_Padrex._ “I declare to gracious, never!”
_Dosch._ “But would you not relapse at the sight of a priest, as the converted Jew did at the chink of the shekels?”
_Padre._ (Scratching his head.) “Well, you know it’s a hard thing for one to abjure his religion, altogether?”
_Dr. Baāhar._ (Testily.) “He’s doomed to blind martyrdom in defense of his idols!”
_Padre._ “But I know those that belong to my own creed, and am not willing to be caught with mousetraps! Besides, when we were together on board of the _Tortuga_, after our good luck, I asked you to advise me about the education of my children; and you replied, ‘Let them glean all the knowledge they can from the schools of their country, until they arrive at the age of twenty; then send them to Germany, and they will then be able to appreciate the rudimentary principles of our philosophical course of study, if they are well posted in physical gymnastics and sword exercise.’ Of course the Manatitlans are well acquainted with the gigantic self-esteem of the French ideas of education, which is expressed in the proverb, ‘Live in Paris a year, and then die, content.’”
_Dosch._ “The philosophical self-complacency of the Germans with regard to the benefits of what they are pleased to style their system of education, is dependant upon habit rather than merit, even in the scale of civilized estimation. But when reduced from its superflage to reality, the course of study pursued in a German university, of sufficient celebrity to attract foreign students, commences with the majority,—from the boasting authority of their own statements,—by a test of the body’s capacity to hold beer, saur-kraut, and sausage, seasoned with tobacco smoke, for the encouragement of philosophical ruminations. When the freshman devotee’s body has become adequately distended, ethics and the art of disputatious war are inaugurated, with the premeditated intention of testing antagonistic skill in the gentle art of tattooing. Although lacking in the graceful designs of the more primitive races, the facial carvings in these friendly encounters indicate a nosological taste for depiction, characterized with boldness of touch on the part of the successful aspirant for honors. After having had his passions slaked by sword indenture indemnification, for the aggravations of guttural opprobriums, swilled at the collateral troughs of learning, the candidate for high collegiate honors, with his initiatory degree tattooed in autographic commendation of his skillful attainments, enters upon his second term. This completed, his body has become seasoned to saturation with the constituent elements of lager bier, schnapps, saur- kraut, pickled herring, sausage, and like condimental retainers, which are incorporated with tobacco-smoke in preparation for the study of the Oriental languages. At the expiration of three or more years employed in hard smoking, drinking,—or lageration, as it is classically termed,—with concomitant study, and wrangling, he reaches the acme of Teutonic elaboration; becoming to all intents and purposes as useless a casket of automatical movements and articulate sounds, as the feathered theologians educated in the Jesuit and Dominican Colleges of Chinandagua and Guatemala. His sympathetic impressibility can be truly likened to the saw of the surgical sawyer, in feeling for the suffering it imparts to the integuments and bone in separation. The French proverb, which you quoted, is certainly apt. For those who have engaged in the follies of Paris for a year, of self accord, we have found so utterly absorbed in the vanities of selfish gratification, that even the legendary memory of an instinctive soul has been lost, as well as all thoughts of purity and goodness in devisement for reciprocation. The real fact must now be apparent to your impressions, that the generations of your race have turned their backs to the realities of the future,—which could be secured for those that are to succeed them,—in pursuit of the will o’ wisp phantoms of the past. To-morrow, you will be able to realize how we preserve and improve the germs of purity and goodness for transmission, in freedom from the frivolous vanities of sense. In parting for the night all united in expressing their appreciation of the Dosch’s truthful portrayal.”
