Both postmen and telegraph boys deliver on horseback, but such is the
lax custom that everything will do to-morrow. That fatal word is the
first the stranger learns--_manana_.

Comparatively few people walk the streets. "No city in the world of
equal size and population can compare with Buenos Ayres for the
number and extent of its tramways." [Footnote: Turner's "Argentina."]
A writer in the _Financial News_ says: "The proportion of the
population who daily use street-cars is _sixty-six times greater in
Buenos Ayres than in the United Kingdom_."

This _Modern Athens_, as the Argentines love to term their city, has
a beautiful climate. For perhaps three hundred days out of every year
there is a sky above as blue as was ever seen in Naples.

The natives eat only twice a day--at 10.30 a.m., and at 7 p.m.--the
common edibles costing but little. I could write much of Buenos
Ayres, with its _carnicerias_, where a leg of mutton may be bought
for 20 cts., or a brace of turkeys for 40 cts.; its _almacenes_,
where one may buy a pound of sugar or a yard of cotton, a measure of
charcoal (coal is there unknown) or a large _sombrero_, a package of
tobacco (leaves over two feet long) or a pair of white hemp-soled
shoes for your feet--all at the same counter. The customer may
further obtain a bottle of wine or a bottle of beer (the latter
costing four times the price of the former) from the same assistant,
who sells at different prices to different customers.

There the value of money is constantly changing, and almost every day
prices vary. What to-day costs $20 to-morrow may be $15, or, more