Avarice

The tourist debauches the

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The tourist debauches the great monuments of antiquity, a comic figure, always inapt in his comments, incongruous in his appearance; …avarice and deceit attack him at every step; the shops that he patronizes are full of forgeries… But we need feel no scruple or twinge of uncertainty; ‘we’ are travelers and cosmopolitans; the tourist is … Read more

But the conceit of

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But the conceit of one’s self and the conceit of one’s hobby are hardly more prolific of eccentricity than the conceit of one’s money. Avarice, the most hateful and wolfish of all the hard, cool, callous dispositions of selfishness, has its own peculiar caprices and crotchets. The ingenuities of its meanness defy all the calculations … Read more

What a lesson, indeed,

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What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses … Read more