Thursday, April 5th.

YESTERDAY the train brought dear old Mr. R—— to see us. In addition to our former chess and conversations on literature and art, he reads French, gives me lessons in Spanish, and occupies all the time that would otherwise have made this a bigger if not a wiser or a better letter.

I have often suggested to you the resemblance between the game of chess and the game of life. It occurs to me at this moment, that, if this be true, fatalism must also be true. These inhabitants of chessdom are forced about by an inevitable will; their success and ruin are equally beyond their own let or hindrance. They are created as we are, with certain powers and spheres for action and being; with certain possibilities which, whether they will or not, may become impossibilities, but with, alas! impossibilities which must remain such.

From an inevitable force of circumstances, the great and powerful in chess may become weak; the insignificant may have a greatness thrust upon them. The humble pawn can at times act with the dignity of a queen; the queen is often less powerful than the little plebeian beside her. The bishops, in their attempts to serve royalty, often sacrifice themselves; the knights sometimes ruin the queen they are sworn to protect. The queen has the position many other women would like,—she is the only female in her empire. But, alas! this dizzying distinction sometimes spoils her wits: in trying to rule her allies and conquer her enemies, she is too apt to destroy herself and her kingdom. Her king and lord lives mostly in statu quo-ism. He would be her admiring imbecile except that he has found out the secret of endless life: “The king never dies.” He may at times, it is true, be a wandering Jew, but he is an immortal one; he can well afford to be besotted with inertia, for he is too wise to die. But this wisdom is also his fatality. All that he and his queen or subjects do or refrain from doing is foreordained; their entire existence seems to me an admirable illustration of the doctrine of predestination.

If, however, you wish to find an example of life as it is, of man as he is in these strugglings between the inevitable providence (which in this other game we call chance) and his own free will, between circumstances and character, ability and materials, we must go to the game of whist. Here you are always balancing the must be with the may be; you are recalling the past, and from it foreseeing the future. You are calculating the chances, you are making desperate and uncertain ventures, which may result in disappointing success or brilliant failure. And here is life, this unfathomable life of ours; this wrestling with hidden and unprecedented elements, this combating an unguessed destiny; more than all, this yielding with an equal grace to its fondness or its hate. Here, as in life, honor is for the successful; but true greatness is for him who uses most wisely and most valiantly the much or the little that is given him.

Friday, 6th, has brought back Mr. S——, with intelligence that the steamer leaves for Nassau on the 14th inst. So we must be off at once to Matanzas, if at all; and Trinidad, and all other places must, alas! be given up, from the lateness of the season and the excess of heat.

This evening was celebrated by a grand religious procession, one of the ceremonies of Good Friday. At five o’clock, low, muffled sounds of music were heard approaching. Presently the band appeared, draped in mourning; following it, drawn by black horses, came a great hearse, with heavy pall and waving plumes, and on the top of this, under a white shroud, was plainly visible the sharp outline of a human figure; blood spots were on the edge of the shroud, and above them, drooping on one side, with matted and stained hair, lay the agonized, ghastly face, in wax, of the crucified Saviour. It was horrible!

I felt myself grow sick and faint, but looked around in vain for a corresponding horror in the faces of the other spectators. They stared on with only a little less than their usual gayety and indifference, and turned with curiosity, as I did for relief, to the remainder of the procession. Next came a line of priests in sable robes, and officers of government with crape on their arms, all with uncovered heads, and carrying in their hands immense wax candles that flickered and paled before the light of the receding sun. The procession paused a few minutes before each of the principal houses, while the dead march kept beating on. But now they have passed, and here comes an august, standing figure, mounted upon a high carriage: we soon discover it to be the Virgin following her son to the grave.

Her dress is of long, trailing black velvet; upon her head is a faded crown; the face is horribly wan and white, with an expression in it of excruciating torture and despair, and, alas! what is this carried, high in the pale, uplifted hand! We shudder, we are faint, we look again; it is—a deeply flounced, elegantly embroidered white pocket-handkerchief!

Behind all this follows an indiscriminate mass of men, women, and children; but I have seen enough, and go back to the house, wondering over the strange things in heaven and earth and our philosophies.

