"The language of this nation seems very harsh and unintelligible to a foreigner, yet they converse with one another with great ease and quickness. One of the oddest customs is that which men use on saluting each other. Let the weather be what it will, they uncover their heads and remain uncovered for some time if they mean to be extraordinarily respectful."
"Why, that's like pulling off our hats," said Jack.
"Ah, ha! papa," cried Betsy, "I have found you out. You have been telling us of our own country, and what is done at home, all the while."
"But," said Jack, "we don't burn stones, or eat grease and powdered seeds, or wear skins and caterpillar's webs, or play with tigers."
"No?" said the captain. "Pray, what are coals but stones; and is not butter grease; and corn, seeds; and leather, skins; and silk, the web of a kind of caterpillar? and may we not as well call a cat an animal of the tiger kind, as a tiger an animal of the cat kind?
"So if you recall what I have been describing, you will find, with Betsy's help, that all the other wonderful things I have told you of are matters familiar among ourselves. But I meant to show you that a foreigner might easily represent everything as equally strange and wonderful among us as we could do with respect to his country; and also to make you sensible that we daily call a great many things by their names without ever inquiring into their nature and properties; so that in reality it is only their manners and not the things themselves with which we are acquainted."
A Curious Instrument