Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. 2 of 2: To Which Is Added, That Boy of Norcott's; With Illustrations
Sole use and benefit, but without the slightest intention Of misleading, for it never once entered his head that you could possibly believe him! I know it will sound badly. I am well aware Of the Shock it will give to many a nervous system; but for all that I will not blink the declaration which I desire to record as formally and as ?atly as I am capable Of expressing it - which is, that of one hundred statements an Englishman accepts and relies upon abroad, as matter Of fact, ninety-nine are untrue; full fifty being lies by premeditation, thirty by ignorance, ten by accident or inattention, and the remainder, if there be a balance, for I 'm bad at figures, from any other cause you like.
It is no more disgrace for a foreigner not to tell the truth than to own that he does not sing, nor dance the mazurka; not SO much, indeed, because these are marks of a polite education. And yet it is to hold conversation with these people we pore over dictionaries, and Ollen dorfs, and Hamiltonian gospels. As for the enlargement and expansion of the intelligence that comes Of acquiring languages, there never was a greater fallacy. Look abroad upon your acquaintances: who are the glib linguists, who are the faultless in French genders, and the immaculate in German declensions? The ?ippant boarding-school miss, or the brainless, unpaid attaché, that cannot compose a note in his own language. Who are the bungling conversers that make drawing-rooms blush and dinner-tables titter? Your first-rate debater in the Commons, your leader at the bar, your double first, or your great electro-magnetic fellow that knows the secret laws Of water-spouts and Whirlpools, and can make thunder and lightning just to amuse him self. Take my word for it, your linguist is as poor a crea ture as a dancing-master, and just as great a formalist.
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