, 1888-02-12

y AAAN nav lNRN nav s&lLONluG uhN.
But you do thus have opportunity to
feast upon the delight in these wonderful
trees and flowers, from palm to pendant
companile. And when night comes YOU
then learn that the day-the day of life
and beauty here-has just begun. All
Havana is in the parks or cafes or on the
housetops at night. AS the sun goes
down 1t seems rs though from every quar-
ter come thousands for the nightly outing.
The streets, plazas and cafes dazzle With
light taring from the quaintest of burners
and frames, and the brilliant colored
glass, so universally and richly used in
decoration, adds q beauty and charm to
countless pleasing scenes.
There is music everywhere. Here in
half lighted, richly decorated balcony is a
group of men and women chatting in low,
musical tones, or listening to sweet notes
of the guitar. In this entranda, with a
court filed with rich lights, plants, flowers
and quaint corridors behind, in an almost
oriental background, are perhaps several
families seated half out upon the street,
and among them somewhere is music.
Here, there and everywhere upon the
housetops among luxuriant gardens are
merry crowds singing, playing or dancing.
The half lights of the night hide and re-
veal. Sound and light and shadow min
gle until the ear and sight are ravished by
what is heard and seen, and what is
listened Tor and heard in thought. Melo-
dy in word, laugh and song, and from
musical instruments of every nature and
in every place-nothing loud and sono-
rous, but everything soft and dreamful-
pulses IN harmonious chords above and
over and through the streets. You may
no alOnn and NOT Of - nc ,n, h,t - -,
all comprising and possesses you. You
know it not; yet it has in it the loving
familiarity of the universal voice of mirth
and music. 1t is in a strange tongue; yet
it is as plain TO you us the untaught Joy
of childhood. For you ure within the
influence and charm of three hundred
thousand souls given up wholly to delic-
ious dalllance, melodious words and
sounds, to the half tones OF coquettish
pleasure, to the %eloquence OF bright eyes,
and the passionate passiveness of night
In treplc land, where nature CLOVIS be-
meath, as glow the stars above.
The whole city is as a fairylaud by
night. 1t is the more b~ewildering to the
beholder, because there are in it one
mlndedness and one, hcartedness that
make melody and gaiety not only with the
well conditioned, but as truly within the
grimy walls Of the charcoal man stall;
down at the waterside among the swarthy
boteros; over there in Regla with the toll
scourged stevedores aud lancheros; up
Balquarte way among the labor bent Law
enderas; and in every odd and moldy
corner where human life lasts in lairs, it
lights up all with a face as free of care as
if ever unknown. All this comes to you,
and you know the fact. You leave those
who like, to quarrel over the involved
ethics. But all this time, when an entire
city has suddenly resolved itself into a
vast pleasure garden so completely that
its influence seems even TO have touched
and transformed, without exception, the
direst conditions, the gayer and more
restless elements swarm the pascos and
plazas, and nc European city presents
more brilliant scenes.
For instance, in Paris, on Sunday at
%ternoon and evening, the Champs Elysees
may furnish the gayest pictures in the
world. OF N evening the boulevards are
filed with vast throngs. Down in the
Place de la Concorde you may find half a
hundred thousand souls. But on the
Champs, Dives rides, and Lazarus walks,
this once n week; in the boulevards are
simply crowds of the worlds ~everybodies,
with whom Paris is always filled; while in
the Palace dc la Concorde the wild
throngs are lowly burgeoisc and villainous
c%anaille. in whose faces YOU find hate and
worse. But in this one city of the world,
this single rich blossom of tho tropics, all
its people, in these hours, are pleasuror
glvers, and pieasure-receivers and that.
too, whatever the individual condition
There is none so high and naughty, o,
low and ~listless, as to think, or dare, re-
fusal of this individual concession, or gift
of word and way, to this universal some
thing we would be quick to call among
our own good selves true evidence of true
light-heartedness and Joy. | do not be-
lievc the world has elsewhere such a CON
dition and study.
In these nightly carnivals fully 10000
~equipages filed with richly attired and
merry occupants may be seen. During
the early evening, the f~avorite drive is
along Gale Ancha del Norte by the sea.
Later, the Calzada de la Reina and the
Paseo de Tacon are sought. As the night
advances, the great center of this brilliant
life and luxurious activity is in the vicinity
of the larger city parks to which the
paseos and the Prado lead, where military
bands discourse the lively or sensuous airs
of Spain. Here throng hosts of pedes-
TRANS; but instead of the rudeness aud
clamor usual in such %concourses in other
cities, every frequenter of the locality only
intensifies the everywhere manifest ch1val-
Tous courtesy and charming consideration
that so distinguish them. 1t is as though
here were a mammoth reception of the
courtlies. of men and women. Indeed it
is the great outdoor parlor of a great city,
where every citizen is a noble guest. In
the pauses Of the music promenading is
continuous. Il would not then be uncom-
mon for you to see at one time, aud in the
one place on the globe where that is pos.
sible, 10000 ONE Of surprising beauty,
Of wonderful winsomeness, of marvellous
grace.
1t is not until some time after midnight
that the crowds seem to diminish; for at
some hour of the evening every sonora
and senorita in the city makes it a social
obligation or pleasure to be present. But
from midnight until morning, by an I'M
written law, the parks and paseos are in
possession Of less dense gatherings though,
an i~ntenser and far more questionable
character of pleasure-seekers And yet,
because that does not here form the ma
terial ior agonized PHILOSOPHERS, it is just