When Minister Toso took charge of the Provincial portfolio of Finance, he exclaimed, "_C-o! Todos van robando menos yo!_" ("Everybody is robbing here except I.") It is public news that President Celman carried away to his private residence in the country a most beautiful and expensive bronze fountain presented by the inhabitants of the city to adorn the principal _plaza_. [Footnote: Public square.] The president is elected by the people for a term of three years, and invariably retires a rich man, however poor he may have been when entering on his office. The laws of the country may be described as model and Christian, but the carrying out of them is a very different matter. Some of the laws are excellent and worthy of our imitation, such as, for example, the one which decrees that _bachelors shall be taxed_. Civil elections are held on Sundays, the voting places being Roman Catholic churches. Both postmen and telegraph boys deliver on horseback, but such is the lax custom that everything will do to-morrow. That fatal word is the first the stranger learns--_mañana_. Comparatively few people walk the streets. "No city in the world of equal size and population can compare with Buenos Ayres for the number and extent of its tramways." [Footnote: Turner's "Argentina."] A writer in the _Financial News_ says: "The proportion of the population who daily use street-cars is _sixty-six times greater in Buenos Ayres than in the United Kingdom_." This _Modern Athens_, as the Argentines love to term their city, has a beautiful climate. For perhaps three hundred days out of every year there is a sky above as blue as was ever seen in Naples. The natives eat only twice a day--at 10.30 a.m., and at 7 p.m.--the common edibles costing but little. I could write much of Buenos Ayres, with its _carnicerias_, where a leg of mutton may be bought for 20 cts., or a brace of turkeys for 40 cts.; its _almacenes_, where one may buy a pound of sugar or a yard of cotton, a measure of charcoal (coal is there unknown) or a large _sombrero_, a package of tobacco (leaves over two feet long) or a pair of white hemp-soled shoes for your feet--all at the same counter. The customer may further obtain a bottle of wine or a bottle of beer (the latter costing four times the price of the former) from the same assistant, who sells at different prices to different customers. There the value of money is constantly changing, and almost every day prices vary. What to-day costs $20 to-morrow may be $15, or, more likely, $30. Although one hundred and seventy tons of sugar are annually grown in the country, that luxury is decidedly expensive. I have paid from 12 cts. to 30 cts. a pound. Oatmeal, the Scotsman's dish, has cost me up to 50 cts. a pound.