at seemed to be a
hanging garden of greenery and flowers, shut in on all sides by piazzas
and galleries. Climbing one of these flights of steps, I found myself in
a second and higher patio, shaded by large mango-and mamonilla-trees,
brightened by borders of flowering shrubs and plants, and filled with
the fragrance of roses, geraniums, and pomegranate blossoms. The
transition from the heat, filth, and sickening odors of the narrow
street to the seclusion and shady coolness of this flower-scented patio
was as delightful as it was sudden and unexpected. I could hardly have
been more surprised if I had entered what I supposed to be a Siberian
forwarding prison, and found myself in a conservatory of tropical plants
and flowers. Around three sides of the patio were spacious piazzas in
two tiers, and upon these piazzas opened the living-rooms of the
club,--about twenty in number,--like the boxes or stalls in the
galleries of a European theater. On the southern side of the patio was
a large dining-room, and beyond this, occupying the whole width of the
building and overlooking the street from a projecting balcony, was the
reading-room. This was a high, cool, spacious apartment comfortably
furnished with easy-chairs, pictures, maps, hanging book-cases, a big
library table covered with periodicals, and an American piano. The
periodicals were not of very recent date, and the piano was somewhat out
of tune, but I was so delighted with the shady, flower-bordered
courtyard and the comfort and apparent cleanliness of the club as a
whole that I felt no disposition to be hypercritical. To find such a
haven of refuge at all in a city like Santiago was unexpected good
fortune.

To one who is unfamiliar with the distinctive peculiarities of
Spanish-American architecture, nothing, at first, is more surprising
than the contrast between the gloomy and unpromising exterior of a Cuban
residence and the luxury and architectural beauty which one often finds
hidden behind its grated windows and thick stuccoed walls. It is more
surprising and striking in Santiago, perhaps, than in most
Spanish-American cities, on account of the narrowness and filthiness of
the streets on which the houses even of the wealthiest citizens stand.
In the course of the first week that I spent in the city I had occasion
to enter a number of Spanish houses of the better class, and I never
failed to experience a little shock of surprise when I went from what
looked like a