CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUTH AMERICANS 587 
cism. It makes him fairly froth at the mouth, as it did the Americans 
in the days of Charles Dickens’s first visit. So the pleasant-faced gen- 
tleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Bevan, told young Martin Chuzzlewit: 
If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of 
any man, American born and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, 
and not as this or that party; and has escaped the foulest and most brutal 
slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange 
name in my ears, believe me. In some cases, I could name to you, where a native 
writer has ventured on the most harmless and good-humored illustrations of 
our vices or defects, it has been found necessary to announce, that in a second 
edition the passage has been expunged, or altered, or explained away, or patched 
into praise. 
There is a story in Santiago de Chile of a young American scholar 
who spent some time there studying localisms. When he returned to 
New York he ventured to publish honest but rather severe criticisms 
of society, as he saw it, in that most aristocratic of South American 
republics. As a result, the university from which he came received a 
bad name in Chile and his visit is held in such unpleasant memory that 
his welcome, were he to return there, would be far from friendly. This 
seems narrow-minded and perverse, but is exactly the way we felt not 
long ago toward foreigners who spent a few months in the states and 
wrote, for the benefit of the European public, sincere but caustic criti- 
cisms. American sensitiveness became a byword in Europe. Possibly 
it is growing less with us. However that may be, South American 
sensitiveness is no keener to-day than ours was fifty years since. 
It is particularly important that we should realize that the political 
conditions of the larger republics are very much more stable than our 
newspaper- and novel-reading public are aware of. Lynchings are 
unheard of. Serious riots, such as some of our largest American cities 
have seen within the past generation, are no more common with them 
than with us. It is true that the Latin temperament finds it much 
more difficult to bow to the majesty of the law and to yield gracefully 
to governmental decrees than the more phlegmatic Teuton or Anglo- 
Saxon. But the revolutions and riots that Paris has witnessed during 
the past century have not kept us from a serious effort to increase our 
business with France. The occasional political riot that takes place, 
of no more significance than the riots caused by strikers with which 
we are all too familiar at home, is no reason why we should be afraid 
to endeavor to capture the South American market. 
Climatic conditions and difficulties of rapid transportation have had 
much to do with the backwardness of the South American republics. 
With the progress of science, the great increase in transportation facili- 
ties and the war that is being successfully waged against tropical dis- 
eases, a change is coming about which we must be ready to meet. 
There is not the slightest question that there is a great opportunity 
awaiting the American manufacturer and exporter when he is willing 
