It gave an illustrated list: among the items was the “national long tongue”—we talk too much; another was _bacharelismo_—everyone in Brazil wants to be a “Doctor” of medicine or law or philosophy. It is a disease not altogether limited to Brazil, despite the _Malho_. Cartoons in Brazil have a point of interest in addition to their wit, in the presentment of a national figure, “Zé (José) Povo.” Zé Povo is “the people,” quite distinct from the dignified figure of the _República_, a lady in draperies crowned with the Phrygian cap. Zé is the man in the street who stands by and makes acid comments; he has no counterpart in North American or English journals, but speaks his mind much as “Liborio” does in the Cuban humorous-political papers. No one can say that the press is not free in Brazil. Industrial expansion in Brazil will be the great amalgamator of the grades and divisions of the population; colonists of foreign origin cannot continue to live in separate nests, commercial fortunes will blend society, and the expansion of agriculture will sooner or later mean the evolution of the _sertanejo_ into a modernized, trading farmer; as the hills are opened for metals and the forests are entered for hardwoods and dyes and latex, the millions of Indians of the interior must be brought into line, or, retreating, eventually die out—the worst solution of his case and probably an unnecessary one. But at the present day there are many distinct types among Brazilian populations, and of them that of the _sertanejo_, the farmer of the interior, the _sertão_, is not the least interesting. Here on the wide uplands of the plateau he lives very much as Isaac lived, his world about him, his home, servants and herds his chief interests; simple, philosophic, intensely hospitable although reserved and proud, he makes little money but by his cattle, and wants little. His bodily needs are few, his furnishings of the simplest; his food is mainly the inevitable _farinha de mandioca_, milk products, beans (feijão) and eggs and _carne_. He may be the owner of great expanses of land, but he will seldom sell or divide it and there is no other life that he will endure and live. In touch with the open sky, the broad horizon before him, the _sertanejo_ is of a class apart; his is a simple and a dignified figure. Brought to town, through acquisition of money or the wishes of his womenfolk, the farmer of the interior is a peg for many witticisms of the townsman; he is a “caipira,” a countryman, a hayseed, and endless amusement is obtained at his expense. One of the Rio weeklies, the _Careta_, once ran a series of illustrated adventures of such a farmer who is supposed to come to Rio de Janeiro on a visit with his wife and pretty daughter, and who takes in the “sights” of the Capital from the countryman’s angle.