Havana homes.

You notice that everything is made to serve comfort and coolness.  Instead of having panes of glass, the windows are open and guarded by light iron railings, and the heavy wooden doors are left ajar.  You see into many houses as you pass along, and very cool and clean they look.  There are marble floors, cane-seated chairs and lounges, thin lace curtains, and glimpses of courts in the center of each building, often with green plants or gaudy flowers growing in them between the parlor and the kitchen.

You find much the same plan at your hotel.  You may walk in at the doors or the dining room windows just as you please, for the sides of the house seem capable of being all thrown open; while in the center of the building you see the blue sky overhead.  Equally cool do all the inhabitants appear to be, and the wise man who consults his own comfort will do well to follow the general example.  Even the soldiers wear straw hats.  The gentlemen are clad in underwear of silk or lisle thread and suits of linen, drill or silk, and the ladies are equally coolly apparelled.

Havana is a dressy place, and you will be astonished at the neatness and style to which the tissue-like goods worn there are made to conform.

But come and see the apartment you are to rest in every night.  Ten to one the ceiling is higher than you ever saw one in a private house, and the huge windows open upon a balcony overlooking a verdant plaza.  The floor is of marble or tiling, and the bed is an ornate iron or brass affair, with a tightly stretched sheet of canvas or fine wire netting in place of the mattress you are used to.  You could not sleep on a mattress with any proper degree of comfort in the tropics.  There is a canopy with curtains overhead, and everything about the room is pretty certain to be scrupulously clean.  Conspicuous there and everywhere else that you go is a rocking chair.  Kocking chairs are to be found in the houses, and in regiments in the clubs.

Havana is the metropolis of the West Indies.  It has more life and bustle than all the rest of the archipelago put together.  If you are German, English, Scotch, Dutch, American, French or whatever you are, you will find fellow countrymen among its 250,000 souls.  There is a public spirit there which is rare in these climes.  The theaters astonish you by their size and elegance.  The aristocratic club is the Union, but the popular one is the Casino Espanol, whose club house is a marvel of tropical elegance and beauty.  Nearly all these attractions are on or near the broad, shady and imposing thoroughfare, the Prado—­a succession of parks leading from the water opposite Morro Castle almost across the city.

In one or another of these parks a military band plays on three evenings of the week, and the scene on such occasions is wholly new to English eyes.  It is at such times that one may see the beautiful Spanish and Cuban women.  They do not leave their houses in the heat of the day unless something requires them to do so, and when they do they remain in their carriages, and are accompanied by a servant or an elderly companion.  So strict is the privacy with which they are surrounded that you shall see them shopping without quitting their carriages, waited on by the clerks, who bring the goods out to the vehicles.