Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/312

298 often learn as well as the white children up to about twelve years old, they then fall off, and are left behind by the children of the ruling race.

It will be well now to examine more closely what a race is. Single portraits of men and women can only in a general way represent the nation they belong to, for no two of its individuals are really alike, not even brothers. What is looked for in such a race-portrait is the general



character belonging to the whole race. It is an often-repeated observation of travelers that a European landing among some people unlike his own, such as Chinese, or Mexican Indians, at first thinks them all alike. After days of careful observation he makes out their individual peculiarities, but at first his attention is occupied with the