[An Attic Philosopher by Emile Souvestre]@TWC D-Link book
An Attic Philosopher

CHAPTER IV
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How many things there are to learn in the streets of Paris! What a museum it is! Unknown fruits, foreign arms, furniture of old times or other lands, animals of all climates, statues of great men, costumes of distant nations! It is the world seen in samples! Let us then look at this people, whose knowledge is gained from the shop-windows and the tradesman's display of goods.

Nothing has been taught them, but they have a rude notion of everything.

They have seen pineapples at Chevet's, a palm-tree in the Jardin des Plantes, sugar-canes selling on the Pont-Neuf.

The Redskins, exhibited in the Valentine Hall, have taught them to mimic the dance of the bison, and to smoke the calumet of peace; they have seen Carter's lions fed; they know the principal national costumes contained in Babin's collection; Goupil's display of prints has placed the tiger-hunts of Africa and the sittings of the English Parliament before their eyes; they have become acquainted with Queen Victoria, the Emperor of Austria, and Kossuth, at the office-door of the Illustrated News.

We can certainly instruct them, but not astonish them; for nothing is completely new to them.


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