 
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