302 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
One may hear an elderly gentleman talking to 
a young girl of fourteen, or, better still, two 
such damsels talking together, and it is “your 
Excellency” at every sentence; and the ad- 
dress on an envelope for a married lady is ///us- 
trissima Excellentissima Senhora Dona. The 
lower classes have not quite reached the “ Ex- 
cellency,” but have got beyond the “ Grace,” 
and hence the personal pronouns are in a state 
of colloquial chaos, and the only safe way is to 
hold to the third person and repeat the name 
of Manuel or Maria, or whatever it may be, as 
often as possible. 
This leads naturally to the mention of an- 
other peculiar usage. On visiting the Fayal 
post-office, I was amazed to find the letters 
arranged alphabetically in the order of the bap- 
tismal, not the family names, of the persons 
concerned, —as if we should enumerate Adam, 
Benjamin, Charles, and so on. But I at once 
discovered this to be the universal usage. Mer- 
chants, for instance, thus file their business 
papers; or rather, since four fifths of the male 
baptismal names in the language fall under the 
four letters, A, F, J, M, they arrange only five 
bundles, giving one respectively to Antonio, 
Francisco, José or Joao, and Manuel, adding a 
fifth for sundries. This all seemed inexplica- 
ble, till at last there proved to be an historical 
