hite walls of the court-yard, and screaming bits of Spanish.
My New York friends have got back from the country a day before me. I am
installed in a better room than before, on the house-top, where the sun
is hot, but where there is air and a view of the ocean.

XV.

HAVANA: Social, Religious and Judicial Tidbits

The warm bath round the corner is a refreshment after a day's railroad
ride in such heat; and there, in the front room, the man in his shirt
sleeves is serving out liquor, as before, and the usual company of
Creoles is gathered about the billiard tables. After a dinner in the
handsome, airy restaurant of Le Grand's, I drive into the city in the
evening, to the close streets of the Extramuros, and pay a visit to the
lady whom I failed to see on my arrival. I am so fortunate as to meet
her, and beside the pleasure to be found in her society, I am glad to be
able to give her personal information from her attached and sympathizing
friends, at the North.

While I am there, a tinkling sound of bells is heard in the streets, and
lights flash by. It is a procession, going to carry the viaticum, the
last sacrament, to a dying person.

From this house, I drove towards the water-side, past the Plaza de
Armas, the old Plaza de San Francisco, with its monastery turned into an
almacen (a store-house of merchandise,) through the Calle de los
Oficios, to the boarding-house of Madame Almy, to call upon Dr. and Mrs.
Howe. Mr. Parker left Havana, as he intended, last Tuesday, for Santa
Cruz. He found Havana rather too hot for his comfort, and Santa Cruz,
the most healthful and temperate of the islands, had always been his
destination. He had visited a few places in the city, and among others,
the College of Belen, where he had been courteously received by the
Jesuits. I found that they knew his reputation as a scholar and writer,
and a leading champion of modern Theism in America. Dr. Howe had called
at Le Grand's, yesterday, to invite me to go with him to attend a trial,
at the Audiencia, which attracted a good deal of interest among the
Creoles. The story, as told by the friends of Senor Maestri, the
defendant, is that in the performance of a judicial duty, he discharged
a person against whom the government was proceeding illegally, and that
this lead to a correspondence between him and the authorities, which
resulted in his being deposed and brought to trial, before the
Audiencia, on a charge of disrespect to the