But such being the case, you never know! It is
disheartening to find such babble in the mouth of respectable officials
and writers.
I am well aware that there is a Sicilian _in fabula_ who is not "mafioso";
that the crude banditism which sits in every Corsican's bones has raised
him to the elysium of martyrs and heroes and not, where he ought to have
gone, to the gallows; that the Maltese are not merely cantankerous and
bigoted (Catholic) Arabs, but also sober, industrious, and economical. I
have lived with all these races in their own countries and--apart from a
fatal monkey-like apprehensibility which passes for intelligence but, as a
matter of fact, precludes it--have found chiefly this to admire in them,
that they are prolific and kind to their offspring.
Small praise? Not altogether. The same may apply to cats and dogs, but it
does not always apply to civilized races of men. The Scotchman, for
instance, can produce children, but is often unkind to them (_Read the
papers!_); the Frenchman is kind to children, but often cannot produce
them. It would seem that chiefly in half-cultured people are these two
qualities, twin roots of racial and domestic virtues, to be met with side
by side.
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