People who talk and write
about the disorderly South American republics are fond of pointing to
Brazil, that great, peaceful, progressive empire, as setting an example
to be followed. An orderly country, yes, and the people in it steeped
to their lips in every abominable vice! Compared with these emasculated
children of the equator, the Orientals are Nature's noblemen.
I can very well imagine some over-righteous person saying, "Alas, poor
deluded soul, how little importance can we attach to your specious
apologies of a people's lawlessness, when your own personal narrative
shows that the moral atmosphere you have been breathing has quite
corrupted you! Go back over your own record, and you will find that
you have, according to _our_ notions, offended in various ways
and on divers occasions, and that you are even without the grace to
repent of all the evil things you have thought, said, and done."
I have not read many books of philosophy, because when I tried to be
a philosopher "happiness was always breaking in," as someone says;
also because I have loved to study men rather than books; but in the
little I have read there occurs a passage I remember well, and this
I shall quote as my answer to anyone who may call me an immoral person
because my passions have not always remained in a quiescent state,
like hounds--to quote the simile of a South American poet--slumbering
at the feet of the huntsman resting against a rock at noon.
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