With reference to the personal honesty of the Cuban, no unqualified statement is likely to be just. All people possessing great love of approbation and an excessive desire to please are apt to be more or less insincere in social intercourse. Extend the ethics of an afternoon tea to all statements of fact in business relations, and one has an atmosphere of reliability or the reverse about equivalent to that in Cuba. Men tell you things they think you will like to hear. It appears to strike a Cuban as something akin to discourtesy to bring a painful fact to your attention, even though a knowledge of it be quite essential to your business welfare. To save himself the embarrassment of refusing a request, he will often make a promise that he can not keep, and to save you from being disquieted by uncertainty he will give you an assurance as unqualified that ought to be decidedly conditional. His business statements are like his currency, subject to fluctuating discount. As in case of money, this is undoubtedly an inconvenience in conducting a transaction. But, as there is sound money in Cuba, so there are men to be found whose word in business is as good as their bond. The upper commercial classes of the Island preserve a conservative integrity in their dealings and their methods of conducting business as high as prevails in any country. There are few failures. The representatives of large American houses report that their losses from bad debts are less in Cuba in proportion to the amount of business done than in the United States. In purchasing at retail one has to guard against overcharging. But this is simply a feature of a very ancient and still very common way of doing business. There are no settled prices, and each individual sale is a separate transaction to be settled by independent agreement, and is not prejudiced in the least by the precedent of previous transactions of a similar character. Americans, with little experience outside their own country, frequently bring up this practice as a main argument to prove the universal dishonesty of the Cuban. But it is like many other ingenuous arguments of the same sort--“It is not our way, ergo, it is wrong”--that would result in making virtue a decidedly local thing in this world if they were universally applied.