There was a great majority of expressive, intelligent faces among these belles, and there were plenty of large black eyes, some very beautiful; and there were pretty lips, which disclosed with every smile two even rows of pearly teeth; but there was also a total absence of that fresh, healthy look which, when united to youth, constitutes beauty, whatever be the shape of the features, and without which no woman can be truly lovely. As I contemplated, from my somewhat high bench, the colorless cheeks of the maidens, and the sallow, withered skins of the matrons kneeling on the marble floor before me, I remembered the temperate zone with heart-sick longing. "It seems," thought I, "very delightful, when one reads of it, to inhabit a clime where the trees are ever green, and the flowers in perpetual bloom; where snow and ice are unknown; but look at these pallid girls and their faded mothers--poor, enervated victims of continual heat! And oh! the many physical miseries arising from want of active exercise, and the sluggish torpor that seems to invade the soul as well as the body." And then the days long gone by came back to me; the days when "life went a-Maying with nature, hope, and poesy;" the days when I was young. "How I pity you," I murmured, "pale Cuban girls, who have never run free in the daisied meadows to gather spring violets and primroses; who have never rambled with laughing youths and maidens in the leafy woods of summer, or sported among the dried fallen leaves in the cool, bright days of autumn, or made one in a merry evening party around the sparkling, crackling, glowing winter fire!" A startling yelp, accompanied by the whistling sound of a well-applied whip, recalled my wandering thoughts. The _perrero_, in the exercise of his duties, was ejecting a recalcitrant dog, which had contrived to reach the chancel unobserved. This functionary, the _perrero_--_anglicé_, dog-man--is peculiar to the cathedral. In all the other churches of Havana, the faithful are constantly grieved by the unseemly spectacle of dogs roaming at will within the sacred precincts, even on the very steps of the altar. The _perrero_ is distinguished by a dark blue serge robe, descending to his feet, and very much resembling a gentleman's dressing-gown in form. Around his neck he wears, as a finish, a wide white frill. He carries, concealed in the folds of this unpretending and rather unbecoming costume, a serviceable cowhide, which he uses with a will upon all canine intruders; and if he can, he concludes his admonishment with a kick, it being generally believed that a dog which has received this final humiliation eschews the cathedral for the rest of his days.