tly mothers of families before they are twenty.
Of course they fade early. In domestic life the husband is literally
lord and master, the wife, ostensibly at least, is all obedience.
There is no woman's rights association on the island, nor even a
Dorcas society. While young and unmarried, the ladies are strict
adherents to all the conventionalities of Spanish etiquette, which is
of the most exacting character, but after marriage the sex is perhaps
as French as the Parisians, and as gay as the Viennese, under the
stimulus of fast and fashionable society.

The reason of the edict issued by the government forbidding parents
to send their children to this country for educational purposes was
obvious. The young Cubans during their residence here imbibed liberal
ideas as to our republican form of government, which they freely
promulgated and advocated on their return to their native island. Even
those who had been educated in France or England, and they were
numerous, readily sympathized with the pupils returned from America,
and became a dangerous element. Long before the first Lopez
expedition, these sons of planters and rich merchants had formed
themselves into a secret society, with the avowed purpose of freeing
Cuba sooner or later from the Spanish yoke.

The low-lying, many-colored city of Havana, called San Cristobel,
after the great discoverer, was originally surrounded by a wall,
though the population has long since extended its dwellings and
business structures far into what was, half a century since, the
suburbs. A portion of the old wall is still extant, crumbling and
decayed, but it has mostly disappeared. The narrow streets are paved
or macadamized, and cross each other at right angles, like those of
Philadelphia, but in their dimensions reminding one of continental
Toledo, whose Moorish architecture is also duplicated here. There are
no sidewalks, unless a narrow line of flagstones can be so called, and
in fact the people have less use for them where nearly every one rides
in a victoria, the fare being but sixteen cents per mile. A woman of
respectability is scarcely ever seen walking in the streets, unless
she is a foreigner, or of the lower class, such as sellers of fruit,
etc. Those living in close proximity to the churches are sometimes
seen proceeding to early mass, accompanied by a negress carrying a
portable seat, or a bit of carpet on which to kneel upon the marble
floor of the cathedral. But even th