THE TOUR. 9 



will see new and extraordinaiy things j I also will have 

 something to tell." 



Make you the tour of the world, 



I WILL MAKE THE TOnR OF MY GAEDEK. 



I will wait for you here, my friend; you will find me 

 under my fig-tree, or under one of the honeysuckles, and I 

 will make you avow that there is a great and terrible punish- 

 ment for travellers as for inconstant lovers : — for travellers, 

 arrival; for inconstants, success; for they then find how 

 much all countries and all women are alike. 



What are you going to see abroad? How proud you will 

 be in your first letter, if, by ohancei you should ever think 

 of writing to me at all, to tell me you have seen women 

 tattooed and painted in divers colours, with rings in their 

 noses. 



And I will answer you : "Well, my good friend, what occa- 

 sion was there for going so far? Why did you go further 

 than two streets from your own house ? There was nothing 

 to prevent your looking at your sister-in-law, who, after the 

 example of a hundred other women you are acquainted with, 

 and each of whom is at once painter, original, and portrait, 

 puts pearl white and rouge upon her brow and cheeks, black 

 upon her eyelids, blue to increase the apparent fulness of her 

 veins, and passes rings through her ears in the same manner 

 that savage women pass them through their noses. Pray, 

 why is it more strange to pierce one cartilage than another? 

 Can the difierence be worth going so far to see ? 



I know very well you will meet with sharpers and cheats ; 

 with the imbecile, the hypocritical, the proud, the egotistical, 

 the envious, the mendicant ; but have you not remai'ked that 

 there are a few of these to be equally found here? 



Is it so difficult, in this country, to experience hunger or 

 thirst — too much heat, or too much cold, that you think it 

 worth while to go so far for these unpleasant sensations? 



Is there any plague, or any fever, or any leprosy unknown 

 in our country that you feel a wish to take? 



Or, are you so weary of the common house-flies which 

 annoy you here in the summer, that you travel two thousand 

 miles for the pleasure of being stung by musquitoe?? 



