The Decrotteur, Who Cleans Your Shoes At The Corner Of
The Pont Neuf, Has A Tail Of This Kind Hanging Down To His Rump,
And Even The Peasant Who Drives An Ass Loaded With Dung, Wears
His Hair En Queue, Though, Perhaps, He Has Neither Shirt Nor
Breeches.
This is the ornament upon which he bestows much time
and pains, and in the exhibition of which he finds full
gratification for his vanity.
Considering the harsh features of
the common people in this country, their diminutive stature,
their grimaces, and that long appendage, they have no small
resemblance to large baboons walking upright; and perhaps this
similitude has helped to entail upon them the ridicule of their
neighbours.
A French friend tires out your patience with long visits; and,
far from taking the most palpable hints to withdraw, when he
perceives you uneasy he observes you are low-spirited, and
therefore he will keep you company. This perseverance shews that
he must either be void of penetration, or that his disposition
must be truly diabolical. Rather than be tormented with such a
fiend, a man had better turn him out of doors, even though at the
hazard of being run thro' the body.
The French are generally counted insincere, and taxed with want
of generosity. But I think these reproaches are not well founded.
High-flown professions of friendship and attachment constitute
the language of common compliment in this country, and are never
supposed to be understood in the literal acceptation of the
words; and, if their acts of generosity are but very rare, we
ought to ascribe that rarity, not so much to a deficiency of
generous sentiments, as to their vanity and ostentation, which
engrossing all their funds, utterly disable them from exerting
the virtues of beneficence.
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