Mr. S—— tells us so much of the elaborate celebrations and ceremonies in Havana, during these Easter days, that we regret not having gone back to witness them. Yesterday, the streets in all parts of the city were filled by ladies walking to and from all the different churches; the great ambition and proof of piety being, to visit as many as possible during the day. All were dressed in deep black. This is the only day of the year when dainty Havanese female feet press the pavements. Not a sound was to be heard over the entire city. All shops closed, carriages and vehicles of all kinds forbidden to stir, as was the case in Guiness; profound silence reigns because Christ is dead, and no profane sound must disturb his slumbers. In most of the churches an image of the dead Christ lay in a tomb surrounded by burning tapers, and all the signs of burial. Even some of the private houses, opening as they do on the streets, discovered in the principal room, to passers by, the same ghostly image partly covered by a black pall, while the family and guests sit around it in deep mourning, which is, or should be, enlivened only by occasional sobs.

Friday evening, 10 o’clock.—We are just returned from the Cathedral. As we entered, the Miserere was being sung by two young priests and our friend Father M——; the organ accompaniment played by a young priest. The pathetic strains, here mournful as the sob of a broken heart, there subdued into the tones of resignation, then suddenly struggling out in an energy like despair, seemed to thrill all the hearts of the kneeling worshippers. They were composed entirely of black-robed women; for you must know, devotion here is entirely a feminine accomplishment: the men only stand around against the wall to admire the performer, apparently quite forgetting the performance.

I perceived on one side a regularly arranged pyramid of wax candles. At certain periods of the ceremony one of the lights was extinguished, then another and another; when all were out the services were to close; but finding my strength waning faster than the lights, I came home to make a hurried note of sounds and scenes that I do not attempt to describe, of ceremonies that have all the grotesqueness and absurdity of those of Rome without their dignity and grandeur. The piety of Cuba seems to think that the next best thing to being in Rome and doing as the Romans do, is to be out of Rome and do more than Romans do.

Saturday, April 7th.—At nine o’clock this morning we found ourselves waiting at the pretty and fanciful American depot for the Havana train. As soon as fairly seated in the American car, in came our jolly friend the priest, accompanied by a large number of officers; we find that he is chaplain of the regiment. Officers have taken the little private sitting-room one always finds in these cars. They amuse themselves more than us by uproarious singing and laughter. As we start the priest crosses himself, laughing, and accompanying it by a muttered prayer; all we hear is “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” He says this is so that if any accident happens it shall not be his fault. One of the sharply moustached officers is the first to get out his cigars and offer one to me, with a look of some concern that I decline, but all the rest of the ladies accept, and soon every man in the car, but one woman, is smoking and happy. But presently Father M—— discovers a pretty Creole lady acquaintance quietly smoking her cigar, at the other end of the car; he leaves me with a phrase characteristic of Spanish politeness,—“I kiss your feet, seÑora.”

Saturday.—San Nicola and the other little towns on our way present uniform features. In all varieties of new palms in groves and avenues; hogsheads of molasses waiting to get their tickets on the cars; low huts with thatched roofs, or else the ordinary Cuban house with nearly all its rooms opening on the street, exposing the occupants to the curiosity of travellers. These people seem to be as ignorant of private life as unconscious that they are leading a public one. How much is the privacy and sanctity of domestic life a matter of climate?

This being within a few days of the season of cock-fighting, these redoubtable warriors, tied securely by unwilling feet, were being carried in large numbers to the numerous fighting rendezvous. Their spurs were very long with which to “prick the sides” of their masters’ “intents,” otherwise I saw nothing to distinguish them from our humble, domestic, barnyard citizen at home, who crows and struts out his day, and dies “unwept, unhonored,” etc.

The approach to Matanzas, through a ravine between two mountains, is far famed, and certainly deserves no small credit for the hasty glimpse it gives you of an ordinarily interesting town and an extraordinarily interesting bay, and beyond this an even range of mountains which surely were not born great, nor have they achieved greatness, although many travellers and descriptions have thrust greatness upon them.

I will not blacken and mar the myriad-hued brightness of that bay with ink; nor will I attempt to chronicle the phosphorescent miracles which are all day long being performed by the gulf stream and the concealed rocks over which it washes and breaks in sunny foam and dripping rainbows. It is so marvellously uttered in colors that words would do it wrong.

Evening.—It being well established that the only sane thing to do upon our arrival was, soon as possible, to see the renowned valley of the Yumuri, we accordingly walked from the dinner-table into our waiting volante to go and see the renowned valley of the Yumuri.

We drove at once as far up the Cumbri mountain as is consistent with horse and carriage possibility, the rest of the way trusting to the unwillingness of feet that walk under the burden of an old fatigue and a new dinner.

Inversely, like Milton’s pandemonium, above the highest peak, a higher peak still beckoned us up with false assurances, until at last this is really the very final topmost top, and we are distinctly rewarded for so much patience.

