“Ah, my dear lady,” continued the Senor, as he spread a hot biscuit with butter and currant jelly for the youngest Miss Brimmer, “I am afraid that, with the fastidiousness of your sex, you allow your refined instincts against a race who only mix with ours in a menial capacity to prejudice your views of their ability for enlightened self-government.  That may be true of the aborigines of the Old World—­like our friends the Lascars among the crew”—­

“They’re so snaky, dark, and deceitful-looking,” interrupted Mrs. Markham.

“I might differ from you there, and say that the higher blonde types like the Anglo-Saxon—­to say nothing of the wily Greeks—­were the deceitful races:  it might be difficult for any of us to say what a sly and deceitful man should be like”—­

“Oor not detheitful—­oor a dood man,” interpolated the youngest Miss Brimmer, fondly regarding the biscuit.

“Thank you, Missie,” beamed the Senor; “but to return:  our Lascar friends, Mrs. Markham, belong to an earlier Asiatic type of civilization already decayed or relapsed to barbarism, while the aborigines of the New World now existing have never known it—­or, like the Aztecs, have perished with it.  The modern North American aborigine has not yet got beyond the tribal condition; mingled with Caucasian blood as he is in Mexico and Central America, he is perfectly capable of self-government.”

“Then why has he never obtained it?” asked Mrs. Markham.

“He has always been oppressed and kept down by colonists of the Latin races; he has been little better than a slave to his oppressor for the last two centuries,” said Senor Perkins, with a slight darkening of his soft eyes.

“Injins is pizen,” whispered Mr. Winslow to Miss Keene.

“Who would be free, you know, the poet says, ought themselves to light out from the shoulder, and all that sort of thing,” suggested Crosby, with cheerful vagueness.

“True; but a little assistance and encouragement from mankind generally would help them,” continued the Senor.  “Ah! my dear Mrs. Markham, if they could even count on the intelligent sympathy of women like yourself, their independence would be assured.  And think what a proud privilege to have contributed to such a result, to have assisted at the birth of the ideal American Republic, for such it would be—­a Republic of one blood, one faith, one history.”

“What on earth, or sea, ever set the old man off again?” inquired Crosby, in an aggrieved whisper.  “It’s two weeks since he’s given us any Central American independent flapdoodle—­long enough for those nigger injins to have had half a dozen revolutions.  You know that the vessels that put into San Juan have saluted one flag in the morning, and have been fired at under another in the afternoon.”

“Hush!” said Miss Keene.  “He’s so kind!  Look at him now, taking off the pinafores of those children and tidying them.  He is kinder to them than their nurse, and more judicious than their mother.  And half his talk with Mrs. Markham now is only to please her, because she thinks she knows politics.  He’s always trying to do good to somebody.”