The San Francisco call., 1898-02-27

tragic affairs of life. In Cuba people are dying by hundreds: The Arch bishop of Havana has said that his parish registers show over 5O0,OO0 missing since the war began. Almost every woman in the street wears deep mourning; plantations are burned and devastated; the tramp of armed men and the rattle of gun carriages awaken all from morning slumbers; food Is scarce and becoming Scarcer; the bare necessities of life are dear and becoming dearer; yet the music and the dance go on. There is money to gamble at the clubs and pennies for the poor to risk in lottery schemes. Spain has spent e56,000, 900 to put down the rebellion; her representa- tives are pent up in Havana; yet the national pastime-the bull fight-goes on every Sunday as if there were no hungry, fiercely determined men in the hills.
 In fact, people are tired talking war: in society they talk of something else unless some novel incident oc- CUTS. Widows and mothers seem to have drained their dregs of sorrow, and go about sad eyed, but composed, as if their grief were too deep for tears.
 At Key West I saw the father of
 
 man, with an iron face and piercing eye. He seems to live in dazed past. Every night he is about the village postoffice awaiting news of anything or anybody. Occasionally a phantom of the past in the shape of some old friend comes before his eyes and he breaks into boyish ecstasy. He has one son under the sod and an- other "in the bushes," as they say in (tr1ha L Ia fn f he second one again, so he dreams on and plans to tell the story of his son's death to the world.
 What is left of Cuban society wraps itself in exclusiveness and awaits its time. The wealthy land owners at the beginning of the war sought re- fuge in Europe or the United States Most of them had no thought of re- duced incomes. Then came burned fields and impoverished tenants; edicts of the Government forbidding the foreclosure of mortgages, but always taxes more and more. Incomes were reduced, many stopped. In order tc protect what they had, many once rich returned to Havana with scarce ly enough to buy the coarser necessi- ties of life. But it is still an ex- elusive aristocracy, as proud as tht first families of ruined Virginia, and Ike them, reDel to the bone.
 There is no doubt about where the native Cuban aristocracy stands II | this war. They were never fruga people. On the contrary, the mer spent money like drunken sailors. Nol were they good business men. Tht commercial control of the island passed away from them years ago and the American, Spaniard. English man and German became their mas ters. Cubans complain of unjust dis elimination against them by the Span iards, but where they are pitteC against each other in the end tn, ] Spaniard wins. It is ability that tell | in the long run. Years of repressio, and unjust discrimination have no ruined the Hebrew. Several scions O l the old regime were comparing note on old times one evening in my hear ing.
 Why" said one, i've sometime came into Havana with big wagon l and drove out to the plantations whole band of music. We would thel l invite hundreds of our kinsmen ant 1 friends, and keep up jollifi cation fo 1 two, three all sometimes four weeks.