"He has gone up to town."
"Then I will see the chief clerk."
"He is away on leave."
"The chief warder?"
"He is laid up."
"Can I speak to the Sister Superior?"
"She has just gone out."
"Well, are any of the prisoners at home?"
The gaoler, smiling amiably: "I believe so."
Argentine officials, like their French brethren, are both fallible and zealous, and while it was impossible that in so many visits there should be no ground for criticism, yet I am anxious to declare publicly how admirably kept were the schools, of whatever degree, the hospitals, asylums, refuges, and prisons; they were not only adapted to all the requirements of therapeutics, hygiene, and the canons of modern European science, but they showed a genuine effort to do better than the best. I should have been glad to have there some of those who make a practice of disdaining these countries that started very long after us, but that can already give us some salutary lessons through institutions such as those I have named, which are here brought to a pitch of perfection that is in many cases unknown with us.