If He
Succeeds In Riding Him Down (An Action He Scruples Not To Do), He,
With Great Show, And At The Sword's Point, Conducts Him To The
Nearest Police Station.
Unfortunately he often chooses the quiet side
streets, where his prisoner may have a chance to buy his freedom.
If
he pays a few dollars, the poor vigilante is perfectly willing to
lose him, after making sometimes the pretence of a struggle to blind
the lookers-on, if there be any curious enough to interest
themselves. This man in khaki is often "the terror of the innocent,
the laughing-stock of the guilty." The poor man or the foreign
sailor, if he stagger ever so little, is sure to be "run in." The
Argentine law-keeper (?) is provided with both sword and revolver,
but receives small remuneration, and as his salary is often tardily
paid him, he augments it in this way when he cannot see a good
opportunity of turning burglar or something worse on his own account.
When he is low in funds he will accost the stranger, begging a
cigarette, or inviting himself at your expense to the nearest
cafe, as "the day is so unusually hot." After all, we must not
blame him too much - his superiors are far from guiltless, and he
knows it. When Minister Toso took charge of the Provincial portfolio
of Finance, he exclaimed, "C-o! Todos van robando menos yo!"
("Everybody is robbing here except I.") It is public news that
President Celman carried away to his private residence in the country
a most beautiful and expensive bronze fountain presented by the
inhabitants of the city to adorn the principal plaza. [Footnote:
Public square.] The president is elected by the people for a term of
three years, and invariably retires a rich man, however poor he may
have been when entering on his office. The laws of the country may be
described as model and Christian, but the carrying out of them is a
very different matter.
Some of the laws are excellent and worthy of our imitation, such as,
for example, the one which decrees that bachelors shall be taxed.
Civil elections are held on Sundays, the voting places being Roman
Catholic churches.
Both postmen and telegraph boys deliver on horseback, but such is the
lax custom that everything will do to-morrow. That fatal word is the
first the stranger learns - manana.
Comparatively few people walk the streets. "No city in the world of
equal size and population can compare with Buenos Ayres for the
number and extent of its tramways." [Footnote: Turner's "Argentina."]
A writer in the Financial News says: "The proportion of the
population who daily use street-cars is sixty-six times greater in
Buenos Ayres than in the United Kingdom."
This Modern Athens, as the Argentines love to term their city, has
a beautiful climate. For perhaps three hundred days out of every year
there is a sky above as blue as was ever seen in Naples.
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