"How strange, I also have just had a bath."
The habits of the middle and lower classes throughout Argentina are very filthy. Clean toilets are unknown outside of a few of the best hotels and cafés of Buenos Aires and a few of the other large cities. In the Hotel Colon in Buenos Aires, two men were hired constantly just to keep the toilet clean and they did this job well.
The men of the lower classes bathe more frequently than those of the upper and middle classes and some are really fine swimmers. These are mostly Italians, Spaniards, and natives who do the work and are the backbone of the Argentine nation as they have not become affected by contact with those of the middle classes.
There are in Buenos Aires many Jews of Galician origin. Their ghetto is on the streets, named Junin, Ayacucho, and Ombú, but they are likewise scattered all over the city. Many wear corkscrew sideburns, which they smear with grease and fondle lovingly as they converse with you. These vile Kikes are mostly in the lottery ticket and retail tobacco business. They have native employees whom they send out on the street to hawk lottery tickets on commission. This lottery business is overdone. There are too many drawings. One takes place every week and it is only occasionally that there is a drawing with high enough premiums to make it worth while purchasing them. Lottery is a good institution if properly regulated, but the annoyance that everybody is subjected to in Buenos Aires by the peddlers of the tickets soon makes a person wish that such an institution did not exist. Not only are the tickets of the Benificencia Nacional sold about the streets, but also those of the Province of Buenos Aires which has drawings at La Plata, those of the Province of Tucumán, those of Córdoba, San Juan, and even of Montevideo.
These Buenos Aires Jews are the lowest class of riffraff. Their nasty children peddle strings of garlic from door to door. The adults are always gesticulating and trying to cheat the stranger.
Regarding the morals, the average Porteño of the middle class cannot be called immoral. He is unmoral because he never had any morals to begin with. His conversation invariably takes a lascivious turn which shows how his thoughts runs. Seduction, feminine figures, adultery, etc., are his favorite themes of conversation.
Many of the women of Buenos Aires are beautiful. Nowhere have I seen such fine-looking women, excepting in Santiago, Chile, and in Budapest. They carry themselves well and also know how to dress. Their figures and taste are such that they can make the poorest material look well on them. Their average stature is that of our North American women; most of the young Porteñas are neither fat nor slim, but medium. They have wonderful black eyes and well developed busts. It is rare to see a poor figure. It really is a treat to sit in front of a café on the Avenida and watch them walk by. There was one beautiful girl that took the fancy of every man that saw her. She worked in an office and every day at noon she would pass the Tortoni; she would repeat this again about five o'clock in the evening. This girl was about nineteen years old and the dainty way she tripped along absolutely unconscious of her grace made the men rave about her. One noon as she walked by bound for home, I followed her a quarter of a block behind her. My intentions were to find out where she lived and try to arrange to get an introduction because she quite fascinated me. I found out that she lived with her parents on Calle Montevideo. I had a friend who lived in the block beyond her in Calle Rodriguez Peña, but unfortunately when I called on him to arrange for an introduction, I found out that he was on a business trip to northern Argentina and was not expected back for a month. As I intended leaving in a few weeks, I was doomed to disappointment and had to swallow my chagrin and content myself with gazing at her from the table in front of the Tortoni when she passed by.
The amusements of Buenos Aires are few. Of course there are some very high-class dance halls with restaurants in connection such as Armenonville, but the hours are too late when life begins there.
The race track of the Jockey Club is the best in the world, and races are held every Thursday and Sunday, but one soon gets tired of continually going to the races. The betting is by mutuals. There are some baseball and cricket teams in Buenos Aires which hold matches and games on Sunday afternoons. The players are English, American, and Canadian residents of Buenos Aires who clerk in the banks and in the great importing houses. The article of baseball they put out is ludicrous, and they draw no attendance. A good primary school at home could trim them.