To the Consol of the U. S. A.
Hon. Sir:
I am reading now the news of the war (it was the time of our sending marines to Vera Cruz) and the call at the arms to volunteers. If you remember, about 7 or 8 month ago, I have writen to you from Rosario, offering my blood for your Republica. Not answer have I received about. Now if you like to take in consideration this letter, I wish to start for the war and to be incorporated in the volunteer’s corps. This is not a strange offering. I am Italiaman and I cannot to forget the time passed in the U. S. A. and the generous heart of the Americaman when my country was troubled by the sismic movements.
I live in New York six year, left the North America three year before, and am desiring now to see and live in that blessed country. Here has the hungry, and indeed to die starved in the streets. I wish better to die for the North American states. I love your land more than my country and severals of the Italiamen living in the States, believe me, Sir, will be incorporated for the war. I would to be at present in New York, not here: I well know that the international respects forbidden to answer me about, but I have not money in this poor country, and for that I can’t to start at my expenses. If you like to give me a passage, I am ready to start rightaway, and not body shall know my resolution.
Hoping in your favorable answer, I am glad to be,
Yours respectfully,
Mike Albanese.
Nor does Buenos Aires take a back seat to New York in the amusement the stroller may find in its streets. There was the incident of Easter Sunday, for instance. I went to church, but there was no special music, only a cluster of priests in barbarically resplendent robes going through some sort of silent service, so I drifted out again. There was not even the parade of new spring hats to which to look forward, for spring was still far off in Buenos Aires. In fact, the oppressive heat of early March in which I had arrived had only begun to give way to a refreshing coolness. The early autumn skies were brilliant, leaves had scarcely begun to turn color. I bought a copy of La Prensa, tucked it under an arm, and went strolling lazily up Rivadavia beyond Calle Callao, the Forty-Second street of “B. A.,” flanking the gleaming new congress building. Mounted policemen in rich uniforms, with horsetail helmets and the white gloves of holidays, here and there decorated the landscape. For some time I sauntered dreamily on at random, a trifle bored by the monotony of life, for I had already been more than a month in Buenos Aires and had tasted most of the excitement it has to offer.
I was half aware of crossing the broad Plaza Once de Setembro, still covered with earth from the digging of the new subway. Finally, up in the 2700 block, a man standing on a corner asked me if I could tell him where Dr. Martinez lived. I replied that I was a stranger in those parts. So was he. That was fairly evident to the naked eye, for he was decidedly countrified in appearance and actions, though he was clean and well dressed. He had just come up from Bahía Blanca, he said, and when he got off the train in the station, he had met one of those men with a huascar, a rope, over one shoulder and a number on his cap—a changador, or porter, I explained—who asked him if he wanted his baggage carried. He did, and gave the man his maleta and also the slip of paper with the address of Dr. Martinez on it. Then the changador said it was customary to pay in advance, and as he had no change he gave him a ten-peso bill and told him to bring back the small money.
The poor fellow was so evidently a simple, good-hearted countryman who had never been in a large city before that I could not but admire, as well as pity, his unsuspecting nature. Of course the changador had disappeared with the valise, the ten pesos, and the address; and as the campesino did not even know the doctor’s first name, things looked rather dark for him, for Martinez rivals Smith in directories and telephone books. Still, it was no concern of mine, so after giving him my sympathy and advising him to report the matter to the police, just for form’s sake, I turned to go on.