[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA VICTORIA, BUENOS AIRES]
Till the morrow’s sun shines, that is. Then he will see the City, which overnight he may have thought wholly absorbed by pleasure-seeking, transformed into a quick-moving, alert commercial centre. Surely the Argentine when in Buenos Aires burns his candle at both ends. The well-to-do have, however, their Estancias on which to vary town life with mentally restful, if often physically laborious, days spent in superintending their agricultural interests.
Fine-looking new buildings are ever springing up in Buenos Aires with such surprising suddenness and rapidity as to render any description of the chief edifices of that city out of date almost before it can get into print. Even the palatial home of the Jockey Club, renowned as the most splendidly luxurious Club House in the world, is soon to be abandoned by its members for another more gorgeously wonderful still.
One leaves the City for a few weeks in the _Camp_ wondering what the former will look like on one’s return.
That is one did, until very recently. Just now, the War has called a temporary halt in the commencement of many projected building operations.
One cannot, however, leave Buenos Aires without mention of the beautiful, park-like suburb of Palermo; with the broad Avenida de Alvear leading from the northern part of the City to it. It may here be observed that fashion has not travelled westward in Buenos Aires; the Northern parts of the City being the most fashionable and adorned with the most palatial new dwellings.
A wide palm-bordered avenue leads to others winding round grassy spaces in which backwaters of the Tigre River glint under overhanging trees; amid all of which is a great restaurant, after the fashion of those in the Parisian Bois de Boulogne.
That restaurant is, to the author’s mind, the one great tawdry blot on the picture; but it is only fair to add that every afternoon and evening, during a long season, it is crowded with gaily dressed people who all seem happy and vociferously contented with the refreshments and music it provides.
The Palermo Avenue is the fashionable drive, the Corso of the Élite of Buenos Aires Society; and also of others desirous of attracting attention to their equipages and themselves. Everyone the aspirant to social distinction ought—and ought not—to know is to be seen at Palermo on a fine late afternoon or evening in Spring. In Summer most of them are, naturally, at Mar-del-Plata.