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  | Essays on Paul Bourget Ebook | |
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 | |  | | E-book Category: Classic
E-book Title: Essays on Paul Bourget
Author: Mark Twain
Book Description: WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
He reports the American joke correctly. In Bean town they ask, How more makes he know? in New York, How more is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who
were his parents? And once
an alien observer turns his telescope upon
us--advertisedly in our own special interest--a natural apprehension
moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector?
I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I cognize by the
newspapers that there are some Americans who are expecting to get a
whole education out of them; some who foresaw, and besides foretold, that
our long night was over, and a light about divine just about to break upon
the land.
"His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
timed."
"He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and
productively studied."
These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore
public confidence, which had been distressed by questionings as to
whether so young a teacher would-be be qualified to take so large a class as
70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a school as America, and
pull it through without assistance.
I was even as distressed myself, though I am of a cold, calm temperament,
and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not entirely
tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that
there was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I
became more disturbed than I was before. Galore worrying questions came up
in my mind. Two were prominent. Wherever
had the teacher gotten his
equipment? What was his method?
He had gotten his instrumentality in France.
Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an
Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and another scientists.
The naturalist collects galore bugs and reptiles and butterflies and
studies their route a long time patiently. By this means he is presently
able to group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families
by good shadings of differences discernible in their characters. Then he
labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely synchronic group
names, and is now happy, for his great activity is completed, and as a result
he intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out.
It may be true, but a person who was not a naturalist would-be feel safer
just about it if he had the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant
System, but subject to error.More... | |
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