An incident occurred in Havana some little while back, which, although trivial enough when reduced to its true proportions, has had a vast influence in bringing about the present war. Miss Evangelina Cisneros, a daughter of that Marquis de Santa Lucia who was second President of the Cuban Republic, effected her escape from a Cuban prison under exceptional circumstances. We are assured that she is exceedingly lovely, and, judging by her numerous photographs, she certainly must be very pretty. Her aged father has been in a State prison at Havana for some years. His dutiful daughter, hearing that his health was breaking down under the prolonged confinement, went one day to the governor of the prison, Colonel Berriz, and throwing herself upon her knees before him, implored him to use his influence to obtain her parent's liberation. If we are to believe Miss Evangelina Cisneros' account of the affair, the colonel offered her the same vile conditions that the Count de Luna suggests to Leonora (in _Il Trovatore_), when that operatic heroine begs him to release Manrico. The fair Evangelina scorned the proposal, and, in a whirlwind of indignation, fled from her insulter's presence. According to the Colonel, there is not a word of truth in the whole story; he vows he is the victim of an hysterical girl, who had been caught carrying letters to the rebel army. Be this as it may, Señorita Cisneros was arrested and sent to prison, and to what seems to have been a very undesirable one, in which she was given scanty fare, and forced to associate with the very lowest females. Here she remained for many months, in the greatest agony of mind, until she managed, one fine day, to communicate with Mrs Lee, the wife of the United States Consul, by means of a few words scratched on a bit of paper with a pin, dipped in her own blood. Mrs Lee contrived to visit her, and does not seem, to tell the truth, to have had much difficulty in obtaining admission to her cell. The sad story was soon afterwards published broadcast all over the United States and England, thanks mainly to the arch-millionaire journalist, Mr W. E. Hearst, who, perceiving that Evangelina's adventures would make excellent copy for his paper, and considerably help the Cuban cause, commissioned Mr Deckar, a young gentleman connected with his staff, to go to Cuba and effect her release, which exploit was duly performed with splendid courage and skill. The fair Evangelina was enabled, thanks to Mr Deckar's intervention, to stupefy her companions with sweetmeats infused with laudanum, and, whilst they lay in a profound slumber, to squeeze herself through the bars of her cell window, to cross a ladder stretched from roof to roof, and finally, after many hairbreadth perils and dangers, to effect her escape from Cuba like another Rosalind, in the disguise of a boy--all of which tends to prove that the Cuban prisons are not particularly well guarded.