584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the battle of Ayacucho, the resemblances between the faults that were 

 found with us fifty years ago and those that are noticeable among the 

 South Americans of to-day, are too striking to be merely coincidences. 

 It is surely not for us to say that there is anything inherently wrong 

 with our southern neighbors if their shortcomings are such as we our- 

 selves had not long ago, and possibly have to-day. 



The first criticism that one hears and the first one is likely to make 

 after getting beyond the pale of official good breeding in South Amer- 

 ica, is that the manners of the ordinary South American are very bad. 

 Let the traveler who is inclined to take such a state of affairs too seri- 

 ously, read what Dickens wrote about us and our ways in 1855 in 

 " American Notes " and " Martin Chuzzlewit." It was a faithful pic- 

 ture of a certain phase of American life. Furthermore, it paints a con- 

 dition of affairs worse than anything seen in South America. 



Travelers who are prone to find fault with the service at South 

 American hotels and restaurants, should ponder on Dickens's description 

 of the dining room of a New York boarding house in his day. 



In the further region of this banqueting-hall was a stove, garnished on 

 either side with a great brass spittoon. . . . Before it, swinging himself in a 

 rocking-chair, lounged a large gentleman with his hat on, who amused himself 

 by spitting alternately into the spittoon on the right hand of the stove, and the 

 spittoon on the left, and then working his way back again in the same order. 

 A negro lad in a soiled white jacket was busily engaged in placing on the table 

 two long rows of knives and forks, relieved at intervals by jugs of water; and 

 as he travelled down one side of this festive board, he straightened with his 

 dirty hands, the dirtier cloth, which was all askew, and had not been removed 

 since breakfast. 



It is indeed hard to overlook the table manners of the average 

 South American. But how many years is it since North Americans 

 were all reading and conning "Don't! A Guide to Good Manners"? 

 It is less than a quarter of a century since our self-conscious use of the 

 fork on all possible (and impossible) viands showed that we felt the 

 need of improvement. 



To one inclined to criticize the speed with which a company of 

 South Americans will dispose of their food, let me recommend Dick- 

 ens's American boarding house table where 



Very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in 

 self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast-time to- 

 morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature. 

 The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and 

 slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished; 

 whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums; and no man winked his eye. Great 

 heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn 

 and awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted their food in wedges; 

 feeding, not themselves, but broods of night-mares, who were continually stand- 

 ing at livery within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out 

 unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes 

 upon the pastry. 



