Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/591

Rh The conversation of a group of young South Americans is not such as appeals to our taste. There is usually too much running criticism on the personal qualities and attractions of their women acquaintances. To them it seems doubtless most gallant. At all events, it is not sordid, as was that conversation which Dickens describes as "summed up in one word—dollars."

When Dickens visited America, he remarked the frequency of the expression, "Yes, sir," and made a great deal of fun of us for our use of it. Singularly enough, the Spanish "Yes sir"—"Si senor" is so extremely common throughout South America as to attract one's attention continually.

Another thing that Dickens notices was our tendency to postpone and put off from day to day things that did not have to be done. Yet there is no more common criticism of Spanish-Americans than that known as the "Mañana" habit. You will hear almost any one who pretends to know anything at all about Spanish-America say that the great difficulty is the ease with which the Spanish-American says "Mañana." Personally, I do not agree with this criticism, for I have heard the expression very seldom in South America. It is true that it is hard to get things done as quickly as one would wish, but I believe that the criticism has been much overworked. Dickens was undoubtedly honest in reporting that the habit of postponing one's work was characteristic of the "middle west" as he saw it, but such remarks would be greatly resented to-day and would not be true.

In many South American cities one is annoyed by the continual handshaking. No matter how many times a day you meet a man, he expects you to solemnly shake hands with him just as did those western Americans who annoyed "Martin Chuzzlewit."

So also with "spitting." With others, I have been repeatedly annoyed, not only in the provinces, but also in the very highest circles of the most advanced republics, by the carelessness of South Americans in this particular, even at dinner parties. But how many years is it since "The Last American" was prophetically depicted by J. A. Mitchell as sitting amid the ruins of the national capitol with his feet on the marble rail, spitting tobacco juice? One can hardly ride in our street cars to-day without being reminded that only recently have the majority of Americans put the ban on spitting. The fact that there are already printed notices in some of the principal South American cathedrals begging people, in the name of the local "Anti-Tuberculosis Association," not to spit on the floor, shows that this unpleasant habit will undoubtedly be eradicated in considerably less than fifty years after we have ceased to offend.

We also dislike intensely the South American habit of staring at strangers and of making audible comments on ladies who happen to be passing. Unfortunately, this is a Latin habit which will be hard to