While our
Cuban friends regale themselves with soursop and _zapote_ ice sweetened
with brown sugar, we call for a cup of delicious Spanish chocolate,
which is served with a buttered toasted roll, worthy of all imitation.
Oh, how much comfort is in a little cup of chocolate! what an
underpinning does it afford our spiritual house, a material basis for
our mental operations! In its support, we go it a little longer on the
Plaza, see more masks, hear more guitars and "catch-this-rat!" and
finally return, in a hired _volante_, to the Ensor House, where rest
and the bedless cots await us.
But we have friends in Matanzas, real born Cubans, who will not suffer
us to remain forever in the Ensor House. They send their _volante_ for
us, one day, and we visit them. Their house, of the inevitable Cuban
pattern, is richly furnished; the marbles of the floor are pure and
smooth, the rug ample and velvety; the wainscoting of the walls, so to
speak, is in handsome tiling,--not in mean, washy painting; the cane
chairs and sofas are fresh and elegant, and there is a fine Erard
piano. The master of the house is confined to his room by illness, but
will be happy to see us. His son and daughters speak English with
fluency. They inform us, that the epidemic colds which prevail in Cuban
winters are always called by the name of some recent untoward
occurrence, and that their father, who suffers from severe influenza,
has got the President's Message.
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