"Never mind forty years ago. What is the matter this morning, and why have you come to me for medicine?" chants the seasoned employer of plantation labor.
"That is what I was telling you, señor. Forty years ago I took a bath, and the next day I felt chilly, and then I thought that I had made a mistake, and so I went—"
"Now, see here. I have no interest nor curiosity about forty years ago. What is the matter with you now?"
"Be patient, señor. This is important, and I will tell you all. Forty years ago—" and after devious dodgings the tale terminates in a case of fever or indigestion, or mayhap only plain drunk.
It is ever thus with the tropic tao, or peon, or ignorante, or whatever may be called the people who have grown up with the soil and have risen not any above it. The petty official who hears complaints in any tropic land listens to marvelous reminiscences through deep jungles of imaginative memory before reaching present facts.
"Twenty-five years ago I had the toothache, and then the next week I had a bad dream, and after that I had no suerte [luck] at all, until one saint's day I drank rum and ate rice, and the rice make me sick—" is merely the opening chapter.
Every employer of tropic labor must be judge and jury for a docket of petty cases that have to be adjusted if the wheels of industry are not to be paralyzed in their work. Newcomers at this business of sitting in the seat of judgment hear marvelous stories of oppression and outrage, in which the accuser is always innocent—and always alone, if possible. But experience breeds disillusionment and skepticism deep and wide, and soon the amateur Solomon learns to distrust every story, most of all the first one told. For, after the plaintiff has sworn that he is telling the truth, or may all the saints strike him dead, and has unrolled his woes in orderly sequence, he stands with critical eye, watching to see what impression his art has made upon the puzzled personage of power.
And when the adjuster of affairs scorns the tale and says, "Get out with you. I don't believe a word of that stuff," the beggar bows and smiles a deprecating smile and begins all over again with a revised version of the case, which bears very little resemblance to the first story, and again stands back to observe what better success he may hope for this time. And there appears to be no end to the ready versions and variations of the woes of the downtrodden exponent of virtue whose humble bearing seems to exude virtue from every protruding bare spot through his rags.
