It lies
about a third of the way down the coast of Peru, close over the sea.
It has no harbour: a population of half-breeds--mestizos? Is that
the word?--sprinkled with whitish cosmopolitans, and here and there a
real white man. But these last, though they wear shoes and keep up
among themselves a pretence to be the aristocracy of the place, have
really resigned life for this anticipatory Paradise where they grow
grey on remittance money, eating the lotus, drinking smoked Scotch in
the hotel veranda, swapping stories, and--since they know one another
all too well in this drowsy decline of their day--feebly and falsely
pretending to one another what gallant knowing fellows they had been
in its morning. As for their shoes, token of their caste, they
usually wear them unlaced by day and not infrequently sleep in them
at night. With the exception of Engelbaum, who keeps the hotel, the
white citizens are unmarried. With the exception of Frau Engelbaum--
aged sixty and stout at that--there are no white ladies in San Ramon.
And yet San Ramon is a Paradise.
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