They made the meal from the ground up; killing and cleaning guinea hens, roasting and grinding coffee—for, like many other farmers, this one grew his own coffee—cooking rice, and boiling pottage. There is every opportunity to eat well in Cuba. Where they do not eat well, it is because they do not care or know how. Chickens and guinea hens are raised without care. There is generally a guinea hen or a quail or some other fat bird wandering around the house, anxious to be shot for breakfast, dinner, or supper. Anything that you can stick into the ground will grow. It is possible to raise coffee on one side of the house and sweet potatoes on the other, bananas just outside the lean-to and potatoes in the front yard. There is a funny touch of Cuban innocence in their potatoes. They care little for the small ones which grow down there, and so they ship them to the United States, where the Broadway hostelries serve them as Bermudas and other varieties costing four times the usual price. In exchange, Cuba imports the vulgar Irish variety at extravagant prices and cares not that half of them have rotted away in transit. Bananas are the staple vegetable. They are rarely ripened and eaten as fruit. Generally, they are picked and cooked green, by frying, like potatoes. The lack of household economy in eating also applies to meats. Although there is plenty of fowl and a bountiful supply of vegetables, the stock-yards of Chicago have an extensive Cuban trade in canned meats, of the doubtful, aged varieties. Domestic beef is muscular and better adapted to the pulling of ox carts than to the delectation of satiated appetites. As we sat on the hard benches, in the dirt-floored living room, waiting for our supper, Rogelio slumbered. The three men of the establishment tried to talk with us, but we could only point to the peacefully sleeping interpreter. Although we protested, the family served our meal before it sat down to its own. They watched us eat, and then we were almost as curious and possibly as unreserved in our candid staring while we watched them eat.