AN EVENING SCENE ARGENTINA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8153, 1 June 1906, Page 3

AN EVENING SCENE ARGENTINA.

'Mr Cunningham the Saturday Review, sets forth 1 the picturesque aspect of townWfe in Argentina, where the temperature is warm, and the customs prevailing are of mixed nature and Spanish origin. The town described ia of Gualegoayobu. Here is an evening soene:—"Daring the hot hoars of tbe day all slept, leaving the streets deßerted and tbe stores wide open so that a man coald walk into them, and, knocking with his whip upon the counter or the door, find no =one, till at last some sleepy shopman would appear and say that business was suspended, and retreat, oorsing, to his bed. Tbe sun declining put new life into tbe town, and tbe various • stores men sat and talked, and criticised tbe horses and the women as tbey passed. Still .later io tbe evening brought tbe ladies of tbe plaoe into tbe plaza, all dressed in Paris fashions of a year ago, to saunter up and down in i groups beneath the orange trees, in which the fire-flies flitted, making the heavy leaves seem all alive with ligbt. As they passed by, afire of compliments was turned on them, wbioh tbey pretended not to bear, and yet were piqued if no one paid "rtbem, for, as the saying was, even a compliment from a black man is better than indifference from a prince, in the still air the tinkle of guitars sounded like cupid's sheep bell, and at the iron-grated windows of tbe streets men stood, flattening themselves against the bars, to talk to women, whom the . judicious custom of tbe plaoe only allowed to see their lovers with a stont iron railing set betwixt tbe two. Between a male and a female . saint a wall of bricks and lime, the proverb cays, but a stout iron bar > aids virtue plaauily."