It is what prompts children to say "smart" things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways "show off" when company is present.

It is what makes gossips turn out in rain and storm to go and be the first to tell a startling bit of news.
Think, then, what a passion it becomes with a guide, whose privilege it is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw them into perfect ecstasies of admiration! He gets so that he could not by any possibility live in a soberer atmosphere.

After we discovered this, we never went into ecstasies any more--we never admired any thing--we never showed any but impassible faces and stupid indifference in the presence of the sublimest wonders a guide had to display.

We had found their weak point.
We have made good use of it ever since.

We have made some of those people savage, at times, but we have never lost our own serenity.
The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives.