Adventure Magazine Cover — page 82: what you’re looking at

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86 others again who have been whole men—as also your son, Senhor. | | Do not mistake. For in the course of time I have deemed him my friend. But it is necessary that I make clear to you how some of these curious ways of his impressed us, the people of Amazonas, in order that you may understand some of the vicissitudes that he brought upon himself. ; It is perhaps difficult for you, as it was for him, to realize that he was a foreigner here in a strange city; and that, as such, it behooved him to deport himself circum- spectly. But in this matter you Ameri- canos are like the Ingleses, only not so bad. There was not an action of this lad’s that did not jar upon the sensibilities of the resi- dents. Consider, Senhor: There is no manner of doubt that America of the north is the greatest and most pro- gressive of the Americas. Yet we of the south do not care to have forced upon us the insistent conviction that we are an outlying and a primitive people, and that of all our manners and customs and doings there is not one which is not done better or not done at all in the north. Yet the lad meant no offense. He spoke only his inborn conviction while conversing With the utmost friendliness. Not a sub- ject was there, but presently he would be able to hold himself no longer and would say, “Well now; in the United States—” And he would proceed to tell all and sundry how much better the thing was done in his country. You understand the irritation, no? And if his listeners out of courtesy would permit him to continue he would enlarge upon his theme, showing in detail how much better the thing was done in his particular petty township than in all the rest of those United States. A veritable patriotic illness he had. We of the south have a conception of the north as some forty or so united States. Yet this youth divided them into three parts. Those of the two former he spoke With animosity and derision; while some central townlet or other, the name of which nobody had ever heard, he extolled as “God’s own country.” I was here in Manaos at the time; and haying listened to a two-hour exposition of the excellence of his home town sanitary system as compared with that of Manaos— where it was true we had the yellow fever— I laughed and laid my hand on his shoulder. : SR eae pe ele eee - Adventure ) “My son,” said I, “when the people of this town have driven you from among them; do not lose heart, but come on up to us of the upper rivets; and who knows but that you may be one of the lucky ones for whom fortune. waits in this vast Amazonas of ours.” For I said to myself that this lad with his clear eyes and his strong nose and his wide mouth, and with his restless energy, looked to have the makings of a man—if indeed: his enthusiasms should outlast the rebuffs which would be his portion here. And the good God knows that this Amazo- nas of ours needs men to develop its great resources. But he, he looked at me with awreat won- der in his eyes and wanted to know why should the good people of Manaos ever be hostile to him; they were his friends; he liked them and he had no enemies. Yet what could I say? Meu Deus, I am no evangelist to explain to youth its short- comings. So I wished him. well and left him, much mystified, to learn in the only school in which youth ever learns, that of experience. And the first of the lessons came soon enough. In the full publicity of the Teatro Central it occurred. Some foolish picture was showing, depicting the life of your vaqueiros in which men rode among cattle and in and out of clapboard villages at a pace never less than a gallop and shot each other with a pistol to each hand. Now we of the south can never under- stand this anomaly. How you of the most progressive north can abide such lawlessness at your very doors. And in this matter we think ourselves superior. For in our great plains, where the herds run in their vast thousands, we do not permit murder by the heroic wholesale. Yet this lad of yours, conversing with a couple of other gringos, his companions, made some remark to the effect that it sur- prized him, having been in Manaos three months now, not to have witnessed some such exciting lawlessness; and he cited with an amazing twist of pride the number of men killed yearly by pistols in’ some town of other of yours of equal population to ours. Whereupon a young hothead of the city sitting behind him, who understood English, as do most of our better class youths, could contain himself no longer; and leaning for- ward, he tapped the other on the shoulder Gomichbooks.com