Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/215



A GLANCE AT BUENOS AIRES. 185

pulperias or esquinas"^ (drinking houses) 1 to 150. The Club reading-rooms, lit up with gas, spoil the eyesight : the cafes, with itinerant bands, make the head ache, so men go to the " Cas."

" Music Hall," writ large, arrests us. We pay $10 (paper) for pit or gallery, and $20 for stalls ; there is no Cazuela or family tier set apart, and the few feminines present are the loudest of the loud. ^' Swells " do not patronize the place, except when something new is ex- pected â€” a singer or a squabble. So far, all is inferior to Rio de Janeiro, where the Aimee certainly excels the Schneider, and where anybody is as good as M. Dupuis.

The room is a small oval with a few open boxes near the stage, which is fronted by a trumpery orchestra. Venti- lation is wanting, and it is no wonder that the pale reds and yellows of the house wear a dingy, bilious, jaundiced hue. The audience, sitting at marble tables, smoking rank tobacco, and drinking beer and liqueurs, both equally vile, but not cheap as the aspect suggests, delights in French Vaudevilles, and songs a la Therese, in which the most vio- lent action is admitted, and admired. M. and Mme. Cheri Labouchere preside over the revels â€” the lady was once pretty â€” and the revels sometimes end roughly. An actress of prodigious girth once nearly caused a " pro- nouncement," because she would remain faithful to the tenor. Every night saw its disturbance, men rushing wildly about the galleries, and jumping over tables and benches, to escape a charge en masse by the police, who pursued, " sabre au poing," those that dared indulge in hiss or catcall. After witnessing the actions and postures with which Mme. Gooz illustrated her song I was not surprised

and vendor of dry goods. It is the venda further north which I have described in the " Highlands of the Brazil."
 * The pulperia is the establishment of the pulpero â€” grocer, spirit-dealer,