“We tried in every way to explain to that little brown fellow that we wanted a native dinner,” each would later tell the people at home, “and what do you think he brought us? Beans! Just think of it! Beans!”
After lunch they rode about town again. The monument in the central plaza interested them. The suspender-manufacturer from Buffalo called it “Napoleon crossing the Delaware.” Great applause greeted the sally. Thereafter, pleased with his success, the wit rode through town standing up in the front seat, and shouting through megaphoned hands his descriptions of the other sights.
Old-Timers damned him, as they always damn the tourist.
“He’s the sort,” they said, “that brings us all into disrepute.”
But the natives merely smiled. They were accustomed to this oft-repeated phenomenon. When asked their opinion of the tourists, they merely replied, “All of them seemed very jolly, señor.”
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.”