There was something
new every day, and a bridge was surely not harder to invent than a
telephone, for they had bridges in the very earliest days.
Then came up the question of the teachers. Probably these could
be found in Boston. If they could all come the same day, three
could be brought out in the carryall. Agamemnon could go in for
them, and could learn a little on the way out and in.
Mr. Peterkin made some inquiries about the Oriental languages.
He was told that Sanscrit was at the root of all. So he proposed
they should all begin with Sanscrit. They would thus require but
one teacher, and could branch out into the other languages
afterward.
But the family preferred learning the separate languages. Elizabeth
Eliza already knew something of the French. She had tried to talk
it, without much success, at the Centennial Exhibition, at one of
the side-stands. But she found she had been talking with a
Moorish gentleman who did not understand French. Mr.
Peterkin feared they might need more libraries, if all the teachers
came at the same hour; but Agamemnon reminded him that they
would be using different dictionaries. And Mr. Peterkin thought
something might be learned by having them all at once. Each one
might pick up something beside the language he was studying,
and it was a great thing to learn to talk a foreign language while
others were talking about you.
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