Whistling!

(Newspapers are reporting that the cost of living in Brazil is calamitous, afflicting the poor classes.)
Joe Public: “Look, gentlemen, we are reduced by protectionism, which favors a false national industry. Here are the consumers of tuberculosis. Imagine what the descendants of such a race will look like! The people are positively dying of hunger, they are already on the path of despair.”
(Various officials give mealy-mouthed excuses…)
Republican Senator for São Paulo and former agriculture minister Francisco Glicério: “And in the face of spectacles like this, I will not repeat that this is not the Republic of my dreams!”
Joe Public: “Nor mine. Republic of dreamers is what this is, the Republic of talkers. Some are eaters, the rest are fasters. Republic of doctors!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1912)