THE BRAZILIANS 



is seldom need for extraordinary haste, and the climate is not 

 favourable to excessive speed or excitement. People always think 

 that the Southern peoples are more vivacious and even more noisy 

 than we are, but this is by no means the case. That great con- 

 noisseur of women, Maupassant, chose a thin Englishwoman when 

 he wished to describe a passionate type. The streets of the cities of 

 north-eastern Brazil are very much quieter than ours. There is no 

 pushing and elbowing when the electric trams stop to take on 

 passengers. Those waiting enter the tram as they stand in the queue. 

 There is no crowding at the booking-offices of the railway-stations 

 or the counters of the post-offices. In Recife the clerk of the post- 

 office was acquainted with me, and often entered into conversation 

 with me, but those waiting behind me never grew impatient. And 

 one day, when I was travelling by rail, a lady entered the carriage, 

 accompanied by a Httle boy who was holding a tin trumpet. The 

 child had no sooner sat down than he put the trumpet to his mouth 

 and blew it, with all the strength of his lungs, for a full hour (I timed 

 him by my watch). No one indignantly turned round to protest; 

 the child might have blown his trumpet for another hour if he had 

 not left the train. In Brazil people are allowed to do as they please ; 

 people are not so ready with prohibitions and demands as with us. 

 I feel inclined to advise nervous invalids to make a stay in Pernam- 

 buco or Bahia, as a cure. 



Of course, the Brazilians have less excitement in their lives than 

 we have ; above all, there is no direct taxation ! Tariffs and customs 

 duties provide the revenue. The whole life of the country has given 

 the people a repose whose charm is doubled by their amiability. 

 For example, it is not usual to talk loudly in the electric trams; 

 a loud voice at once stamps the speaker as a foreigner. I was always 

 charmed by the repose of the great city of Recife, and especially 

 on travelling homewards, through the quiet night, by the electric 

 tramway, from friends who lived at a distance of about an hour 

 and a half. It is true that I often regretted the absence of music, 

 which one seldom hears among the people; and yet the calm sea 

 along the shore of OUnda, and the wide inlets which traverse Recife, 

 might have been made for boating trips with singing and the music 

 of guitars ! 



All the time I was in the North-east I never heard an angry 

 word, never witnessed a quarrel. It is true that I was living in 

 the peace of the cloister. And this peace accompanied me even in 

 the more vivacious and Europeanized South. Here I experienced 



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