sit and sip, prolonging their pleasures with dilatory spoon and indefatigable tongue.  Group follows group; but the Spaniards are what I should call heavy sitters, and tarry long over their ice or chocolate.  The waiter invariably brings to every table a chafing-dish with a burning coal, which will light a cigar long after its outer glow has subsided into ashy white.  Some humans retain this kindling power;—­vide Ninon and the ancient Goethe;—­it is the heart of fire, not the flame of beauty, that does it.  When one goes home, tired, at ten or eleven, the company shows no sign of thinning, nor does one imagine how the ground is ever cleared, so as to allow an interval of sleep between the last ice at night and the first coffee in the morning.  It is the universal siesta which makes the Cubans so bright and fresh in the evening.  With all this, their habits are sober, and the evening refreshment always light.  No suppers are eaten here; and it is even held dangerous to take fruit as late as eight o’clock, P.M.

The Dominica has still another aspect to you, when you go there in the character of a citizen and head of family to order West India sweetmeats for home-consumption.  You utter the magic word dulces, and are shown with respect into the establishment across the way, where a neat steam-engine is in full operation, tended by blacks and whites, stripped above the waist, and with no superfluous clothing below it.  Here they grind the chocolate, and make the famous preserves, of which a list is shown you, with prices affixed.  As you will probably lose some minutes in perplexity as to which are best for you to order, let me tell you that the guava jelly and marmalade are first among them, and there is no second.  You may throw in a little pine-apple, mamey, lime, and cocoa-plum; but the guava is the thing, and, in case of a long run on the tea-table, will give the most effectual support.  The limes used to be famous in our youth; but in these days they make them hard and tough.  The marmalade of bitter oranges is one of the most useful of Southern preserves; but I do not remember it on the list of the Dominica.  Having given your order, let me further advise you to remain, if practicable, and see it fulfilled; as you will find, otherwise, divers trifling discrepancies between the bill and the goods as delivered, which, though of course purely accidental, will all be, somehow, to the Dominica’s advantage, and not to yours.  If you are in moderate circumstances, order eight or ten dollars’ worth; if affluent, twenty or thirty dollars’ worth; if rash and extravagant, you may rise even to sixty dollars; but you will find in such an outlay food for repentance.  One word in your ear:  do not buy the syrups, for they are made with very bad sugar, and have no savor of the fruits they represent.