On leaving the docks and driving up into the city, the visitor is at once impressed with the fact that Buenos Aires is not so wholly wrapped up in the purely material as is our commercial center on Lake Michigan. It has broadened along more æsthetic lines and is cultivating the graces, not alone the sordid features, of cosmopolitanism. In the newer parts, particularly in the fashionable suburb of Belgrano, the buildings and shaded boulevards and beautifully landscaped parks resemble rather those of Paris; although it is not behind our own big cities in public utilities. Even in the business district there are no skyscrapers or elevated railroads to disturb the harmony of the architectural scheme; not even the usual promiscuous, blatant advertising posters are permitted to be displayed until they have been censored by the proper official, and when approved they are affixed to ornamentally tinted and paneled billboards, erected for the purpose. So keen, indeed, are the Bonarenses to enhance the beauty of their city that a prize is offered each year for the handsomest structure to be erected. And yet there is much that is possessed of the charm of antiquity. The occasional glimpses of blossoms and foliage one gets through doorways opening into the courtyards, or _patios_, of the old Spanish houses is most refreshing in the midst of so much that is modern. It is from Paris, too, that they have acquired their culture, and their taste in dress and amusements and in literature and art. They buy their clothes in Paris and sip their French liqueurs in the cafés in true Parisian style, and they are entertained by opera and comedy companies from the best Parisian theaters. They have absorbed into their city life an Italian colony that exceeds in numbers the population of Genoa, and more Spaniards than could be crowded into Toledo, besides a multitude of British and Germans and a goodly sprinkling from the rest of Europe, and even Asia. Having taken so much from France and Italy, and being Spanish in descent and in speech, the overtone of the city is distinctly Latin, while their industrial and governmental institutions bear the mark of the Anglo-Saxon. Next to the Italian and Spanish, the British colony is the largest. Then follow the German and the French. The North Americans are small in number; less than three hundred responded to a recent effort to organize a North American Society.