“I, myself, in a burst of parental obligation last
Fall, decided to take the boys through the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington. I would have picked a bigger
place if there had been one in the country, but the Smithsonian was the biggest
I could get. As a result, I contracted a bad case of what is known in medical
circles as ‘Smithsonian Feet,’ that is, a complete paralysis of the feet from
the ankles down, due to standing on first one foot and then the other in front
of exhibition cases and walking miles upon miles up and down the tessellated
corridors of the museum. The boys suffered no ill effects from the trip at
all.”—Robert Benchley, “Museum Feet,” in Pluck and Luck (1925)
From what I’ve been able to determine, only four
museums were under the Smithsonian
umbrella at the time when humorist Robert Benchley (1889-1945) wrote his deeply amusing essay.
Today, there are 19—count ‘em, 19. If
every American could be prevailed upon to visit each of these buildings at
least once, the result would be enough to foot the bill for a decade’s worth of
meetings of the American Podiatric Medical Association, I'd wager.
(The
accompanying image of Benchley was taken by an unknown photographer around 1935.)
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