This has been another potent cause of general decline. Having made up my mind to return home to work out my future, I began to retrench more and more, eliminating amusement for the most part--almost the sole one now is moving pictures, which takes my mind away from myself for two or three nights a week. I enjoy them here for one reason, _i. e._, they present long pictures in a number of parts which present good dramas of life. These pictures are French for the most part, and now I hardly understand how I ever took any interest or received pleasure from the prevailing American pictures, as I always loved drama and continued story, vaudeville never appealing to me. But for this one little thing, present conditions would be unbearable, which is why I touch upon it at greater length than the story of these days would seem to warrant. One of the principal pleasures of my life has been the theatre. I always had an abiding and ever-present liking for dramatic action and situation, as well as good comedy--burlesque, vaudeville, moving pictures, farce, and the like, only had a limited appeal, although I must say that “Seven Days” was a farce which I greatly enjoyed. Coming to Havana I had to drop the theatre entirely,--not that I was such an inveterate theatre-goer before (owing to financial circumstances)--because of lack of understanding and lately lack of energy to exert myself to attempt to understand, my hearing not being any too good at best; a greater reason was the absence of good plays and the outrageous prices. I ignore entirely the numerous small theatres devoted to pandering to the lowest instincts of the ignorant black, mulatto and even white. Under these circumstances I turned to the moving picture theatre, and by only attending when there is at least one longer picture which promises dramatic action, I managed to derive considerable pleasure from this class of entertainment, no doubt to a great extent due to the fact that that was the only thing which took me out of myself, so that I lived in the play--except my reading. These two have kept me going during these months--when I tire of reading or by reason of a peculiar nervousness do not feel like reading, if there is a good picture I go, otherwise I make myself read and am soon reconciled for the evening. Sometimes a walk by the sea during the evening helps me much.