CLUBS
IN
HAVANA
317
than for their own. Through an open door our conductor faintly indicated the apartment which belonged to himself. Four bare walls, a bare tiled floor, a plain pallet, with a crucifix above the pillow, was all that it contained. There was no parade of ecclesiasticism. The libraries were well furnished, but the books were chiefly secular and scientific. The chapel was unornamented; there were a few pictures, but they were simple and inoffensive. Everything was good of its kind, down to the gymnastic courts and swimming bath. The holiness was kept in the background. It was in the spirit and not in the body. The cost of the whole establishment was defrayed out of the payments of the richer students managed economically for the benefit of the rest, with complete indifference on the part of the Fathers to indulgence and pleasures of their own. As we took leave the Marques kissed his old master's brown hand. I rather envied him the privilege. Something I saw of Havana society in the received sense of the word. There are many clubs there, and high play in most of them, for the Cubans are given to the roulette tables. The Union Club, which is the most distinguished among them, invites occasional strangers staying in the city to temporary membership as we do at the AthenĂŚum. Here you meet Spanish grandes, who have come to Cuba to be out of reach of revolution, proud as ever and not as poor as you might expect; and when you ask who they are you hear the great familiar names of Spanish history. I was introduced to the p r e s i d e n t young, handsome, and accomplished. I was startled to learn that he was the head of the old house of Sandoval. The house of Columbus ought to be there also, for there is still a Christophe Colon, the direct linear representative of the discoverer, disguised under the title of the Duque de Veragua. A perpetual pension of 20,000 dollars a year was granted to the great Christophe and his heirs for ever