XI
The sort of American who brings us all into disrepute is, in reality, a much over-damned specimen. He is a comparative rarity. Most travelers, and most permanent residents in Latin America, go out of their way to show themselves congenial and sympathetic to the natives.
We travel-writers love to picture the gruff, impolite American because he shows the reading public by contrast that we are cultured, considerate persons, with an international breadth of mind that enables us to appreciate foreign countries and foreign customs.
But the offensive fellow-countryman does exist.
“It is not so much that he is a low-class American,” explained a Salvadorean gentleman with unusual frankness. “Usually he is one who behaves very decently at home. Here he feels at liberty, in his disrespect for a small country, to do as he pleases. One of your diplomatic representatives a few years ago was expelled from the social club at Tegucigalpa, because when drunk he would go out upon the balcony to whoop and cheer and cast things at the pedestrians below.”
Our diplomatic and consular corps has sobered up since the days of O. Henry, and the typical representative of our State Department no longer sits in his hammock with a gin bottle, throwing banana peelings at the parrot. But this incident I was able later to verify. And there was one incident more.
“Not long ago, señor, two Americans came over the trail from Guatemala in an automobile, and when asked for their names by our police, they inscribed everything from the Prince of Wales to Jack Johnson. The authorities are tracing them now, and if we catch them, they shall learn what it means to show such insult to El Salvador!”
Salvador was a very pleasant place, but I decided to drift along. Anyhow, news had just arrived that a revolution was threatening in Honduras, the next republic on my itinerary. So I started in haste for Honduras.