Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/329

CH. XXI.] and advising me to take my pistols with me. I naturally fell into his suggestions, and generally continued to practise them; it having been our uniform custom, at Mexico, never to be out, unarmed, after dark.

I found, in the course of my travels, that it was always prudent to manifest a firm intention of self-preservation: this should, however, be done with an air of indifference, as if the shooting an aggressor was a matter-of-course business: the facility and precision with which it might be effected it is prudent frequently to show by shooting at a mark in the presence of your native servants, loiterers, and other hangers-on, in the different places where you happen to take up your abode: to this practice may be ascribed the happy result that I was never, in my own defence, once obliged to pull a trigger; although I had nothing else, in very many awkward situations, to rely upon for my protection, had I been attacked.