will you give me some little thing, (_alguma cousinha_,)--I am so poor?"
Overwhelmed with a sense of personal humility, you pull out three
half-cents and present them with a touch of your hat, he receives them
with the same, and you go home with a feeling that a distinguished honor
has been done you. The Spaniards say that the Portuguese are "mean even
in their begging": they certainly make their benefactors mean; and I can
remember returning home, after a donation of a whole _pataco_, (five
cents,) with a debilitating sense of too profuse philanthropy.

It is inevitable that even the genteel life of Fayal should share this
parsimony. As a general rule, the higher classes on the island, socially
speaking, live on astonishingly narrow means. How they do it is a
mystery; but families of eight contrive to spend only three or four
hundred dollars a year, and yet keep several servants, and always appear
rather stylishly dressed. The low rate of wages (two dollars a month at
the very highest) makes servants a cheap form of elegance. I was told of
a family employing two domestics upon an income of a hundred and twenty
dollars. Persons come to beg, sometimes, and bring a servant to carry
home what is given. I never saw a mechanic carry his tools; if it be
only a hammer, the hired boy must come to fetch it.

Fortunately, there is not much to transport, the mechanic arts being in
a very rudimentary condition. For instance, there are no saw-horses nor
hand-saws, the smallest saw used being a miniature wood-saw, with the
steel set at an angle, in a peculiar manner. It takes three men to saw a
plank: one to hold the plank, another to saw, and a third to carry away
the pieces.

Farming-tools have the same simplicity. It is one odd result of the
universal bare feet that they never will use spades; everything is done