The tourist, robbed right and left, need have little fear of the Havana señorita stealing away his heart. Her beauty is largely mythical. As a rule, the Cuban woman looks as if she had used a barrel of flour to powder her face, and her body is built on barrel-hoop lines. To powder she adds paint—mamma and her daughters are about the only paintings one finds in town. After viewing and reviewing these Spanish “beauties” (so inferior to our American beauties in the garden of love), one does not feel inclined to purchase the books sold here in the stores: “The Art of Kissing in Twelve Lessons”; “The Art of Caressing in Twelve Lessons.” Taken all in all, the Havana “angel” is an adorable, endurable inutility—an expensive luxury on which to hang fine clothes and diamonds. Pythagoras made it a rule to review every night what he had done during the day. Were she to follow his example, I fear she would soon be through, for she appears to be master of the art of doing nothing that is important. Havana harbors many “ladies” of that species one calls ladies only between quotation marks. God made Cuba, but the Devil invented some of Havana’s pastimes. The Cuban is “revolting” in his pleasures as well as in his politics. Streets along the water-front are lined by open bars and brothels brilliantly lighted—a mistake, because most of the inmates resemble female Calibans. The witchery of the old time wanton is no more. With Flaubert one laments the passing of the _fille de joie_: “In olden times she was beautiful when she walked up the steps leading to the temple, when on her shell-like feet fell the golden fringe of her tunic, or when she lounged among Persian cushions, twirling her collar of cameos and chatting with the wise men and philosophers. She was beautiful when she stood naked on the threshold of her _cella_ in the street of Suburra, under the rosin torchlight that blazed in the night, slowly chanting her Campanian lay, while from the Tiber came the refrains of the orgies. She was beautiful, too, in her old house of the _Cité_ behind the Gothic windows, among the noisy students, when without fear of the sergeants, they struck the oaken tables with their pewter mugs. She was beautiful when she leaned over the green cloth and coveted the gold of the provincials; then she wore high-heels and had a small waist and a large wig which shed its perfumed powder on her shoulders, a rose over her ear and a patch on her cheek. Fear not that she will ever return, for she is dead, quite dead.”