American Beauty roses in tint, their pearly teeth gleamed behind lips of coral, and their dark eyes sparkled with tantalizing fires. "Why is it," I asked, "that the Spanish women are so much superior to the men?"

"I think it must be because the men live only for the women, was the reply. "I believe I know what you're thinking about," he went on. "If you know Byron, you must be recalling the lines in 'Childe Harold,' about the maids of Spain:

"Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,

But formed for all the witching arts of love:
Though thus in arms they emulate her sons,
And in the horrid phalanx dare to move,
'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove,

Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate:
In softness, as in firmness, far above

Remoter females, famed for sickening prate;

Her mind is nobler sure, her charms how much more great!"

We stopped at a little wine-shop long enough to absorb some bottled sunshine. As we were entering, two voluptuous señoritas, wearing the lace mantillas which they all know how to use with so much grace, passed by. They both looked around at us, one of them with a suggestion of a smile, but they continued their walk.

We resumed our carriage ride, finally stopping at a restaurant in the Prado, and ordered a dinner to be brought along with the wine. We were joined by some of my companion's friends. Two of them were resident correspondents of New York newspapers, another was the editor of a Spanish daily. One of the correspondents was so melan

choly that half a dozen glasses were needed to make him at all cheerful.

"He's been melancholy ever since the wreck of the Maine," whispered my new friend. "He was out of town when that happened, and got scooped on it. If you want to see a human imitation of a mad bull, ask him where he was when the Maine blew up. But for heaven's sake, don't do it now. Let nothing interrupt the present blissful harmony."

The tinkle of mandolins, playing "La Paloma," was now heard. A woman's voice soon joined in, and in musical accents, full of heart-throbs, sang the sweetly sad story of the "dove." Within were lights, music, clinking glasses, gleaming tableware, beautiful colors, wine, woman and song. Without, the moon's rays shone through the leafage and fell softly upon the moving picture of life in the Prado.

It was not strange to me that my friend forgot to go back to his office that night. When someone mentioned that the hour was growing late, he scornfully rejoined: "Time was made for slaves." There was but one jarring note in the course of the dinner. A fine, large steak was brought in and carved. "Ah," I thought, "I will now dine upon Cuban beef. The cow from which this was cut doubtless cropped grass in some poetic vale of this fair Island, tended, perchance, by a beauteous maid with sensuous lips and eyes of light, and still carrying in her veins the passionate, masterful blood of the Spaniards of old.

"Where," I inquired, in my best Spanish, "did this steak originate?"

"We got it from a Chicago packing-house, sir," responded the waiter in English.

We fell to discussing the political situation. Everyone in the party seemed to think the Palma government would not last long; also that it was never intended to last. The representative of a commercial agency said he had gathered as much from a conversation with President Palma himself. (I afterward learned that he was really a friend of the President.) He and Mr. Palma were talking of the status of Cuba and the new American colonies. The probability that Porto Rico and the Philippines would remain colonies, or at least become no better than territories, was mentioned by the commercial man.

"Yes, but Cuba is fit for better things," the President had remarked. "She has done as well as any of the States for more than a year now. We ought to be able to keep affairs going as they are for three or four years more."

"And then what-statehood?" ventured the other.

"That's my idea," responded the President. "What do you think about it?”

"Why shouldn't that be Palma's view?" said one of the correspondents. "That's what he was put over here for. He was taken from the head of the Cuban Junta in the States, and placed where he is now. His eighteen years in the United States fairly Americanized him, although he was once before President of Cuba-during the last days of the Ten Years' War. He knows the Cuban rabble