When we converse—in their own language—with the educated Spanish American folk, we find them full of wise saws and modern instances. They are shrewd and philosophical, and the Spanish language abounds with proverbs and aphorisms applicable to the things of everyday life. They are born statesmen and lawyers and orators. They go back to the remote classics for their similes. All this is very delightful in its way, and the Englishman, after a course of years of it will come home and think his own countrymen rather stupid and unimaginative; that is if his own common sense does not balance their own more solid qualities against the more surface attainments. What he wishes is that the one race might partake more of the qualities of the other, and vice versa. Oratory and theory cannot replace practical politics and justice, but we miss the amenities.
Mucha tinta y poca justicia!
so says the Spanish American (or the Spaniard), referring to the national power of document-compiling and red tape; that is to say: "Much ink and little justice."
Nor yet can the most delightful spirit of hospitality make amends for the insufferable defects of the fonda and the inn, and
De tu casa a la ajena
Sal con la barriga llena!
is the soundest advice in Latin America to the traveller in the interior, or, as one would say, "From your own to a stranger's home, go forth with a well-filled belly."
The Spanish American people, as we have remarked, are of a poetical and sentimental temperament, given to oratory, and they produce many poets, many of which, however, would, if criticism is harsh, be termed versifiers. They are fond of what might be termed descriptive embroidery; what, indeed, one of their own race has termed desarollos lyricos ("lyric developments"). Love verses are an absorbing theme, and their small magazines overflow therewith, and even the daily Press does not disdain such. It might be said that versifying in Spanish in matters amorous may be facile, because amores (love), flores (flowers), olores (perfume), and dolores (grief) all rhyme! One cynical Spanish American poet, however, has propounded the following, descriptive of the social and natural ambient:
Flores sin olor
Hombres sin honor
Mujeres sin pudor!