Mr. Woody spent the next eight days in jail until his friends learned of his predicament and bailed him out.
The other incident is this:
One of my friends was seated one evening in front of the Tortoni when a policeman approached him and asked him in Spanish if he spoke English. My friend answered in the affirmative and the policeman told him to wait there a minute and walked away. Presently the guardian of the law reappeared with a young Englishman who could speak no word of Spanish. He said he was a sailor from a boat that sailed that midnight and becoming lost did not know how to get to it. He came on an electric car to the Avenida de Mayo and all that he knew about the line was that it bore a board on which was printed the name "Cinzano." Now this is the name of a vermouth which is widely advertised in Argentina, and he mistook the vermouth sign for the name of the street. After considerable difficulty, his ship was located.
One afternoon, while walking down the Avenida with Mr. Atwood Benton of Antofagasta, Chile, we saw a crowd collected and on passing by noticed that a grown man was slapping a little girl and dragging her around by the hair. Not a man in the crowd had made any attempt to prevent this outrageous scene, but all stood by with smiles of mirth on their faces. Mr. Benton made a rush through them and grabbing the man by the nape of the neck gave him a sound beating and held him while I called a policeman. When the rabble saw what Benton did, they raised an earsplitting cheer of "bravo" for him, yet none of the cowardly bunch dared interfere for fear of a poignard stab. A newspaper reporter chanced by, shook Mr. Benton by the hand, congratulated him upon his bravery, and asked him for his card as he wished to put it in his newspaper next day. Mr. Benton put his hand in his pocket and extended him a card which he thought was his own, but when the newspaper article came out in the La Nacion the next day, it happened that Benton had made a mistake and had handed the reporter a card of Mr. Percival O'Reilley of Concepcion, Chile.
With the exception of the policemen, one sees but comparatively few mestizos or people of mixed white and Indian blood in Buenos Aires, when compared to the inhabitants of other Argentine cities, yet there are plenty, many being in the employ of the government. Dark complexions are not as popular in Argentina as light ones; therefore many of the criollos or natives whose facial characteristics are those of the original inhabitants of the land, beseech the photographers to put chemicals on the plates so as to make their visages come out light in the photograph. The descendants of Indians are called Indios; negroes are called Negros and Chinamen, Chinos. Many of the mestizos are nicknamed Chinos. All these words are terms of approbation and it is funny to hear an enraged descendant of an Indian call a white person an Indio or a Chino.
There is in Buenos Aires a fine opera house, the Colon, and there are many other theaters, but the most patronized by the male public are the burlesque shows, the Casino and the Royal. The attraction for the men in those places are the "pick ups" that abound in the foyer, making these music halls clearing houses for loose moral femininity. There is no more vice in Buenos Aires than in any other large city, but there is a peculiar system in vogue there which is original.
A woman passes down the Avenida with a basket of flowers on her arm. She approaches the boulevardier seated at a table and offers to sell him a flower. He buys one and as he stretches out his hand to pay her, she slips him a card bearing the address of a brothel but refuses the money. These women are the hirelings of the brothel proprietresses. Often the dueñas as these proprietresses are called do the florista act (flower selling). One night, while seated in front of the Tortoni, a famous dueña named Carmen came along and pinned a tuberose on an army officer. A minute later, a rival dueña named Matilda passed by and seeing the tuberose on him, knew who pinned it there. She tore it off, and pinned on him a carnation. Carmen now returning from a neighboring table saw the trick and a battle royal like between two enraged tigers ensued. When the police put a stop to it, the two dueñas, scratched up, and with dishevelled hair, were obliged to make for the subway, holding up the remnants of their torn clothing by the middle lest they should drop off.
Among the fine buildings of Buenos Aires are the custom house and the Central Argentine Railway station at Retiro. This mammoth building, not yet completed, is the largest and finest railroad station in South America. This honor was formerly held by the Luz station in São Paulo, Brazil; that of Mapocho in Santiago, Chile, being second. The new Central of Córdoba Railway station is also fine.
There are in Buenos Aires but few skyscrapers in the North American sense of the word, a fifteen-story building being the tallest. It is the new arcade on Calle Florida and is the largest in America. It ranks fourth in the world in ground-floor area; those of Milan, Naples, and Genoa being greater. There is a thirteen-story apartment house; the Otto Wulf Building is twelve stories high, and there are probably a dozen other buildings that exceed in height ten stories. There are any number of seven-, eight-, and nine-story buildings.
In Buenos Aires there are a great number of so-called Brazilian coffeehouses where about five o'clock afternoons people repair for coffee and ice cream. Casata ice creams are a favorite. They are a mixture of flavors, and these coffeehouses specialize in two flavors of coffee ice cream in the same brick. The best known of these establishments are those of Huicque and of Bibondo.