140 A BOOK-LOVER S HOLIDAYS 



cepted as one of the great Germans whose 

 memory they wished to impress on the minds 

 of their children. In this school there was a 

 good little library, all the books being, of course, 

 German; it was the only library in the town. 



That night we had a very pleasant dinner. 

 Our host was a German. Of the two ladies 

 who did the honors of the table, one was a Bel 

 gian, the wife of the only doctor in Bariloche, 

 and the other a Russian. In our own party, 

 aside from the four of us from the United States, 

 there were Colonel Reybaud, of the Argentine 

 army, my aide, and a first-class soldier; Doctor 

 Moreno, who was as devoted a friend as if he 

 had been my aide; and three other Argentine 

 gentlemen -- the head of the Interior Depart 

 ment, the governor of Neuquen, and the head 

 of the Indian Service. Among the other guests 

 was a man originally from County Meath, and 

 a tall, blond, red-bearded Venetian, a carpenter 

 by trade. After a while we got talking of books, 

 and it w r as fairly startling to see the way that 

 polyglot assemblage brightened when the sub 

 ject was introduced, and the extraordinary vari 

 ety of its taste in good literature. The men 

 began eagerly to speak about and quote from 

 their favorite authors Cervantes, Lope de 

 Vega, Camoens, Moliere, Shakespeare, Virgil, 



