If it please you to leave the gay throng to its devices, its cigarettes, and its scandal, to quit the flaring thoroughfares and betake yourself to the semi-deserted bye streets, you will find plenty to attract and amuse you. Here, for instance, is a street so narrow, you might shake hands across it. The mellow tropical moonlight falls only on the roofs of its tall one-storied houses, and on the tapering campanile of some church or convent, which it transforms for the time being into a column of burnished gold. A vivid glare across the street attracts your attention. It proceeds from a cavernous-looking tavern, whose otherwise gloomy interior is lighted up by strings of Chinese lanterns. A crowd of negroes, smoking cigars or cigarettes, stand in a confused group round a couple, consisting of a huge Congo black naked to the waist, and a lady of a few shades lighter hue, dancing the obscene Cubana, to the intense gratification of the dusky spectators. Down another still narrower street, across a little Plaza, and we find ourselves in a sort of covered gallery, where whole families of respectable citizens, gran'pa and gran'ma included, are supping _al fresco_--by the light of a number of curious brass lamps, such as the old Romans used. Not far off you catch a glimpse of the sea glistening in the moonlight, which turns the distant suburb of Regla, on the opposite side of the harbour, into rows of ivory dice, the square one-storied houses looking for all the world like those pernicious toys on a colossal scale. Resisting the pressing invitation of a party of gaudily dressed ladies seated in the huge cage-like window of a house hard by, we find ourselves, by a sudden turn, in the Cathedral Square. Although late, the great church is open and brilliantly illuminated, and within we can see the pious throng, kneeling before the high altar, chanting Ave Maria-- _Ora pro nobis, nunc et in ora mortis nostris._ Commend to me a city of the Latin race for delightful contrasts, and I assure you Havana is no exception to the rule.