the big bell, summoning all stragglers to their places, is
heard, the audience resume their seats, and the curtain rises for 'Los
Mocitos del Dia.'

The scene of the farce is laid in the interior of a 'ventorillo,' or
fruiterer's shop, in Cuba, with real bananas, plantains, sugar-cane,
cocoa-nuts, mangoes, Panama hats, and limp hand-baskets distributed
about the stage. Juana, the mulatto girl--attired in a low-necked,
short-sleeved cotton gown and a coloured turban--is discovered smoking
an enormous cigar, and washing clothes in a kind of flat tub, called in
Creole vernacular a 'batea.' She soliloquises in the drawling nasal tone
peculiar to her race, and adopts a Spanish _patois_ which abounds in
abbreviated words, suppressed s's, unlisped z's, and s-sounding c's.
After singing the 'Candelita,' a favourite Cuban ditty, Juana discourses
upon her master Don Gabriel's objections to 'lo mocito,' as she calls
them, and describes their rakish habits.

Enter Teresita's lover, Ramon.

The 'mocito' desires an uninterrupted interview with his mistress, and
offers to bribe the mulatto with silver 'medios' if she will warn the
lovers of the 'enemy's' approach by singing the 'Candelita' outside.
Juana accepts the bribe, which she places carefully within the folds of
her turban after the fashion of her tribe, and vanishes in quest of her
young mistress.

Enter Teresita.--'Valgame Dios! Ramon?'

Ramon.--'Teresita de mi vida!' (Love-scene.)

Teresita refers to her father's dislike to 'los mocitos,' whom Don
Gabriel declares to have no occupations save those of gambling and
dancing, and who go about 'perfumed with eau-de-Cologne and violet
powder.' Her papa's notion of a model son-in-law is an individual who
savours of the workshop. Such a man Don Gabriel has discovered in the
person of Mister Charles (pronounced Charleys), the engineer of Don
Hermenejildo Sanchez' sugar estate.

Ramon is disgusted with this information.

'What!' he exclaims, 'you married to a "fogonero"--a stoker! I will
never consent to such a union--first because of my deeply-rooted love
for you, and secondly because of my patriotic feeling on the subject.
This is a question of race, Teresita mia. It is war between coal and
cafe-a fight between brandy and bananas. Yes; rosbif _versus_ fufu.
Mister Charleys is a bisteque (beefsteak), and I am your tasajito con
platanito verde machucado!' (a favourite Creole dish).

The infatuated fruiterer is, nevertheles