Jabez Balfour at Salta.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5211, 19 March 1895, Page 4

Jabez Balfour at Salta.

• Once more we have cabled rumours that the Argentine Government haa agreod to surrender that arch-fraud, Mr Jabez Speacor "Balfour, to English justice, coupled with the intimation ttat the Salta authorities are throwing obstacles in the way. The virtuous Jabez, meanwhile, lives at his ease, and has been employing his leisure in writing to the Pall Mall Gaselte a description of " Society in Salta." Like the superior Englishman abroad, Balfour finds very little to admire in the town that is saving him from oa&uin-picking in an English prison. He says :— •< Dinner parties, dances, garden parties and other forms of social amusement aro almost unknown. The ladies exchange visits freely, and these visits are nearly always made of an .evening, and frequently last for two or three hours. 'Gentlemen do not often take parb in theso somewhat ilugubrious functions. . They have resorta and social gatherings of their own. They meet at the club, at the cafi, or, what seema very strange to English people, they habitually frequent some particular shop, generally a chemiat'e, where they sit for hours every evening talking and Bmoking. Meanwhile tho young ladies, clad in bright dresses, but generally without either hat or bonnet on their heads, frequent the public square, where they stroll about in parties of three orj four, listening to the music discoursed by a very vigorous but not very tuneful band. Many young men are also attracted to the square by the music and by the presence of the young ladies; but the two sexes always keep themselves strictly apart, and what communication, if any, may pas 3 between them at these times iB through the medium of the eyes alone. Indeed, nothing, is more curious than the complete separation of the sexes in public; they sit apart in church, and it, is quite an uncommon thing to see even man and wife walking out together. Honeymoons and honejmoon trips are not at all general. There is a considerable disproportion in numbers between the two eexes, the. ladies; being far in excess of the men," Really/ apart from the snobbishness of this Pharisaic scoundrel in thus criticising the; place that gives him asylum, ib is in-i Bttfferable that he should be at large while his Icbs guilty colleagues are on their trial. Wo ferveatly hope the Salta folks when they read his article, will kick him incontinently cub of their community.