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SUNLIGHT 129
The Anglo-Teuton nations have developed hardship
as a doctrine of life, and yet their care for self-
preservation has resulted in more suicides than those
due to any other cause, even including unrequited love.
These solicitudes for self-preservation have, further-
more, very rarely any direct connection with starva-
tion; you shoot yourself because you do not possess the
necessary number of one-thousand-dollar bonds to en-
able you to live according to your station. The Anda-
lusian, on the other hand, will cast a ragged bag about
his shoulders with as much pride and decency as he
would put on a velvet-lined mantle; he is no lower in
his own eyes or in the eyes of others because he is
obliged to eat hard bread and drink water; his sense
of status does not depend on external things, and his
feeling of hardship is not aroused until hunger gnaws
at his vitals. But even in this case he will not take his
own life; he will let hunger do the job. And if hunger
does not accomplish the task, well then—obviously the
matter could not have been so serious after all.
He is not an ascetic. If you serve him a tasty meal,
he will partake of it gladly—but he will not go out of
his way to obtain it; such things do not move his am-
bition. The mode of cooking that results from this
attitude is more or less haphazard. After break-
fast has been taken from the stove at eleven o’clock
in the morning, dinner is put on, because it saves you
the trouble of making a new fire later, and the food
will go on boiling and frying until six o’clock, regard-
less of recipe. It is only in the boiling of eggs that
some attention is paid to time; for in this process the
kitchen girl will recite the Credo at a greater or less
speed, depending on whether the eggs are to be boiled
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