But the Dominica. You know, probably, that it is the great _café_ of Havana. All the day long it is full of people of all nations, sipping ices, chocolate, and so on; and all night long, also, up to the to me very questionable hour when its patrons go home and its _garçons_ go to bed. We often found it a welcome refuge at noon, when the _douche_ of sunlight on one's _cervix_ bewilders the faculties, and confuses one's principles of gravitation, toleration, etc., etc. You enter from the Tophet of the street, and the intolerable glare is at once softened to a sort of golden shadow. The floor is of stone; in the midst trickles a tiny fountain with golden network; all other available space is crowded with marble tables, square or round; and they, in turn, are scarcely visible for the swarm of black-coats that gather round them. The smoke of innumerable cigars gives a Rembrandtic tinge to the depths of the picture, and the rows and groups of nodding Panama hats are like very dull flower-beds. In the company, of course, the Spanish-Cuban element largely predominates; yet here and there the sharper English breaks upon the ear.
"Yes, I went to that plantation; but they have only one thousand boxes of sugar, and we want three thousand for our operation."
A Yankee, you say. Yes, certainly; and turning, you see the tall, strong Philadelphian from our hotel, who calls for everything by its right name, and always says, "_Mas! mas!_" when the waiter helps him to ice. Some one near us is speaking a fuller English, with a richer "_r_" and deeper intonation. See there! that is our own jolly captain, Brownless of ours, the King of the "Karnak"; and going up to the British lion, we shake the noble beast heartily by the paw.
The people about us are imbibing a variety of cooling liquids. Our turn comes at last. The _garçon_ who says, "I speke Aingliss," brings us each a delicious orange _granizada_, a sort of half-frozen water-ice, familiar to Italy, but unknown in America. It is ice in the first enthusiasm of freezing,--condensed, not hardened. Promoting its liquefaction with the spoon, you enjoy it through the mediation of a straw. The unskilful make strange noises and gurglings through this _tenuis avena_; but to those who have not forgotten the accomplishment of suction, as acquired at an early period of existence, the _modus in quo_ is easy and agreeable.