After calling for rum and water, to be in the fashion, I sat down on
a bench, and, lighting a cigarette, prepared to listen. He was dressed
in shabby gaucho habiliments--cotton shirt, short jacket, wide cotton
drawers, and _chiripa_, a shawl-like garment fastened at the waist
with a sash, and reaching down half-way between the knees and ankles.
In place of a hat he wore a cotton handkerchief tied carelessly about
his head; his left foot was bare, while the right one was cased in a
colt's-skin stocking, called _bota-de-potro_, and on this
distinguished foot was buckled a huge iron spur, with spikes two inches
long. One spur of the kind would be quite sufficient, I should imagine,
to get out of a horse all the energy of which he was capable. When I
entered he was holding forth on the pretty well-worn theme of fate
_versus_ free will; his arguments were not, however, the usual
dry philosophical ones, but took the form of illustration, chiefly
personal reminiscences and strange incidents in the lives of people
he had known, while so vivid and minute were his descriptions--sparkling
with passion, satire, humour, pathos, and so dramatic his action, while
wonderful story followed story--that I was fairly astonished, and
pronounced this old _pulperia_ orator a born genius.

His argument over, he fixed his keen eyes on me and said:

"My friend, I perceive you are a traveller from Montevideo: may I ask
what news there is from that city?"

"What news do you expect to hear?" said I; then it came into my thought
that it was scarcely proper to confine myself to more commonplace
phrases in replying to this curious old Oriental bird, with such ragged
plumage, but whose native woodnotes wild had such a charm in them. "It
is only the old story over again!" I continued. "They say there will