480 



A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



surging in the world outside, constantly developing new 

 phases of national and individual life ; indeed, of all but 

 her own narrow domestic existence she is profoundly igno- 

 rant. 



On one occasion, when staying at a fazenda, I took up a 

 volume which was lying on the piano. A book is such a 

 rare sight, in the rooms occupied by the family, that I was 

 curious to see its contents. As I stood turning over the 

 leaves (it proved to be a romance), the master of the 

 house came up, and remarked that the book was not suit- 

 able reading for ladies, but that here (putting into my hand 

 a small volume) was a work adapted to the use of women 

 and children, which he had provided for the senhoras of 

 his family. I opened it, and found it to be a sort of text- 

 book of morals, filled with commonplace sentiments, copy- 

 book phrases, written in a tone of condescending indul- 

 gence for the feminine intellect, women being, after all, 

 the mothers of men, and understood to have some little 

 influence on their education. I could hardly wonder, after 

 seeing this specimen of their intellectual food, that the wife 

 and daughters of our host were not greatly addicted to 

 reading. Nothing strikes a stranger more than the absence 

 of books in Brazilian houses. If the father is a professional 

 man, he has his small library of medicine or law, but books 

 are never seen scattered about as if in common use ; they 

 make no part of the daily life. I repeat, that there are ex- 

 ceptions. I well remember finding in the sitting-room of a 

 young girl, by whose family we had been most cordially re- 

 ceived, a well-selected library of the best literary and his- 

 torical works in German and French ; but this is the only 

 instance of the kind we met with during our year in Brazil. 

 Even when the Brazilian women have received the ordinary 



