Brazilian

“ Life in Brazil, if in Rio, was very gay; life at São Paulo was very like a farmhouse life, with cordiality and sociability with the other farmhouses, and some of the good Brazilian society was very charming. The Brazilians are to the Portuguese what the Americans are to us. The Portuguese is heavy; the Brazilian is light, active, nervous, spirituel. Their parties are much enlivened by music and dance. ”

“ One may in Brazil depend upon a street cleaner as much as upon a senator for chivalrous politeness. A stranger may address any passer-by in a Brazilian street in the most execrable Portuguese and will almost invariably receive serious and kindly attention: it is said that the Brazilian with his agreeably poised attitude to life “laughs at everything except a stranger who is speaking bad Portuguese.” ”

“ It is very seldom that a Brazilian lady is seen upon the streets of Rio during the day, which is in part to avoid the scrutiny of men, and perhaps, also, to obviate the embarrassment of seeing those same men under circumstances not very becoming for observation. ”

“ Turning from these anticipations, and glancing beyond the Brazilian life which is already familiar to us, we catch glimpses of another population connected with the Eastern Brazilians only by the necessities of commerce and production. In this inland society are mingled—under some strange and many picturesque aspects—several distinct varieties, of which the early creole, the aboriginal, and the negro races are the original types. Any rapid material progress will bring changes into this strange society, and already is it entering on a transition stage. ”

“ If among our Brazilian friends there are some who, familiar with the more progressive aspect of life in Rio de Janeiro, question the accuracy of my statements, I can only say that they do not know the condition of society in the northern cities and provinces. ”

“ Often, as we drove along, a wide gateway, opening into an avenue of palms, would give us a glimpse of Brazilian life. Here and there a group of people were sitting in the garden, or children were playing in the grounds under the care of their black nurses. ”

“ It was realized that a change would come about with the passage of years, when the second or third generations grew and mingled in a common society, Brazilians born and bred, and that meanwhile Brazil was too big to fear the effect of these nucleos with their strong retention of foreign loves and habits. Broadminded enough to sympathize with such feelings, the Brazilian knows that no man worth his salt forgets his native land ”

“ It is astonishing how the attention of a single person could occupy itself with so many things ... such as are contained in his work, which treats at the same time, in relation to Brazil, of geography, history, typography, hydrography, intertropical agriculture, Brazilian horticulture, native materia medica, wood for building and for cabinet-work, zoology in all its branches, administrative economy and even mineralogy! ”

“ Its personnel as a rule, admitting many brilliant exceptions, imperfectly represents the noble Brazilian people; its successes have been hailed with an enthusiasm run frantic, and its spare merits have been commended with an exaggeration whose consequences, operating upon public opinion, may do the country much real harm. ”

“ The upper classes of the Brazilians are a well educated and cultivated people. Most of them have been schooled in France, and speak the French language almost as fluently as their own. In Paris there is always a goodly sized Brazilian colony, and the boats passing between Rio and Europe always carry a number of Brazilians to and from that European capital. They find the atmosphere of the French capital more congenial, and full of the simpatica which means so much to the Latin people. ”

“ Apparently, the very considerable additions to the Brazilian population by immigration during the last hundred years have made little difference to Brazilian society; it is true that the Englishman with his tennis 78and football and his rowing-clubs has introduced and popularized sport, so that today there are thousands of young Brazilians taking part in these pleasures and it is true that the influx of artistic French in the reigns of the two Emperors affected and stimulated sculpture, painting and writing in Brazil ”

“ There are points of view in which this traffic wears a more cheering aspect; for any one comparing the puny Portuguese or the bastard Brazilian with the athletic negro, cannot but allow that the ordinary changes and chances of time will place this fine country in the hands of the latter race. The negro will be fit to cultivate the soil, and will thrive beneath the tropical sun of the Brazils. ”

“ Brazilian literature derives chiefly from the Portuguese race, language and tradition as modified by the blending of the colonizers with the native Indians and the imported African slaves. At first an imitative prolongation of the Portuguese heritage, it gradually acquires an autonomous character, entering later into the universal currents of literature as represented by European and particularly French culture. ”

“ The Italians, employed on great fazendas, were more in contact with Brazilian life than any other race, and even they keep their own speech together with newly-learned Portuguese, eat Italian 79food and read Italian-language newspapers printed in Brazil. Not until the development of industry brings the colonies into closer contact with each other and with Brazilian centres of old standing will the Galician and Arab affect any society but of his own race. ”

“ The Brazilian is warm-hearted, generous, punctilious in the observances of the most formal etiquette, and although he can unbend with the freedom of a schoolboy, care must always be taken not to trespass upon this characteristic, or to wound his inordinate vanity. ”

“ Few countries on the active list have seen such revolutions in industry; they have been largely due to the variety of Brazilian regions, and they will in all probability be repeated while Brazil opens her great expanses of virgin prairies, forests, and mineral-saturated hills. ”

“ The Brazilian white man of large property, who draws his descent from the first Donatory of a province, or whose family has for some generations enjoyed distinction, entertains a high opinion of his own importance, which may sometimes appear ridiculous ”

“ It is just as well to realize this difference clearly, to know that, at least in the past, the Americas have been more closely bound to Europe than to each other; the ties are especially strong in Brazil, more tender than in many parts of the New World, because separation in a political sense was obtained without violence. It is only through understanding of the mental and social attitude and conditions of the Brazilian that the newcomer can avoid pitfalls. ”

