here very strong. Everybody and everything
seem to follow the masquerade lead,
the very furniture forming no exception to
the rule: for the gas chandeliers are encased
in fancy papers, the walls and pictures are
adorned by tropical leaves and evergreens,
the chairs are transformed into shapes of
seated humanity, the marble slabs of the
little round tables are partially disguised in
robes of glass and crystal. As for the
white-jacketed proprietor and his myrmidons,
including Bubio, the mixer of liquors,
behind the counter, they all wear smiles or
holiday faces, while they carefully conceal
their natural sleepiness.

Mozo! Garçon! Una copita con cognac!
The waiter hears, but does not obey,
having already too many copitas on his
mind. "Allá voy, señor!" he, however,
says; and as it is some consolation to
know that he will come eventually, I
forgive his procrastination, and bide my time.
Meanwhile, I watch a group of maskers
who surround a guitar-playing
improvisatore, who assures his audience in song
that he is expiring because of the faithlessness
of his mulatto, who has rejected his
advances with ridicule. In an opposite
corner are a pair of moralising Davids
gravely descanting upon the frailty of
woman to the accompaniment of a windy
accordion and a nutmeg-grater, something
after this fashion:

Women there are in this world, we see,
Whose tongues are long enough for three;
They bear their neighbours' skins about,
And twist and turn them inside out.
Pallejo ajeno! lo viran all reves.

This is the whole song, and nothing but
the song; for negro melodies, of which the
above is a specimen, are essentially
epigrammatic.

A rush is made to the big barred
windows and open doors of the cafe. An
important comparsa of Congo negroes of both
sexes is passing in procession along the
street. They have just been paying their
respects to no less a personage than his
Excellency the Governor of Santiago: in
the long reception-room of whose palace,
and in whose august presence they have
dared to dance! The troupe is headed by
a brace of blacks, who carry banners with
passing strange devices, and a dancing
mace-bearer. These are followed by a
battalion of colonels, generals, and field-
marshals, in gold-braided coats and gilded
cocked-hats. Each wears a broad sash
of coloured silk, a sword and enormous
spurs. These are not ordinary masqueraders
be it known, but grave subjects of
his sombre majesty King Congo, the oldest
and blackest of all the blacks: the
lawfully appointed sovereign of the coloured
community. It seems to form part of the
drilling of his majesty's military to march
with a tumble-down, pick-me-up step, for as
each member of the corps moves he is for
ever losing his balance and finding his
equilibrium; but whether on the present occasion
this remarkable step proceeds from
loyalty or liquor I cannot say. In the rear
of his Congo Majesty's officers are a crowd
of copper-coloured amazons, in pink
muslins trimmed with flowers and tinsel, who
march trippingly in files of four, at well-
measured distances, and form a connecting
link with each other by means of their
pocket-handkerchiefs held by the extreme
corners. Each damsel carries a lighted
taper of brown wax, and a tin rattle, which
she jingles as she moves. The whole
procession terminates in a military band,
composed of musicians whose hard work and
little pay are exhibited in their uniforms,
which are confined to buttonless shirts and
brief unmentionables. Their instruments
are a big drum, hand tambours, huge cone-
shaped basket rattles, a bent bamboo harp
with a solitary string, and the indispensable
güiro or nutmeg- grater. There is
harmony in this outline of an orchestra,
let him laugh who may. No actual tune
is there, but you have all the lights and
shadows—the skeleton, so to speak—of a
tune, and if your imagination be musical,
that will suffice to supply the melody. The
peculiar measure adopted in negro drum-
music, and imitated in La Danza and in
church chiming, has an origin which those
who have a taste for natural history will
do well to make a note of. There is an
insect—I forget the name, but you may
hear it any fine night in the wilds of a
tropical country—that gives out a
continuous croak, which exactly corresponds
with this measure.

Al fin y al cabo, I have taken my plus-
café; and now that it is very early morning,
I take the nearest way to my virtuous
home. On my way thither, I pause
before the saloons of the Philharmonic,
where a grand bal-masqué of genuine, and
doubtful, whites is being held. From my
position on the pavement, I can see
perfectly well into the salon de bal, so I will
not evade the doorkeeper, as others do, by
introducing myself in disguise as somebody
else. I observe that the proceedings
within have already begun to grow warm.