e back. We
have no furniture worth mentioning; furniture in Cuba being represented
by a few cane or leather-bottomed chairs, some spittoons, and a small
square of carpet. But our walls are well hung with works of art in
various stages of progress, which, in a great measure, compensate for
the otherwise barren appearance of our apartments. Our studio is a
spacious chamber on a level with the street which it overlooks. The
windows occupy more than half of the wall space, are guiltless of glass,
and are protected by iron bars. The accessories of our strange calling
lend an interest to our domestic arrangements, and form a kind of free
entertainment for the vulgar. To insure privacy, we have sometimes
curtained the lower half of our enormous windows; but this contrivance
has always proved ineffectual, for in the midst of our labour, the
space above the curtains has been gradually eclipsed by the appearance
of certain playful blacks who have clambered to the heights by means of
the accommodating rails. Gentlemen of colour have little respect for the
polite arts; they look upon our sanctum as a sort of permanent
peep-show, and upon us as a superior order of photographers. Primed with
these delusions our Spanish Sambo comes for his carte-de-visite at all
hours of the sunny day, persuaded that we undertake black physiognomies
at four dollars a dozen; and when we assure him that ours is the
legitimate colouring business, and that we have no connexion with Senor
Collodion up the street, our swarthy patron produces a ready-made black
and white miniature of himself, and commissions us to colour it in our
best manner.

The press of Santiago dubs us 'followers of the divine art of Apelles,'
and an inspection of our works of art is thus described in one of the
local papers:

'We have lately visited those industrious gentlemen Don Nicasio
Rodriguez y Boldu and El Caballero Ingles Don Gualterio who, as the
public are aware, have established a studio in Cuba for the practice of
the divine art of Raphael and Michael Angelo. It is the duty of every
art-loving person to inspect all temples of the beautiful whether they
be represented by the luxurious palaces of the great or the humblest
cottages on earth. Knowledge reveals itself in the dullest as well as
the brightest localities, for true genius can abide anywhere.

'He who, like ourselves, has frequently traversed the Calle de Santa
Rosa, must have observed that in that street stands a