Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 2 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian CollectionCatlin, George
History
Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 2 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian Collection
Catlin, George
England -- Description and travel; France -- Description and travel; Indians of North America
It is also necessary to arrange in time with the overseer of the poor,
whether he is to take one-eighth or one-fifth of the receipts for the
hospitals--for the _hospice_, as he is termed, is placed at the door
of all exhibitions in Paris, who carries off one-eighth or one-fifth
of the daily receipts every night. It is necessary also, if catalogues
are to be sold in the rooms, to lodge one of them at least two weeks
before the exhibition is to open in the hands of the Commissaire de
Police, that it may pass through the office of the Prefect, and twenty
other officers' hands, to be read, and duly decided that there is
nothing revolutionary in it; and then to sell them, or to give them
away (all the same), it is necessary for the person who is to sell, and
who alone _can_ sell them, to apply personally to the Commissaire de
Police, and make oath that he was born in France, to give his age and
address, &c., &c., before he can take the part that is assigned him.
It is then necessary, when the exhibition is announced, to wait until
seven or eight guards and police, with muskets and bayonets fixed,
enter and unbar the doors, and open them for the public's admission.
It is necessary to submit to their friendly care during every day of
the exhibition, and to pay each one his wages at night, when they lock
up the rooms and put out the lights. In all this, however, though
expensive, there is one redeeming feature. These numbers of armed
police, at their posts, in front of the door, and in the passage, as
well as in the exhibition rooms, give respectability to its appearance,
and preserve the strictest order and quiet amongst the company, and
keep a constant and vigilant eye to the protection of property. During
the time I was engaged in settling these tedious preliminaries, and
getting my rooms prepared for their exhibition, the Indians were
taking their daily rides, and getting a passing glimpse of most of the
out-door scenes of Paris. They were admitting parties of distinguished
visitors, who were calling upon them, and occasionally leaving them
liberal presents, and passing their evenings upon their buffalo skins,
handing around the never-tiring pipe, and talking about the King, and
their medals, and curious things they had seen as they had been riding
through the streets. The thing which as yet amused the Doctor the most
was the great number of women they saw in the streets leading dogs with
ribbons and strings. He said he thought they liked their dogs better
than they did their little children. In London, he said he had seen
some little dogs leading their masters, who were blind, and in Paris
they began to think the first day they rode out that one half of the
Paris women were blind, but that they had a great laugh when they found
that their eyes were wide open, and that instead of their dogs leading
them, they were leading their dogs. The Doctor seemed puzzled about the
custom of the women leading so many dogs, and although he did not in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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