On one hand the heavy-walled, gaudily-painted city, with its tumultuous life, its busy human ascent of toil and gain and fashion; on another side the throbbing pulse of the bay, sometimes quickening to a fever like a poet’s eye in fine frenzy rolling, and again stilling to an echo silent as a dream of silence; on another side still, interwinding hills and mountains clad in ample verdure, and pretty country seats; and here, on this side, lies the peaceful little mountain-ringed Yumuri valley. It is a tiny, but deep and choicely-inlaid casket. There are groves of dark palms; pale, pea green cane-fields interspersed with dark patches of the brown soil for contrast; little glancing quicksilver brooks; thatched cottages buried among flowers and trees, whence come happy voices of children; here a herd of cattle quietly grazing, there a solitary market-boy wending sleepily home on his sleepy horse,—and all this full to the brim, to the very mountain-ring of the faint, fading glance of a sun that is just breathing his last upon his bed on the western horizon.

And now, the thickening twilight is just able to reveal to us the path leading to our volante; the famous cave is far off and out of the question; and soon we are leaving nature and her spells behind; faster and faster we descend, until soon city lights and city sounds direct us to the Plaza. Here the band is playing and promenading, bare-headed ladies are enjoying the cool air and the warm admiration so grateful to us women in warm climates.

We leave our volante to join the gauzy, chattering stream, and suddenly stumble upon—none other than the gentlemanly Creole officer who was our table vis-À-vis at Guiness. Offering me his arm, the rest following, we walked round and round the flower-scented grounds, listening to all the music that could insert itself between the pauses of our conversation. Very soon fatigue and faintness drive us in to the Dominica, a restaurant of which Matanzas is justly proud,—to my taste, with its cheerful frescoes, much more inviting than the one at Havana. Here we find ice-cream, frozen juice of pineapples and other fruits, orchata (almond juice), and a strip, a mere parallelogram of a breath of sponge-cake to eat with them. But I am too weary for any refreshment that can be found outside a pair of clean linen sheets. B—— hisses “ps-s-s-s-st” for a volante and directs the driver to go at once to the “Ensor House.”

Easter Sunday, April, 8th.—Just too late for the grand procession which celebrated this morning, glorious as all Easter mornings should be. We tried to reconcile ourselves by attending high mass at the Cathedral. Even here, at eight o’clock, the ceremonies were closing; we had only time to catch a glimpse of the gold-laced robes of the priest as he disappeared behind the chancel, and a hasty scrutiny of the perfect flower-bed of kneeling beauties covering the entire floor of the building. I was taken completely by storm. So much and so rare beauty concentrated in so little time and space! Every woman, old and young, was in full dress: white silk, with lace flounces, a long white lace veil thrown, like an exquisite fancy, over head and shoulders, instead of the usual black mantilla, was the most favorite and recherchÉ costume.

Here in Matanzas is a decided sprinkling of the Anglo-Saxon blood, just enough to flush and brighten the skin and to remove two or three of the strata of fat, which are so universal with the white ladies of Havana. Many are even so delicate in coloring, that the winds of heaven must have considerately passed by them on the other side. Still the ladies of Matanzas almost invariably retain the classically regular features, the dark fascinating eyes, the grace of posture, the meaning movement, the language of the fan, the perfect busts and arms copied from a more luxurious Venus de Medici. I cannot indeed say how much of all this effect was owing to the contagious admiration of a circle of seÑors, who had also come to the sanctuary for worship, preferring however, in all good taste, truly to offer their devotions at the shrines of living virgins in flesh and blood and moire antique, to that of a dead one in tinsel and wax. Nor can I vouch for the effect of cascarilla artistically applied; for these ladies are all allowed amateurs in its use. I tried however, to forget all this—to enjoy by faith as well as by sight; and I did succeed in bringing away with me an impression of loveliness that would be an actual inheritance to an artist.

From the Cathedral we drove to the somewhat incipient Paseo. It is an unfinished sentence, yet prettily punctuated,—here by commas in the shape of vine-porched cottages, there by a long dash of green fields; now a parenthesis made by brackets of palm-trees including a little bright piece of the bay, uttering itself in a low tone of voice; presently an exclamation point, made of mounted cannon; and finally a full architectural period at the end—the country house of Count Somebody, or possibly of the Austrian Ambassador.

