But one thing else is clear. Cuba, so gifted by
Nature, is being despoiled by man; and what ought to be a garden will
become overgrown with weeds if there is not a change of fortune. There
is taxation without representation under an iron despotism: there is an
army without war, and the people look on. It is not necessary to find
any new means of going to the bad at a gallop. The rich give practical
support to the Spanish, and moral support to the insurrection; but if
the insurrection should triumph, I can't see how it will benefit the
Creole Cubans of property. I think ideas here are confused on the
subject, and while they are giving hearty encouragement to neither
cause, between the two they are sure to be utterly ruined.

I have spent a week in all on sugar plantations in the interior. I was
delightfully entertained, and reveled in the luxury of soft air and
out-of-door life. I was on horseback a good deal, riding one of the
shuffling little animals they have here, whose gait is so easy that it
doesn't amount to motion. The crops are to a great extent still uncut;
the green cane, which looks like our broom-corn at a distance, waves in
the winds as far as the eye can reach. The country is level, but has a
frame of mountain-land. The woods are festooned with air-plants and
parasites; palm trees dot the landscape in every direction or run in
splendid avenues, sometimes in double rows, alternating with the round,
full mamey tree, whose deep green foliage brings into fine relief the
white stalk of the palm. The breeze rustles through the broad
plantations of bananas and sways the orange groves. The gardens are rich
in flowers of brilliant hues. The fields swarm with negroes and
ox-carts; the ponderous machinery of the boiling-houses maintains a
steady hum; the picturesque buildings are all touched with Fortuny-like
tints: there is much to see and much to tell of, but I must have some
regard for your patience. I have not finished, but I must stop.

F. C. N.

FRENCH SLANG.

Reading the slang of a language is much like seeing the said language in
its intellectual shirt-sleeves, off duty and taking its ease: one feels
sure of detecting some essential characteristics of the people who speak
it, and one turns over the pages of a slang dictionary expecting to
recognize through its corruption and perversions the real nature of the
people who have created it. French slang is no exc