This Is A Racial Trait Worthy Of The Scientific
Consideration Of Professor Hugo Munsterberg And Other Students Of
Our National Psychology.
So far the Munsterberg school has
overlooked it - but the canny Parisians have not.
They long ago
studied out every quirk and wriggle of it, and capitalized it to
their own purpose. Liberality! Economy! Frugality! - there they
are, everywhere blazoned forth - Liberality for you, Economy and
Frugality for them. Could anything on earth be fairer than that?
Even so, the rapturous reception accorded to a North American pales
to a dim and flickery puniness alongside the perfect riot and
whirlwind of enthusiasm which marks the entry into an all-night
place of a South American. Time was when, to the French understanding,
exuberant prodigality and the United States were terms synonymous;
that time has passed. Of recent years our young kinsmen from the
sister republics nearer the Equator and the Horn have invaded Paris
in numbers, bringing their impulsive temperaments and their bankrolls
with them. Thanks to these young cattle kings, these callow silver
princes from Argentina and Brazil, from Peru and from Ecuador, a
new and more gorgeous standard for money wasting has been established.
You had thought, perchance, there was no rite and ceremonial quite
so impressive as a head waiter in a Fifth Avenue restaurant squeezing
the blood out of a semi-raw canvasback in a silver duck press for
a free spender from Butte or Pittsburgh. I, too, had thought that;
but wait, just wait, until you have seen a maitre d'hotel on the
Avenue de l'Opera, with the smile of the canary-fed cat on his
face, standing just behind a hide-and-tallow baron or a guano duke
from somewhere in Far Spiggottyland, watching this person as he
wades into the fresh fruit - checking off on his fingers each blushing
South African peach at two francs the bite, and each purple cluster
of hothouse grapes at one franc the grape.
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