world,
you can soon find anyone you wish to meet, because before long everyone
who can reach it will pass through. In this street the happy, jesting,
jostling crowd is in one continuous "festa".

In passing through the city one is greatly impressed by the number of
parks and beautiful public squares, and in particular with the
wonderful Beiramar, which is a combination of promenades, driveways and
park effects that stretches for miles along the shore of the bay. What
a thing of beauty this last-named park is! There is nothing comparable
to it anywhere. When Rio wishes to go on a grand "passeio" (promenade)
nothing but the grand Beiramar will suffice.

One cannot help being impressed also by the prevalence of
coffee-drinking stands and stores--especially if he meets many friends.
These friends will insist upon taking him into a coffee stand and
engaging him in conversation while they sip coffee. On many corners are
little round or octagonal pagoda-like structures in which coffee and
cakes are sold. The coffee-drinking places are everywhere and most of
them are usually filled. The practice of taking coffee with one's
friends must lessen materially the amount of strong drink consumed by
the Brazilian. Nevertheless, that amount of strong drink is, alas,
altogether too great.

The greatest nuisance on the streets of Rio, or any other city of
Brazil, is the lottery ticket seller. These venders are more numerous
and more insistent than are the newsboys in the United States. There
are all sorts of superstitions about lotteries. Certain images in one's
dreams at night are said to correspond to certain lucky numbers. Dogs,
cats, horses, cows and many other animals have certain numbers
corresponding to them. For instance, if one should dream tonight about
a dog, he would try tomorrow to find a lottery ticket to correspond in
number with a dog. Say the dog number was thirty-seven. This man would
try to find a ticket whose number ends in thirty-seven. Such a ticket
would be considered lucky. The ticket sellers often call out as they
pass along the street the last two numbers on the tickets they have to
sell, and if a man hears the number called which corresponds to the
animal he dreamed about last night, he will consider it lucky and buy.
There are also many shops where only lottery tickets are sold. No evil
has more tenaciously and universally fastened upon the people than has
the evil of gambling in lotteries. There are 310 Fe