Thus musing and moralizing on the events of the day, I left them to their conversation and their pipe, to attend, myself, where my presence was necessary, in arranging my collection, and preparing my rooms for their exhibitions. In this I had a real task—a scene of vexation and delay that I should wish never to go through again, and of which a brief account may be of service to any one of my countrymen who may be going to Paris to open a public exhibition; at least, my hints will enable him, if he pays attention to them, to begin at the right time, and at the right end of what he has got to do, and to do it to the best advantage.
His first step is, for any exhibition whatever, to make his application to the Prefect of Police for his licence, which is in all cases doubtful, and in all cases also is sure to require two or three weeks for his petition to pass the slow routine of the various offices and hands which it must go through. If it be for any exhibition that can be construed into an interference with the twenty or thirty theatre licences, it may as well not be applied for or thought of, for they will shut it up if opened.
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 any direct way censure them for doing it, it seemed to perplex him, and he would sit and smile and talk about it for hours together. He and Jim had, at first, supposed, after they found that the ladies were not blind, that they cooked and ate them, but they were soon corrected in this notion, and always after remained at a loss to know what they could do with them.
On one of their drives, the Doctor and Jim, supplied with a pencil and a piece of paper, had amused themselves by counting, from both sides of the omnibus, the number of women they passed, leading dogs in the street, and thus made some amusement with their list when they got home. They had been absent near an hour, and driving through many of the principal streets of the city, and their list stood thus:—
| Women leading one little dog | 432 |
| Women leading two little dogs | 71 |
| Women leading three little dogs | 5 |
| Women with big dogs following (no string) | 80 |
| Women carrying little dogs | 20 |
| Women with little dogs in carriages | 31 |
The poor fellows insisted on it that the above was a correct account, and Jim, in his droll way (but I have no doubt quite honestly), said that “It was not a very good day either.”
I was almost disposed to question the correctness of their estimate, until I took it into my head to make a similar one, in a walk I was one day taking, from the Place Madeleine, through a part of the Boulevard, Rue St. Honoré, and Rue Rivoli, and a turn in the garden of the Tuileries. I saw so many that I lost my reckoning, when I was actually not a vast way from the list they gave me as above, and quite able to believe that their record was near to the truth. While the amusement was going on about the ladies and the little dogs, Daniel, who had already seen many more of the sights of Paris than I had, told the Indians that there was a Dog Hospital and a Dog Market in Paris, both of them curious places, and well worth their seeing. This amused the Doctor and Jim very much. The Doctor did not care for the Dog Market, but the Hospital he must see. He thought the hospital must be a very necessary thing, as there were such vast numbers; and he thought it would be a good thing to have an hospital for their mistresses also. Jim thought more of the market, and must see it in a day or two, for it was about the time that they should give a feast of thanksgiving, and “a Dog Feast was always the most acceptable to the Great Spirit.” It was thus agreed all around, that they should make a visit in a few days to the Dog Market and the Dog Hospital.
Jim got Daniel to enter the above list in his book as a very interesting record, and ordered him to leave a blank space underneath it, in order to record any thing else they might learn about dogs while in Paris.
Poor Jim! he was at this time deeply lamenting the loss of the pleasure he had just commenced to draw from the ‘Times’ newspaper, for which he had become a subscriber, and his old and amusing friend ‘Punch,’ which Daniel had been in the habit of entertaining them with, and which he had been obliged to relinquish on leaving England. His friend Daniel, however, who was sure always to be by him, particularly at a late hour in the evenings, relieved him from his trouble by telling him that there was an English paper printed in Paris every day, ‘Galignani’s Messenger,’ which republished nearly all the murders, and rapes, and robberies, &c. from the ‘Times;’ and also, which would make it doubly interesting, those which were daily occurring in Paris. Jim was now built up again, and as he could already read a few words was the envied of all the party. He was learning with Daniel and Jeffrey a few words in French also, to which the others had not aspired; he, could say quite distinctly “vive le roi;” he knew that “bon jour” was “good morning,” or “how do do?” that “bon” was “good,” that “mauvais” was “bad,” and that “very sick” was “bien malade.” He requested Daniel to get Galignani’s paper daily for him, for which he and the Doctor had agreed to pay equal shares. He seemed now quite happy in the opinion that his prospects for civilization were again upon a proper footing, and the old Doctor, who profited equally by all of Daniel’s readings, was delighted to lend his purse to share in the expense. Daniel at this moment pulled the last number of Galignani out of his pocket, the first sight of which pleased them very much, and after reading several extracts of horrid murders, highway robberies, &c., from the ‘Times,’ he came across a little thing that amused them,—the great number and length of the names of the little Prince of Wales, which he read over thus:— (The author regrets very much that he took no memorandum of this, but refers the reader to the London papers for it.)
There was a hearty laugh by the whole troop when Daniel got through, but when Mr. Melody repeated the name of a poor fellow who used to dress deer skins for a living in the vicinity of St. Louis, they all laughed still more heartily, and Chippehola set in and laughed also. He had forgotten a part of this poor fellow’s name, but as far as he recollected of his sign board, it ran thus:—“Haunus, hubbard, lubbard, lamberd, lunk, vandunk, Peter, Jacobus, Lockamore, Lavendolph, dresses deer skins of all animals, and in all ways, alum dressed.”