It is ever a source of regret to anyone interested in the glorious Argentine, lying under the Southern Cross, that its name cannot be mentioned, even casually, without its suggesting revolutions, uprisings, financial distress and ruin. It is an association accepted without question. To speak of that land and not touch upon revolutions, would be like airing one's impressions of Hamlet without mentioning the noble Dane himself. This comparison is somewhat venerable, to be sure, when one considers its three hundred winters and as many summers, but it is singularly suggestive with regard to La Plata, since it points to something being decidedly “rotten in the State.” The latter thought, however, is not apt to disturb the equanimity of the average Argentine mind. To the native of that favored country a revolution is no more out of the normal order of things than is a cyclone to our own Western people.

Among the many interesting phenomena of speech-life are the disappearance and the development of a p, b, t, d, k, or g between two consonants. The suppression of the stop seems to be usually due to a general tendency to simplify consonant groups, whenever such reduction facilitates utterance and does not interfere with intelligibility; thus Vulgar Latin compto becomes comto and then conto. The growth of a consonant between two others appears to be occasioned either by a lack of simultaneousness in the action of different organs, as in English Hampton from Hamton, or by an unconscious effort to bridge over a difficult transition, as in Old French estre from esre; sometimes, perhaps, as in Greek àνδρóς, it is brought about by a combination of these causes.

A good deal has been said, in recent years, about the importance of prose fiction. The vogue which the modern novel undoubtedly enjoys, its immediate and unquestionable influence over multitudes of readers, has contributed much to the prevalent impression as to the value of fiction, yet a more significant factor has been the increasing self-consciousness of fiction writers. They seem to feel a distinct assurance that at last they are going to get seats nearer the head of the table. Compared with the solemnity with which they discuss in public the responsibilities laid upon practitioners of their art, Harry Fielding's prefaces about his stern duty as a historian of human nature seem frivolous indeed. If this conviction of the greatness of the art were producing, or tending to produce, greater artists, one could scarcely quarrel with it, but among the day's distinguished names the great artists are unfortunately as few as ever. Wide-spread as is the present interest in fiction, it is at least debatable whether the English novel is much more intrinsically important, when compared with other types of literature, or even when tested by the proportion of fiction to the entire literary output, than it has been at a half dozen other periods in the last two hundred years.

The material for the present study was collected during a residence of several months in Mexico City, and the facts stated are the result of personal observation of the idiom spoken by the lower classes. In some cases use is made of words and expressions found in printed material, but all such forms have been subjected to a careful comparison with the spoken language, before being accepted as trustworthy.