I am not sorry that we leave by steamer to-night for Havana. Most travellers, I believe, prefer Matanzas; but to me it lacks the chief charm of its elder sister,—the quaintness and novelty, while I find little to supply their place. Undoubtedly it is far more modern in its spirit, and for a resident might have more social congeniality: but when you consider that the sights are all seen; the heat so terrific that the presentation of our letters of introduction becomes formidable; that there is little left for us but a questionable amalgamation of American and Spanish cookery, and unutterable suffocation in a room carefully constructed to admit all of the sun and none of the air,—will you not allow that in this instance a moderate, though possibly somewhat habitual desire for change is fairly legitimate?

Havana, April 9th.—The hour of nine o’clock last night, if it had not been totally blind with the darkness, would have seen us tumbling down from the shore to one of the little row-boats that serve you up to the waiting steamer for Havana. Learning that the cabins below were mere dens, we all remained on deck till the clocks on shore struck eleven, then twelve; then till the steamer began to manifest signs of life; then until

and we began to plunge in darkness and the broad ocean; and then one little hour more for the moon to rise out of this black sepulchre like its guardian ghost; we wait for it to say its say of beauty, and to brighten the farewell we take of Mr. S——, who leaves in the morning before we are awake, and whose constant kindness has been beyond return.

Now at last we really go; and what think you is the way to the ladies’ cabin? None other than directly through the gentlemen’s saloon, where the occupants all lie in open berths, and in most ghostly states of attire. I catch one glimpse of horizontal whiteness, draw my veil, seize B——’s arm, eventuate at the farther end. Here numerous nasal ebullitions (why will nobody submit to calling the thing snoring, if he himself is the offender?

are exchanged for intimations of equally fabulous sea-sickness, and I find myself safely arrived in the ladies’ cabin, where babies are prevailing to a sleepless extent.

Here my mattress, sheets, counterpane, are utterly ignored or forsworn in a cane-bottomed berth. Without any unpinning or unhooking delay, I follow the example of the groups of shady-faced ladies around me, not of Christabel when

This morning, after a delightful slumber all the sweeter because unexpected, I was awakened at daylight by a rattling of spoons, cups, and saucers. It is my companions taking their cup of coffee,—that inevitable potion without which you could never convince newly awakened Cuban men and women of their personal identity, or of the possibility of the world wagging one step farther.

We had already been lying an hour or more in the bay of Havana. Very soon all the passengers are gone but ourselves; we, the only foreigners, are left alone to wait the hour when a volante can be obtained. B—— goes as fast as possible to secure rooms at the hotel. One Chinese waiter offers me milkless coffee; another bushy-headed antipode stands in the door, with pail and mop in hand, waiting for me to go. At last, with patience in a precarious condition, I rush out on one side of the vessel to get out of the way, and I am driven thence by the observing disposition of a swarthy man lying in his berth in a little vessel moored next to our own: he leans on his coatless elbow with an air of cool curiosity that is unendurable. Then I go to the other side, where dirty drippings from the upper deck, suggest anew the superfluity of my presence and drive me, this time fluctuating on the precincts of ill-temper, out to the gentlemen’s cabin. Here I met B—— tired out with looking for a volante, and the disappointment of not finding rooms at Mrs. A——’s where we hoped to go for a change.

At last, after a deal of English and Spanish nobody understands, and of pantomimes that would have enlightened “blocks, and stones, and worse,” etc., we find ourselves re-established at Queen’s Hotel, in a room which, it is plain to see, if there were light enough in it to see anything, was made for some uncompleted individual,—one in whom had never been breathed the breath of life, or who had breathed it all out again, with little hope of a second respiratory experiment.

Tuesday, April 10th.—Last night arrived a young Bostonian, who, like ourselves, has been adventuring in the interior. He tells us he knows well the young man who gave a well-known author on Cuba all the facts in his book except the few the author learned personally. He says the person is a great practical joker, and plumes himself on the humbugging he achieved.

The day has passed in farewell sight-seeings and shoppings, the latter consisting mostly of the purchase of Spanish fans and linen dresses. And now I am ready to part from Cuba with scarcely a regret, yet carrying with me only fresh experiences and smiling memories. The sun in this social as well as material firmament has been cloudless, or with only rare veils to brighten its brightness.

I have, it may be, hung on the walls of my life some new pictures, which will help to keep it from the ravages of time, somewhat as the paintings of Protogones saved the city of Rhodes from the destruction of its enemies.

I do not yet recover from the impression that I have committed a kind of theft upon nature, or the almanacs, or the thermometers—or all of them; for I have stolen and luxuriated in an extra summer; so that this twice-flowered year is likely to be for me the impendingly pious

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