"But what do people eat and drink in La Paz? Grass and water?" I demanded.
But the bedraggled population was not even amenable to crude sarcasm, and the only reply I got was a lazy, child-like:
"Oh, each one keeps what he needs to eat in his own house."
Here was a town of a size to have been a place of importance in other lands, yet even the mayor lived with his pigs on an earth floor. Statistics of population have little meaning in Honduras. The place recalled a cynical "gringo's" description of a similar town, "It has a hundred men, two hundred women, and 100,000 chuchos "--the generic term in Central America for yellow curs of all colors. Why every family houses such a swarm of these miserable beasts is hard to guess. Mere apathy, no doubt, for they are never fed; nor, indeed, are the pigs that also overrun every household and live, like the dogs, on the offal of the patio or backyard that serves as place of convenience. They have at least the doubtful virtue of partly solving the sewer problem, which is not a problem to Honduraneans. A tortilla or other food held carelessly is sure to be snatched by some cat, pig, or dog; a bundle left unwatched for a moment is certain to be rooted about the floor or deposited with filth. These people utterly lack any notion of improvement. A child or an animal, for instance, climbs upon the table or into a dish of food. When the point is reached at which it is unavoidable, the person nearest shouts, throws whatever is handy, or kicks at the offender; but though the same identical performance is repeated a score of times during a single meal, there is never any attempt to correct the culprit, to drive it completely off, or remove the threatened dish from the danger zone. A people inhabiting a land that might be a garden spot of the earth drift through their miserable lives in identically the same fashion as their gaunt and mangy curs.
There was a great gathering of the neighboring clans in the Suaza hut next morning, while my companion of the day before enlarged upon what he fancied he knew about his distinguished guest. Among those who crowded the place were several men of education, in the Honduranean sense,--about equal to that of a poorly trained American child in the fourth grade. But there was not one of them that did not show a monkey curiosity and irresponsibility in handling every article in my pack; my sweater--"Ay qué lindo!" my papers--"How beautiful!" an extremely ordinary shirt--"How soft and fine! How costly!" and "How much did this cost?--and that?" Suaza displayed my medicine-case to the open-mouthed throng--and would I give mother some pills for her colic, and would I please photograph each one of the family--and so on to the end of patience. There was no mention made of the wealthy aunt and her mansion after the day dawned. The invitation to spend a few days, "as many as you like," amid the luxuries of Paris and the Seven Seas had tapered down to the warmed eggs and black coffee, the only real food I ate being that I had bought in a house-to-house canvass in the morning. I had distributed pills to most of the family and several neighbors and photographed them, at the request of the man of many promises, had paid his bills on the road since our meeting; while I prepared my pack, he requested me to send him six prints each of the pictures, some postals of New York, a pair of pajamas such as I carried, "and any other little things I might think he would like," including long weekly letters, and as I rose to take my leave and asked what I owed him, he replied with a bland and magnanimous smile: