CHAPTER XIIITHE ARGENTINE AT HOME

As we make no distinction in English between the name of the country and that of its native, referring to both as “the Argentine,” I am continually finding little difficulties present themselves in the progress of my writing, involving circumlocutions which are obviated in the Spanish. The Spaniard can never doubt the intention of a writer about the Argentine,la Argentinabeing the name of the country, or of a female native, whileel Argentinoindicates the male native. In the English, we have to depend entirely on the context of the sentence to make clear whether the reference is to the country or to a native thereof. In the present chapter, of course, the title sufficiently indicates that we are to look at the Argentine native in his domestic relationships, and I must confess the subject is one that does not admit of very extensive treatment, for the reason set forth by M. Jules Huret in one of his admirable studies. The French writer observes (I translate from the Spanish translation):

Only strangers of high social or official standing are received with any active sympathy. It is a matter of pride to be able to make these visitors realise the great progress of the metropolis and to introduce them to two or threesalons, which are all precisely alike. But if the stranger, although he be of good family, arrive at Buenos Ayres provided with letters of introduction to realcriollos(natives with generations of Argentinepedigree) he will receive cards in reply, and not always that courtesy; rarely a word of friendship or welcome. He will hear repeated on all handsmi casa es suya(“my house is yours”); there will even be the usual courtesies with him should they meet, and he may even be asked to go to the Jockey Club, if his stay in Buenos Ayres is not to be a long one. With few exceptions, he will not be able to penetrate into the intimacy of the “home” or of a family ofcriollos. Argentine family life, especially of the better class, retains many of the habits of the Spaniards and something of the customs of the Arabs.

This is correctly observed, and if an amiable Frenchman found such difficulty as M. Huret evidently experienced in penetrating within the outer walls of Argentine domesticity, how shall the Anglo-Saxon succeed where a Latin had to confess failure? It is to be borne in mind, however, that this refers chiefly to the old families, who affect to despise the motley rabble of newcomers, and while profiting enormously by the industry and enterprise of the Gringo,—who has developed and exploited the riches of their country, making them rich in the process,—do not wish to be vulgarised by intercourse with the merely money-making element of the population. The exclusiveness of such families is notorious, and maintaining as they do the ancient patriarchal relationships, they are sufficient unto themselves, so that any foreigner who seeks to force himself into their small and narrow-minded circle is an ill-advised mortal who will surely be snubbed for his pains. They are as truly republican, these criollos, as the families of the Doges of Venice, but politically, and even socially they are being overwhelmedby the great tide of commercial prosperity on which all sorts and conditions of people and the motliest mixtures of nationalities have floated into wealth and power. Yet there is something austerely attractive in their dignified isolation, their cold contempt of the ruck of the community. Like the creole families of Louisiana, they are landmarks of the past, mouldering memorials of a social system that has served its day and is ceasing to be.

We have really to go further back than Spanish origins to trace the influences that have moulded the Argentine criollo into what we find him. Just as it is a recognised law of heredity that certain characteristics are apt to skip one generation and reappear in the next, so do we find among these peoples of South America features that are more Moorish than Spanish. In modern times, while the Spaniards at home have been ridding themselves of many traces of the old Moorish dominion, those who settled in their American colonies retained customs and habits of thought which were disappearing in the home country, and owing to the isolated and circumscribed colonial life, tendencies toward exclusiveness have become emphasised to the point of exaggeration. Thus, in certain directions, the dusky hand of the Moor is even more noticeable in South America to-day than in Spain itself. This is a point of view which few Argentine writers would be willing to endorse, as it is the claim of the Argentine that his civilisation is purely European, though distinctive in its individuality. The fact remains, however, that the position of the womenkind, legally and socially, though now showing signs of rapid change, conforms more toMoorish notions than to European ideals; the very arrangement of the house is Moorish, disguised, it is true, by progression through Spanish and French styles; the tribal dignity of the head of the family is nearer to Arabic life than to anything still surviving in European civilisation.

It will be at once obvious to the reader that in a country where we find the very latest ideas of intellectual and industrial progress warring with social conceptions which we have long come to esteem as essentially oriental, we must have a very complex and unfamiliar system of family life to consider. Indeed, while there is but little for the writer to deal with, who confines himself to a record of familiar experiences, the subject is extremely fascinating and capable of treatment at great length. My present purpose, however, is to deal with the obvious, with “things seen,” rather than to attempt in any detail the tracing of origins of the Argentine social system. But the slight suggestion I have thrown out will show the bent of my thought in this connection, and perhaps help the reader to a better understanding of what is to follow.

It must be understood that the foreign resident actively engaged in business affairs might not, in the whole course of a lifetime, come in contact with any of the real criollos. Nor would it be matter for surprise if he seldom or never encountered a real Argentine. Personally, it was my good fortune to meet several gentlemen of eminent position and influence in Buenos Ayres who were natives of the country, whose parents in some instances had even been born there, and all were intensely proud to be Argentines.It would be difficult, however, to determine to what extent any one of them, had England been the scene of their lives, would have been regarded as an Englishman. The extraordinary power of the country to assimilate all races under the sun, the speed with which even the most unpromising material of immigration seems to be transformed into Argentine nationality, presents one of the greatest difficulties to the foreigner in his search for national characteristics. I was told by various English residents that they had only been able to make their children grow up with the English tongue by thrashing them when they spoke Spanish, and M. Huret mentions the typical case of a Frenchman whose sons absolutely refused to learn their father’s language, and were proud to speak only Spanish. He also tells how two sons of a wealthy German resident in Rosario, who had been sent to a German University, while staying at the Plaza Hotel in Buenos Ayres on their return, on being mistaken for Germans, felt so mortified that they wept!

There are two immediate reasons for this fervid patriotism of the younger generation: (1) the fact that all male children born in the Argentine are regarded as Argentine citizens and must perform their military service; and (2) the perfervid patriotism instilled into them at school, where the national flag is exhibited in every room and receives the homage of a sacred thing.

A Scene in the “Camp”—Peones outside a “Pulperia,” or Country Grocery and Liquor Store.

It is perfectly understandable that a young man, feeling himself a citizen of no mean country, in which his father is no more than a foreigner—rarely does a Frenchman become officially an Argentine, as thatinvolves the renunciation of his own nationality; the Germans are less squeamish in this respect; while the Italians and Spanish readily nationalise themselves—will take a wholesome pride in his citizenship. And as language is the greatest instrument for binding a people together, and the predominance of Spanish in South America is unassailable, it is not surprising that the native-born should even prefer the language of his country to that of his father’s country. In the course of my stay I met quite a number of persons bearing the most familiar English and Scottish names, who could not even say “Good morning” in English. With certain of these I had frequent transactions, and it was interesting to study the racial characteristics of a gentleman named Campbell, a fanatical Argentine, whose parents two generations back spoke nothing but “braid Scots,” yet whose every action and trick of speech was peculiarly Argentine. Another gentleman, one of the most able and businesslike men I encountered, boasted the name of Harris (pronounced “Arrees”), which was about the only English word he knew. Thus it happens there are unnumbered thousands of Argentines without a single drop of Spanish blood, but with all sorts of infusions of British, German, French, Italian, Belgian, Russian, Scandinavian, etc. As regards the patriotic teaching, here is an example of the catechism in daily use throughout the public schools:

Question.How do you esteem yourself in relation to your compatriots?Answer.I consider myself bound to them by a sentiment which unites us.Q.And what is that?A.The sentiment that the Argentine Republic is the finest country on earth.Q.What are the duties of a good citizen?A.First of all, to love his country.Q.Even before his parents?A.Before all.

Question.How do you esteem yourself in relation to your compatriots?

Answer.I consider myself bound to them by a sentiment which unites us.

Q.And what is that?

A.The sentiment that the Argentine Republic is the finest country on earth.

Q.What are the duties of a good citizen?

A.First of all, to love his country.

Q.Even before his parents?

A.Before all.

Afterwards, the scholar responds in the following manner to another question from the teacher:

In the veins of no human being ever flowed more generous blood than ours; the origins of no people in the world ever shone with a brighter aureole than that which illuminates the brow of the Argentine Republic. I am proud of my origin, of my race, and of my country.

Whenever the name of General San Martín is mentioned by the teacher in a class, the scholars are expected to bob up and make the military salute, at the same time sayingviva la pátria! And very touching the extreme gravity of all classes in uncovering and their prayerful homage when the somewhat bizarre strains of the National Anthem, reminiscent of the Marseillaise mixed with a Sankey hymn, are heard, while the national flag borne through the streets or exhibited on an official occasion involves the doffing of all hats.

All this, to Europeans, exaggerated patriotism, will appear far less so to the citizen of any young country, and is not vastly more pronounced than that of the United States, but it is probably necessary to the fomenting of a proper sentiment of nationality. Time will adjust the untrue perspective of the present day, which elevates the most trumpery shooting affairs into heroic combats and successful soldiers of no dazzlinggenius with Wellington and Napoleon, if not with Julius Cæsar and Alexander the Great!

These, then, are two very potent factors in the making of the Argentine patriot: the claiming of every male child born in the country as a national unit and the determined inculcation of a vigorous patriotism. We have to add to them the influence of the language and also that natural love of country which makes the human being prefer even the most forbidding and unattractive scenes, if they happen to be the first on which his dawning mind has looked. So strong is this feeling, that I have found it quite impossible to utter a single word in criticism of Buenos Ayres in the presence of young people, the children of British subjects, who had been born there and had never seen a European city. Nay, they are to be met in England, full of contempt for poor old London and all things English, and fired with the most unreasoning love of their native Buenos Ayres. Thus in a country where “the melting pot” so quickly turns all that is thrown therein into the same mould, it is almost futile to go searching for “the real Argentine,” and we must be content to attempt no delicate differentiations, but simply to accept in the broadest and loosest way the Argentine residents as the Argentine people, excluding, perhaps, the larger portion of the British community.

Early discovering the fact that there was no possibility of the average stranger being admitted into the charmed circle of the private family, I turned to other methods of discovering something of the family life, and confess that I did not even despise the observations of English governesses, whose services are in keen demandamong the well-to-do. Some of these ladies might do the necessary picture of the inner life of the Argentine family which no ordinary visitor is ever likely to be able to draw from personal observation.

Let me give one glimpse of an Argentine interior, as I had it from a very able teacher of languages—an English lady who had spent a number of years in the homes of different families. Unlike most Argentine families, this was self-contained, the father and mother with their brood of young children, and a considerable retinue of servants, occupying an immense house in the fashionable district, with no other relatives sharing it. The gentleman derived a large income from his estates and was above the need to do more than draw his money periodically from the agents into whose hands he had placed their management. The wife, still under thirty, was the mother of some eight or nine children, and she had already attained to that condition of adipose tissue which is the ambition of every respectable Argentine lady. Her mornings were spent in aimless lolling about the house in a state of undress, her toilet being a matter for the afternoon, when she went for a short run in their big limousine, or visited some lady friends to take afternoon tea. In the evenings, she had her children with her until a comparatively late hour, her husband spending almost every evening at his club, and he too would attend to his toilet in the afternoon, thinking nothing of sitting down to lunch in his shirt-sleeves with his suspenders hanging from the back of his trousers, while his wife would be in her dressing gown. The children were not admitted to meals, but took their food with thegoverness and one or two nurses in a special dining-room, into which papa would occasionally wander at meal time, still in his shirt sleeves, and help himself to scraps from the dishes on the table or perhaps a spoonful of soup from the tureen! This the governess found somewhat trying in her efforts to instil manners into the children, whose conduct at table was deplorable. Once when one of the elder girls was picking the bread on the governess’s plate, that much-tried lady explained to her gently that such was not considered good manners, to which the bright young girl replied: “In England, yes; but here, no.”

To keep these lively youngsters from all sorts of monkeyisms, such as licking the dividing spoon, putting their knives into their mouths, and making as much noise over a plate of soup as one does in a bath, left the governess scant time to enjoy her meals, and such manners among children are not altogether exceptional in Argentine homes. Young people are pampered to a dangerous degree, and while still mere children they have more pocket money to dispose of on their own little selfish pleasures than many a well-to-do Englishman spends on himself.

Although there is great and growing popularity for all forms of English sport, and especially football, the boys of the moneyed classes are usually somewhat effeminate in their manners. Those of the household above mentioned who were old enough to go to school were taken there, a distance of about a quarter of a mile, under care of a nurse or the governess, in one of the various motor cars owned by the father, and at the hour of dismissal each day they were brought home inthe same manner. I used to think it quite one of the characteristic sights of Buenos Ayres to notice the groups of nurses and governesses at the doors of the better-class schools, waiting to receive their little charges and conduct them as far as two or three squares away by electric tram, when the parents could not afford to send a motor or a horse-carriage for that purpose. Many of these helpless boys would be twelve years old! This is understandable in the case of the girls, nay imperative, but it tends to make the boys timorous and unmanly, afraid even to cross the street alone. In view of the universal pampering of the children, it speaks highly for the essential virility of Argentine character that the youth of the country cannot, as a whole, be said to lack in manliness; they seem to throw off in adolescence the effeminacy which their boyhood training is admirably adapted to foster in them.

Of familiar domestic intercourse, such as the social relationships of British and North American home-life make possible, there is absolutely none in the Argentine, or, indeed, throughout the whole of South America—excepting always those families in which Anglo-Saxon influence predominates. The drawing-room of most of the better-class houses is a gorgeously furnished chamber, in which the furniture, on most days of the year, is hidden under dust covers, and where the blinds are seldom raised. It exists for state occasions only, when the starchiest formality is observed, and these are by no means numerous and always duly announced in the social column of the daily papers. The lady of the house passes most of her timebetween her bedroom and her boudoir, and it is in the latter, if she cultivate a circle of lady friends, that she will sip afternoon tea with her callers, although you will occasionally come across an announcement in the social news stating that some lady is going to give a “five o’clock tea room” at four o’clock, and inviting her acquaintances to be present. There is a great partiality for the use of English phrases, and “five o’clock tea,” together with the addition of “room,” is often used without any clear understanding of its meaning.

But the Argentine mother, although her ways are not our ways, might in certain respects serve as an example to English and American mothers; entering not in the slightest degree into any of her husband’s concerns that lie outside of their home, her devotion is entirely to her children, who will in large measure reflect her standard of culture, and when the lady of the house has had a European training, there will be nothing lacking in the behaviour of her children.

This bond between the mother and children is very strong, reaching out through all the living generations, so that even a great-grandmother—and there are many, as the women marry young, grandmothers of forty being not uncommon—enters very intimately into the lives of all her progeny, who vie with each other in their love for her. The community of feeling between all members and branches of the family is most pronounced. The importance of this in knitting together the fabric of Argentine society cannot be overestimated.

Unlike the French housewife, the Argentine lady does not greatly concern herself about the finances ofthe household, merely giving directions for the expenditure, but usually leaving it to her husband to settle the accounts. In this she shows something of the “grand lady” and also something of the lady of the harem, acknowledging that it is no part of a woman’s business to understand the value of money. Her conception of her office is to be pleasing and attractive to her husband and devoted to her children, in which duties she finds her full content. The very formality of her name indicates how far the Argentine lady is removed from the possibilities of Pankhurstism. She is proud to be known as Señora María Martínez de Fuentes, thus indicating that she is María Martínez of Fuentes, the latter being her husband’s name. It is an admission of husband’s rights which could not exist in a country of self-assertive womenkind.

By the way, it may be interesting here to explain the peculiar customs that regulate family names in South America, and lead to continuous mistakes on the part of Englishmen and Americans, who have not taken the trouble to familiarise themselves with them. I have just explained that when a lady marries she retains her maiden name and adds to it, with the preposition de, the name of her husband. Almost certainly, however, her husband would have two family names; the paternal and maternal. Let us suppose his name was Fuentes Mattos, the first his father’s family name and the second his mother’s family name. His wife, in adding his name to hers, ignores his mother’s name, which is of secondary importance, and in many cases is entirely dropped. On the other hand, the childrenof this imaginary couple would be named Fuentes Martínez, thus indicating that the father was a Fuentes and the mother a Martínez, so that we have the following varieties of nomenclature in one family:

When we remember that the names of the grandparents and the grandchildren will all pass through similar changes, it will be seen how complicated South American family names may become. Still, always bearing in mind the simple rules I have illustrated, there is no difficulty in identification, and relationships can be much more clearly established than with our cruder system.

There is a tendency in the Argentine, due to admiration of British brevity, to ignore the maternal name entirely, whereas on the Pacific coast it is the universal practice to use only the initial, so that Señor José Fuentes Mattos would there be expected to sign himself José Fuentes M. As it is, in the Argentine a man will sometimes write his name in full and at other times use only the initial for the maternal name, or drop it entirely; but for Señor José Fuentes Mattos to receive a letter from England addressed Señor J. F. Mattos is an insult he does not readily forgive. Naturally, that is what happens daily in business correspondence between North and South America, and I well remember a traveller for an American firm coming to me to solve the difficulties of a long list of names he had receivedfrom his head office, in every one of which the surname was represented by an initial and the maternal name written in full.

Returning to the Argentine at home, we have to consider for a moment that patriarchal system of living, to which I have already made reference as one of the legacies of the remote past. Formerly universal in Spain, had it not existed in the mother country before the colonising days, it would almost certainly have been forced upon the colonial pioneers. For protection against the marauding Indians, the colonists, even for many years after gaining their national independence in 1810, had to maintain themselves in closely banded communities. Even so recently as the year 1860, the now thriving city and port of Bahía Blanca, which may yet rival Buenos Ayres as a great centre of shipping, was no more than a military outpost to keep the Indians from penetrating too near the townships in the province of Buenos Ayres. Thus we might have attributed to the influence of environment the system of one family with all its connections, interested in the work of a large estancia, as extensive, perhaps, as an English county, living together under the one paternal roof, did we not know that it has a remoter origin. Now that the conditions which justified it have entirely passed away, its true origin is not only forgotten, but would probably be denied by those who observe the custom, which survives in the very heart of the metropolis, and among the best families of the land. I remember well how impressed we were with some of the private palaces in Buenos Ayres, many of which rival in size and architectural ostentation the great publicbuildings. It was a matter for wonder how any ordinary family could tenant a house large enough to serve as the town hall of an important city. But all was made clear when we knew that in many of these private palaces there was not merely one solitary family nestling away in some corner of the huge building, but probably anything from six to a dozen related families, living under one roof, so that I used to think of the head of the family in Gilbertian rhyme, abiding in peace, not only with wife and children, but with

His sisters and his cousins,Whom he reckons up by dozens,And his aunts!

His sisters and his cousins,

Whom he reckons up by dozens,

And his aunts!

To Britishers especially, it is a surprising fact that there are brethren in the world who can dwell together in harmony, to whom propinquity does not lead to family bickerings. That would be notoriously impossible in Great Britain, and I suspect equally so among the Anglo-Saxons of America. Our nature prompts to the independent life and an early good-bye to the parental roof. Surely, then, there must be something radically different in the Argentine character which can enable half a dozen or more interrelated families to live harmoniously in the same house. Of course, each family unit has its own particular quarters, and in some of the more stately residences each family is really self-contained as to its house accommodation, but more usually they will have common dining-rooms and sitting-rooms, the women folk passing practically all their time in each other’s company. As a people they must either be abnormally good-natured, family affectionmust be developed beyond anything familiar among us, or their racial inclination to indolence makes them so tolerant of one another that they do not have the spirit to quarrel. I suspect that something of all three, interacting on their lives, makes possible the existence of this unusual condition of happy family life.

The system is one that has much to be said for it, and fostering, as it does, an intense feeling of family pride, which is reflected in the patriotism of the country, it must be regarded as a valuable asset of national character. If it happens that any member of the composite family meets with misfortune, he can be sure of the immediate sympathy and practical help of his relatives within the domestic circle, for they would deem it an indignity that one of their family should be known to be in difficulties. If one of the married sons dies, leaving a widow with several children, there will never be a moment’s doubt as to what the widow will do. She will continue in precisely the same position within the family, and even if her husband has left no money at all, his brothers will consider it their bounden duty to maintain her and her children in the same comfort as her husband would have done. Nor is there any charity in this, as there would be with us. It is a natural concomitant of the family system. What we should consider generosity, the Argentine brother-in-law regards as a simple duty, and there is hardly a limit to what he will do in the shape of service to the family of his dead brother.

In this connection, I recall a very interesting illustration of the racial differences between Argentine and English. An English settler in Buenos Ayres had fivedaughters born there, four of whom married British residents or the children of British residents. The one exception married an Argentine gentleman, and so narrowly British were her relatives that at first they looked with disfavour on the match. After some years, the English husband of one of the daughters died, leaving her with four children and an empty purse, having wasted all his wife’s patrimony in foolish speculation—there is no Married Women’s Property Act, the husband becoming sole arbiter of his wife’s fortune! Her English brothers-in-law and her own sisters were more or less sympathetic, but the despised Argentine brother-in-law immediately made a home for her and her children with his own family, and, as one of her relatives told me, seemed to think he was only doing his bare duty. This is a very pleasant trait of character, and from all that I was able to gather it is entirely characteristic of the better-class Argentine. Certainly, wherever I found that British women had married natives, they had good reason for happiness, and too often were able to commiserate with their own sisters and women friends who had married Englishmen.

Another noteworthy resultant of the strength of the family bond is its influence for good on the men. In a country where, thanks to the cosmopolitan rabble of rogues and tricksters who swarm in every quarter, dishonesty abounds in all its guises, the temptations to most men are greater than in the older and more firmly established countries of the world. Pride of family very often keeps a man in the straight path. It is a little reminiscent of the ancient system of the Japanese, which involved the entire family in the disgrace andpunishment of any one member who transgressed the laws of honour. The strongest deterrent to one tempted towards a wrong course is not what the community at large will think of him, but how his action will embarrass and humiliate his whole family. And when a member of one of these composite family circles is guilty of embezzlement or any misdeed which can be rectified by the self-sacrifice of the others, the matter seldom reaches the public; his father and his brothers and other relatives willingly make good his defalcations. Quite a number of cases of this kind came to my personal knowledge, and I believe it is a fact that the law has seldom to be appealed to when any one has suffered a loss through an employee, or a partner who is “well connected.” For this reason, astute business men are always careful to inquire into the family connections of any person with whom they purpose having transactions, these connections being their best guarantee. It will usually be found that the most barefaced swindlers are either foreigners, or of foreign parentage, and not seldom have they a good deal of British blood in their veins.

A “Ramada,” or Shaded Resting-place for Men and Horses in the Argentine “Camp.”

As to the “homes” of the Argentine, they approach more nearly Anglo-Saxon ideas of “comfort” than the French, Spanish, or Italian notions of “home.” French styles of furniture and interior decoration still predominate. There is, however, a growing appreciation of the more solid comfort of English styles, and popularity for these is assured. Our capacious easy chairs are ousting the dainty, elegant and abominably unrestful French affairs. Little progress, however, has been made in the direction of heating the houses,and an Argentine interior in winter, as I have said in an earlier chapter, is apt to be a picture of shivering cheerlessness. But there are signs that even this will be remedied in the increasing approval of what may be described as “English comfort.”

That the Argentine’s home is likely, however, to be thrown open to the freedom of the North American home is inconceivable. His exclusiveness is a heritage of the past. He could not rid himself of it, even though he tried. Nor is he trying very hard. He may in time come to follow European customs in the ordering of his meals, which still remain, in real Argentine homes, a topsy-turvy wonder to the European, the soup usually appearing about the end of the dinner, and the cheese being eaten indiscriminately between the earlier courses. This is no more than a fashion, but the other matter is “bred in the bone.”

Knowing this, it seems quaint to receive from a native a letter on some ordinary affair of business, bearing his home address with the initials “s.c.” or “s.c.u.” appended. Here we have an old Spanish formality, and one of the emptiest of courtesies. The initials stand forsu casa de usted, meaning “Your house.” That is to say, he informs you his house is your house! But he has no more intention of ever asking you to enter his house than you have of going there to stay. It reminds one of Mark Twain on his travels in Spain, when expressing admiration for a Spaniard’s jacket, the owner retorted, “It is yours, sir,” and further assured him when he also admired his beautiful waistcoat that it also was at his disposal, so that Mark, out of consideration of the Spaniard’sconvenience, refrained from admiring anything else he wore. This is a custom of very primitive peoples, and I am told that something similar obtains among the Maoris of New Zealand, one of whose chiefs pressed upon King George, when, as Prince of Wales, he visited the colony, the acceptance of some venerated object, and was greatly chagrined by the royal visitor, in all innocence and wishing not to offend the chief, accepting the quite useless gift. We must never take Spanish courtesy literally, and we must remember in South America that their courtesy is one of the things they have imported from Spain.

