Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/395

Rh Broadway, New York, was still bitterly bewailing the lost opportunity, like the man who being asked to "excuse" a lady to whom he had popped the question, excused her, and as he informed his friends, regretted having done so, to the end of his existence.

Many strangers are inclined to look upon the profuse offers of hospitality on the part of the Spanish American people, as utterly insincere, and made with an expectation in advance that they would never be accepted. This view of the case is, however, far too broad and sweeping. As a rule, the people of Mexico are truly hospitable in the broadest acceptation of the term, and strangers are welcomed and entertained with pleasure; but it is, of course, expected that they will use reason, and show some sense of delicacy; and a mere arbitrary translation of the expressions used would be unjust, as putting language into the mouth of the host or hostess which they never intended to use.

It is quite the fashion for foreigners of all classes, to denounce the Mexicans as a set of thieves and scoundrels, false, treacherous, cowardly, unreliable, and without a single redeeming characteristic. I will not claim for the Mexicans that they are a nation of angels and saints; they have their virtues and their faults like all other nations. But that they are more dishonest, or more given to disgraceful peculation and swindling than many of the foreigners with whom they have had to deal, I cannot believe. There are some most notable exceptions among the foreign-born residents of Mexico, but it is nevertheless the fact, that far too many of them bore but an indifferent character in their own country, came to Mexico to get rich "by hook or by crook," and have no scruples worth mentioning as to how they make