Prowling about Panama

by George A. Miller

INDIAN BOY GOES TO SCHOOL

This ignorance is part of our general antebellum attitude toward all the world lying south and east. In fact, we never bothered much with anybody outside of the United States. Over a century we lived on, secure in the idea that we were immune from European militaristic contagion and all-sufficient unto ourselves. The rest of the world might perchance sink into the sea, but we would go on blissfully without it. Our "free institutions" were self-sufficient and all-inclusive. And because we were able to compose our own troubles and keep out of other peoples' quarrels, more or less, we assumed that we were automatically superior to the rest of the world, "of course."

We of the United States have been likened unto a householder living on a plot of ground rich enough to support his family. Resolving not to become entangled in neighborhood alliances, he constructed a hundred-foot wall about his property and lived securely within. The righthand neighbor might be an anarchist and the man on the left a cannibal. If the man in the rear were a polygamist and the dweller across the street had a habit of using firearms indiscriminately it mattered nothing to the householder—so long as the wall held. But it came to pass that an earthquake destroyed that wall, and the said exclusive citizen suddenly found himself out on the street with his neighbors. And behold, it mattered much what sort of neighbors they were. There was nothing to do but get acquainted and help make the neighborhood a decent place in which to live.

Since the world war has battered down the wall with which we sought to separate ourselves from other nations, we have nothing left but to recognize and accept our place in the national neighborhood and do our share to make it decent.

The Latin-American has been at a disadvantage in the character of the continent in which he lives. South America is a land for promoters, organizers of industry, hardy pioneers of production, engineers, planters, and rugged explorers of commercial frontiers. The poetic and artistic temperament of the Latin has suffered an unfair criticism because of the ill adaptation of his temperament to his environment. Sunny Italy and picturesque France and vine-clad Spain were more to his tastes and abilities. That he has done as well as he has speaks much for his adaptability to a situation better suited to a more executive type of character. Give him a chance in his own best environment and he shows capacity of high achievement.

WASHDAY IN COSTA RICA

Probably the two most arrogant travelers have been the Englishman and the American, but our British cousins have assumed their superiority with silent contempt, while the newly rich America globe-trotters have vaunted their ignorance from the piazzas of every tourist hotel and upon the steamer decks of every sea. It is really not strange that we failed to notice the very considerable and important populations of countries lying at our doors.

The North Americans are not travelers. Few of us do go anywhere, and fewer still know how to travel successfully. The poorest traveler in the world is the society tourist who goes about trying to reproduce home conditions in a foreign land. So far as possible he escapes the life and message of the country in which he sojourns and returns with little else but tales of social functions, a la American, and comparative accounts of expenses at tourist hotels. From the first day out he isolates and fortifies himself against the very things that travel alone can give. He brings home a few trinkets made to sell, some cocksure criticisms of customs, people, and missionaries, and a swelled head. But he has been abroad—save the mark!