Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/203



A GLANCli AT BUENOS AIRES. 173

advantage of being a bath establishment,, where, for the use of an old tin pot pulled out at both ends and full of muddy Platine water, you pay as much as for a first-class bain complet at Nice. On the other hand it has a serious disadvantage, namely, rooms are never procurable there.

Turned from the doors you may try the "lodging-house," whose main crime is its name. Of these there are numbers in the Calle " 25 de Maio " ; they are quite in old world style; ground- floors, where ground-floors are an abomination; small dark rooms, where man wants them large, light, and airy. As a rule they are kept by veteran Englishwomen, " old soldiers," mostly wives or widows of diplomatic butlers or valets, here settled for life, and generally provided with daughters more or less pretty, who speak bad Creole English and good Argentine Spanish, and who go out broadly into " society .^â€¢' The wary, however, will be careful how they trust themselves under any particular roof. One landlady has a pronounced taste for " brandy-pawnee ;" another is painfully familiar with her clientele; whilst a third is so open- eared to the charms of the lottery voice, that she will invest in an impossible speculation the sovereigns entrusted by you to her strong box, and she will probably address to you a begging letter, representing that she is a lone wife or a poor widow.

We will now proceed up the Calles Cangallo and San Martin, to the Plaza de la Victoria, ^' the only centre of attraction,^^ says the handbook, as if a centre could be plural. On the left is the Methodist Chapel, with a sunken cross over the door ; it is recessed, band-boxey, American, hideous; and so is the music which periodically electrifies those passing down the street. It contrasts most unfavour- ably with the convent on the other side of the way, the Merced, although this is per se anything but admirable. The Church of England "temple" is hard by in the " 25