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 his hat and murmur “_Com licença!_” A woman walking down the narrow streets of the older cities or older parts of the rejuvenated cities will always find her path cleared by men who step aside into the road with hats in their hands. If she happens to be very pretty looks will follow her and whispers may, but in my opinion the ordinary woman with quiet manners is safer in Brazilian towns than in most centres of population in the world, may break all the small rules with impunity and may always depend upon the grave kindness of the Brazilian. People of less punctilious societies are apt to speak with a degree of contempt of “surface politeness,” and to say that they prefer roughness and a good heart; generally this kind of remark is a clumsy apology for boorishness, and as a matter of fact a good heart is quite as likely to exist under a courteous exterior as under a discourteous one; a habit of consideration for others in speech and small actions is without doubt good training for any variety of heart and head. The Brazilian is in his mental attitude an inheritor not only of Latin tradition in general but of French ideas in particular: Paris is his Mecca, French literature and French science and French art the inspirers of his youth; more cosmopolitan than the Portuguese born, because he is in close touch with all Europe as well as with the Americas, quite minus the feeling that makes the Spaniard love bull-fights, the Brazilian has grounds for his claim as the brightest spiritual heir of Latinity. His excellent manners are a part of his heritage.