“ It is needless to say that the restoration of a monarchy in Brazil is quite unthinkable, and that the society’s existence is more interesting than important, but I mention it to show the amused tolerance of the Brazilian towards other people’s opinions. He has a detached, sometimes cynical attitude, believes in frank discussion and the airing of ideas, and together with a markedly democratic habit of life retains a European 81respect for tradition and authority. ”

“ How far the differences between the Brazilian and the Portuguese of to-day are due to racial admixture, and how far to the conditions of colonial life and a new physical environment, is a matter on which one might speculate for ever and come no nearer to a conclusion. ”

“ I do not mean that strangers are treated with special courtesy; good manners are habitual. Brazilian men meeting each other in the street half a dozen times in a day, lift their hats to each other: no one, obliged to step past another closely on a street-car, but will raise 77his hat and murmur “Com licença!” ”

“ The Brazilians are the hottest players, pushing on far into the small hours. Politely admitting the fact that we, thereabouts lodged, may be asleep, or may wish to sleep, they open conversation in a half whisper. ”

“ Before the coming of the Germans, South Brazil was almost totally neglected; demand for tropical produce such as sugar and tobacco had kept the attention of Portuguese and their mixed-blood descendants for over three centuries to North Brazil, where negro slaves multiplied on the warm coast; the grassy uplands of the south attracted few Brazilians, and these chiefly bandeirantes whose main business was to keep out Spaniards from the Plate, and whose wild cattle strayed and bred on the natural pastures. ”

“ THE INTERIOR OF BRAZIL 1867 I HAD been in Brazil nearly two years, vegetating between Santos and São Paulo, varied by an occasional expedition afield or a trip to Rio de Janeiro, when I determined to put into action my long-cherished plan of prospecting the great and wealthy province of Minas Gerães in the interior, and then to go down the São Francisco, which is the Brazilian Mississippi, from Sabará to the sea, and to visit en route the Paulo Affonso rapids, the Niagara of Brazil. ”

“ Among the humbler class, the negroes and poor whites of the morros and the narrow valleys between them, or of the one-story tenement houses known as cortiços, there is but slight sense of privacy and much of the family dishabillé and domestic activities are freely exhibited to the public gaze.
Outside his home circle, however, the Brazilian is more than exacting in such matters. In public a man must not only be fully dressed, but is somewhat looked down upon if he indulges in any of those lighter garbs of the “Palm Beach” variety that seem so in keeping with the Brazilian climate. ”

“ The Brazilians had been given so much that they wanted more. The opening of their country to commerce and travel had let in new ideas, and the people began to discover that they were the slaves of an absolute government. ”

“ The Brazilian who would be ready to challenge to a duel the stranger who spoke to one of the women of his family often brings them to social events, to the races, to a patriotic celebration, and, after installing them in a place of vantage, goes to sit with his overdressed French mistress, as like as not within plain sight of his family, apparently without incurring any censure or even protest from his wife and children and certainly none from society. ”

“ Brazilians have their own way of thinking, which is not ours, and which is to us almost incomprehensible. [11] They are most indirect in their thoughts and deeds—a characteristic which is purely racial, and which they themselves cannot appreciate, but which often shocks Europeans. ”

“ Many, of all colours, when they can afford to purchase a negro, sit down exempt from further care. They make the negro work for them, or beg for them, and so as they may eat their bread in quiet, care little how it is obtained.
The European Portuguese, are extremely anxious to avoid intermarriage with born Brazilians, and prefer giving their daughters and fortunes to the meanest clerk of European birth, rather than to the richest and most meritorious Brazilian. ”

“ Verissimo, indeed, does Cruz e Souza something less than justice. In his short life (1863-1898) the ardent Negro poet succeeded in stamping the impress of his personality upon his age and, for that matter, upon Brazilian letters. He is incorrect, obscure, voluble,—but he is contagiously sincere and transmits an impression of fiery exaltation. His stature will grow, rather than diminish with time. ”

“ It has an appearance of truth in that the churches are largely filled with women; it is common for Brazilian men in conversation 91to affect an airy amusement before the claims of religious bodies: but due allowance must be made for French influence. ”

“ The Brazilians, who truly loved their country, never intended, however, to subject themselves to a constitution in which all had not a voice, and whose views were to convert them at once from free men into vile slaves. ”

“ The triumph of the engineer; Seeing Rio de Janeiro by tramway; Electric energy transforming Brazil; The racial melting pot; In the land of the Paulistas; The awakening of southern Brazil; Trade and transportation; Outdoor sports and lotteries; Rio de Janeiro, city of enchantment; Bahia, old and bizarre; Paranagua; Pernambuco and Central Brazil; Para and the rubber workers of the Amazon; The Brazilian Indian; Languages, libraries and literature; Brazil’s army and navy; The Latin American view of North Americans; The newspaper as an international medium; Brazil’s tomorrow. ”

“ Yet with the best will in the world the Brazilians know comparatively little of the interior of their own country. It is necessary to collect all that is known from a variety of sources, and then to combine it as well as may be, so as to form an organized plan. ”

“ Naturally, in a young country like Brazil—I am speaking of new Brazil, now wide awake, not of the Brazil which has been asleep for some decades—perfection cannot be reached in everything in one day. It is really marvellous how much the Brazilians have been able to accomplish during the last ten years or so in their cities, on or near the coast. ”

“ The Brazilians are an interesting people. I like them. They are always courteous and polite. Men often tip their hats to each other and kiss each other's hands. In Rio de Janeiro nearly everyone is well dressed. ”

“ The class of Brazilians of whose mode of living the foregoing conveys a slight idea is fast disappearing before the rapid strides that civilization is making in the country. The majority of the planters of the present day are [115] intelligent, and free from most of the prejudices inherited from the old Portuguese settlers. ”