und it downstairs, or else it was the
other way."

Of course now there were more conveniences for study. With the books all
in one room, there would be no time wasted in looking for them.

Mr. Peterkin suggested they should each take a separate language. If
they went abroad, this would prove a great convenience. Elizabeth
Eliza could talk French with the Parisians; Agamemnon, German with the
Germans; Solomon John, Italian with the Italians; Mrs. Peterkin, Spanish
in Spain; and perhaps he could himself master all the Eastern Languages
and Russian.

Mrs. Peterkin was uncertain about undertaking the Spanish, but all the
family felt very sure they should not go to Spain (as Elizabeth Eliza
dreaded the Inquisition), and Mrs. Peterkin felt more willing.

Still she had quite an objection to going abroad. She had always said
she would not go till a bridge was made across the Atlantic, and she was
sure it did not look like it now.

Agamemnon said there was no knowing. 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. Mrs.
Peterkin was afraid it would be like the Tower of Babel, and hoped it
was all right.