erpetual _volante_ at their service! for they
dress in their best clothes three times a day, and do not soil them by
contact with the dusty street. They drive before breakfast, and shop
before dinner, and after dinner go to flirt their fans and refresh their
robes on the Paseo, where the fashions drive. At twilight, they stop at
friendly doors and pay visits, or at the entrance of the _cafe_, where
ices are brought out to them. At eight o'clock they go to the Plaza, and
hear the band play, sitting in the _volante_; and at ten they come home,
without fatigue, having all day taken excellent care of number one,
beyond which their arithmetic does not extend. "I and my _volante_" is
like Cardinal Wolsey's "_Ego et Rex meus_."

As for those who have no _volantes_, modesty becomes them, and quietness
of dress and demeanor. They get a little walk before breakfast, and stay
at home all day, or ride in an omnibus, which is perhaps worse;--they
pay a visit now and then in a hired carriage, the bargain being made
with difficulty;--they look a good deal through the bars of the
windows, and remember the free North, and would, perhaps, envy the
_volante_-commanding women, did not dreadful Moses forbid.

One alleviation of the tedium of hotel-life in the city is the almost
daily visit of the young man from the dry-goods' shop, who brings
samples of lawns, misses' linen dresses, pina handkerchiefs, and fans of
all prices, from two to seventy-five dollars. The ladies cluster like
bees around these flowery goods, and, after some hours of bargaining,
disputing, and purchasing, the vendor pockets the golden honey, and
marches off. As dress-makers in Havana are scarce, dear, and bad, our
fair friends at the hotel make up these dresses mostly themselves, and
astonish their little world every day by appearing in new attire. "How
extravagant!" you say. They reply, "Oh! it cost nothing for the making;
I made it myself." But we remember to have heard somewhere that "Time
is Money." At four in the afternoon, a negress visits in turn
every bedroom, sweeps out the mosquitoes from the curtains with a
feather-brush, and lets down the mosquito-net, which she tucks in around
the bed. After this, do not meddle with your bed until it is time to get
into it; then put the light away, open the net cautiously, enter with a
dexterous swing, and close up immediately, leaving no smallest opening
to help them after. In this mosquito-net you live, move, and have y