which he imagines, from the noise made, must threaten the
whole town. Imagine, O reader! in thy native town, every square with its
church, every church with its tower, or maybe two or three of them, and
in each particular tower a half-dozen large bells, no two of which sound
alike; place the bell-ropes in the hands of some frantic man who pulls
away, first with one hand and then the other, and you will get a very faint
idea of your first awakening in Havana. Without apparent rhyme or reason,
ding, dong, ding they go, every bell-ringer at each different church
striving to see how much noise he can make, under the plea of bringing the
faithful to their prayers at the early morning mass."

[Illustration: BALCONIES IN OLD HAVANA STREET IN HAVANA]

The only conceivable advantage of these early bells is the fact that they
turn out many a traveller at the hour when Havana is really at its best.
Yet, as I read the descriptive tales left by those who wrote forty, fifty,
and sixty years ago, I am struck by the fact, that, after all, the old
Havana has changed but little. There are trolley lines, electric lights,
and a few other so-called modern improvements, but there is still much of
the old custom, the old atmosphere. The old wall, with its soldier-guarded
gates, is gone, and there are a few modern buildings, but only a few, for
which fact I always feel thankful, but the old city is much what it was
when Mr. Ballou, and Mr. Dana, and Mr. Kimball, and numerous others wrote
about it soon after 1850, and when Mr. Hazard wrote about it in 1870. The
automobile is there now in large numbers, in place of the old volante, and
there are asphalted streets in place of cobble-stones. The band plays in
the evening in the Parque Central or at the Glorieta, instead of in the
Plaza de Armas, but the band plays. The restaurants are still a prominent
feature in Havana life, as they were then. The ladies wear hats instead
of _mantillas_, but they buy hats on Calle Obispo just as and where their
mothers and grandmothers bought _mantillas_. Bull-fighting is gone,
presumably forever, but crowds flock to the baseball grounds. The midday
suspension of business continues, generally, and the afternoon parade, on
foot and in carriages, remains one of the important functions of the day.
There are many who know Havana, and love it, who pray diligently that it
may be many years before the city is Americanized as, for instance, New
Orleans has been.

Most