Paidika

I found this sapphire of a book in a Provincetown bookstore: an edition of Flaubert’s Dictionnaire des idées reçues, translated by (whom else?) Jacques Barzun. The satire is biting.

BOOK: Always too long, regardless of its subject.

Or:

YOUNG LADY: Utter these words with diffidence. All young ladies are pale, frail, and always pure. Prohibit, for their good, every kind of reading, all visits to museums, theaters, and especially to the monkey house at the zoo.

Or:

FROG: Female of the toad.