Among the minor characteristics of the Argentine which frequently interested me and for which I endeavoured to find a reason, was the habit of repeating the most ordinary phrases in much the manner of a doddering old person reiterating the same story. Let me try to express this in English. A lady is telling how she narrowly escaped being run down by a tram in the street:

It would be about four o’clock in the afternoon, when I was going down Calle Sarmiento. There was a lot of traffic in the street, and without looking backwards I stepped off the pavement. Just as I stepped off the pavement, I heard the bell of a tram, and looking back, it had nearly reached me, so I gave a scream and stepped back on the pavement, just as the tram passed me, in the Calle Sarmiento, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, when it was very crowded and I had only just stepped off the pavement, when I heard the bell, and had only time to step back when the tram passed me. If I hadn’t heard the bell, I might have been run over, and I gave a scream just as I stepped back on the pavement.

That is no burlesque version of how this most thrilling story would be told. Then, suppose you have to arrange with one of your native employees to purchase a box of purple carbon paper and three shorthand note-books on his way to the office to-morrow morning. You will tell him so, and expect that to be an end of the matter—when you are fresh to Buenos Ayres. But no, after listening attentively to your elaborate instructions, he will then repeat:

So, when I am coming in to-morrow morning, I will go to the stationer’s, and I will get a box of purple carbon paper and three shorthand note-books—a box of carbon paper, purple, and shorthand note-books, three, to-morrow morning on my way into the office. Three note-books and a box of purple carbon paper. Bueno!

This most tantalising habit of trivial repetition is universal, and so endemic that English-born residents speaking both languages translate this mode of thought into the English tongue, with the quaintest results. There is surely no people in the world who can take a longer time to explain a little matter than the South American, and I have often thought that the volume of the Spanish language, which frequently calls for three or four times the number of words that would be used in English to express a simple idea, must have had some influence in producing this strange habit of repetition, in order to fix in the mind precisely what is wanted and the condition under which it is to be secured. The only satisfactory method of conveying ideas from mind to mind was to assume that the person you were addressing was still under fifteen years ofage. The swift exchange of thought flashes which is possible between Anglo-Saxons is unknown to users of the Spanish tongue, but the more go-ahead Argentine, who really represents to-day the brightest intelligence that expresses itself in Spanish, is deliberately aiming at the Anglo-Saxon ideal, and, disregarding the circumlocutions of his native speech, is endeavouring to bend that to the brisker uses of modern commercial life. This theory of mine may be entirely wrong, but the facts, as I have endeavoured to illustrate them above, are substantially correct.

If anything is likely to seduce the Argentine away from his oldest and most honoured customs of life, it is the spirit of emulation which pervades the whole social system, though it is present to a much greater degree in those of mixed parentage than in thecriollos. By no means peculiar to the Argentine, it attains to almost equal strength in the United States, nor is it at all uncommon in English society. Social rivalry is really the motive force behind much of the commercial activity of the country. The family of Sanchez have just built a swagger new house and bought a 25 horse-power limousine. The Alonso family, having quite as much money and perhaps a trifle more than the Sanchez, cannot brook this ostentation to pass without reply, so up goes a still more florid mansion, a 40 horse-power car is bought, and the chauffeur wears a dozen more brass buttons. This game of “Beggar my Neighbour” in social ostentation is being played merrily through every grade of Argentine society. It is extremely good for business. Not only does it create a brisk demand for luxuries, but it lays upon those whoplay it the necessity of energising to secure the wherewithal, and is thus productive of creative effort in the making of wealth where formerly the impetus was lacking. So that perhaps it might not be wrong to suppose that what the European observer would write down in the one case as the vulgar striving of social “climbers,” and as rotten economics in the other, is economically good in the development of a young country. But it is imitative and nothing else, for there is as yet no evidence of the growth of a distinctively national taste, and this imitative tendency of the people is destined to bring them steadily nearer to European ideas, so that they will probably emerge with a social system that will bear the same relationship to that of all the European nations as a composite photograph does to all the portraits that have been overlaid on the negative.

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