quite as "bland" as, the famous Celestial. He never quite
grows up; he will spend his last dollar on a mouth-organ when he is
forty, and give a wild war-whoop of delight as a stack of newly piled
sleepers falls crashing to the ground.

He loves sweets and the bright clothes which he wears with childish
dignity on feast-days and holidays.

His _amour propre_ is tremendous, and influences his code of honour to a
great extent. The first ten commandments he will break most cheerfully,
but the eleventh--"Thou shalt not be found out"--he respects to the best
of his power.

Stealing, for instance, he regards as a pastime, but call him a thief
and you must be prepared for trouble. A perfect instance of this can be
quoted in the case of an estanciero who found a peon wearing one of his
shirts.

[Illustration: _Square Quebracho Logs worked by the Axeman, showing
Resin oozing therefrom._]

"You are wearing my shirt," said the master. "No, Senor; I bought it in
the store." "But you stole it from me," insisted the estanciero,
pointing to the tab at the front, where his name was written in marking
ink; "there is my name on it."

The man, being quite illiterate, had not reckoned on such damning
evidence, but he recovered himself and replied with dignity: "Very well,
Senor; if it is yours, take it; _but don't call me a thief_."

Honesty is with them, admittedly, a matter of degree. A man will always
say if questioned about some small deficiency, "Do you think I would
swindle you for a matter of two dollars?" or "Do you think I would risk
my credit with the Company for the sake of _one_ calf?" To be honest in
a case where a larger profit is involved is a height of integrity to
which he does not even pretend. "I am going to be frank with you"--that
is an expression which puts the wise man on his guard, for it is
generally followed by a cascade of lies.

Business must be done on a completely different basis to that which
obtains in England. To return to our friend Fulano, for instance: he
wishes perhaps to ask for an increase of fifty cents per ton on his
wood, and introduces the subject by a short conversation about the
points of his horse, passing on to the bad state of the bullocks and
enlarging on the chance of a rainy winter. You have just decided that he
has nothing more to say and are preparing to leave him, when he makes
his request with as much circumlocution as possible. To have come
straight to the point would have b