This has been a warning, which, as I live, I'll profit by. I extemporise and assume a home-made disguise. A strange sensation of guilt, of going to do something wrong, comes over me and makes me quake from the top of my extemporised turban to the sole of my sandal slippers. Whither shall I wander, forlorn pantomimist that I am? I loiter about the least frequented neighbourhoods, until the shades of eve--which in this climate come with a rush--have fallen, and then I mix fearlessly with the throng, among whom I am but as a drop in a Black Sea. In my peregrinations I meet a company of negro masqueraders, who, without the least ceremony, are entering the private dwelling of an opulent Don. The illustrious family are tranquilly seated in the elegant sala; but what care their visitors? It is carnival time and they, serfs of that same house, are licensed to bring themselves and their friends. They bear between them a painted screen, which they unfold and plant in the middle of the saloon. It forms a theatrical proscenium on a small scale. An orchestra of tambours, tin-trays, and nutmeg-grating güiros opens the performances, and then the actors proceed to saw the air. They perform this operation in turn, by reason of the limited proportions of their stage; and one very tall negro, who appears to have been altogether omitted in the carpenter's calculations, has to speak his speech behind the top drop. He speaks it trippingly too; for in the middle of a most exciting monologue, he upsets the whole paraphernalia and himself into the bargain. The entertainment, including refreshments, has lasted some fifteen minutes, when the itinerant troupe (who derive no benefit from their labours save what honour and self-enjoyment yield) pick up their portable proscenium and walk away.
By far the gayest region of the city during a carnival is the spacious square called the Plaza de Armas. Here are the governor's house, the residences of Cuban Belgravia, the cafés, and the cathedral. Myriads of masqueraders, in every variety of motley and domino, congregate in the plaza after their day's perambulations, and dance, sing, or bewitch each other with their disguises. There is a party of masqued and dominoed ladies: genuine whites all--you can tell it by the shape of their gloveless hands and the transparent pink of their finger-nails--endeavouring to hoax a couple of swains in false noses and green spectacles, both of whom have been already recognised. The perplexed youths try their hardest to discover their fair interlocutors by peeping at their profiles through their wire masks, but in vain. At the next quiet tertulia these same ladies will have rare fun with their puzzled victims of the night of the masquerade. Within earshot of where I am standing are a small crew of ancient mariners, Britons every one of them; unless they happen to be Americans from Boston: it does not matter which to a Cuban. They belong to the good ship _Mary Barker_, lately arrived from Halifax, in quest of Cuban copper. Jack has come ashore to-night to see the sights and collect material for a new yarn, which he will deliver at his native fireside one of these odd days. Some masker has approached the group, and has brought them the astounding information that he--the unknown--belongs to the _Mary Barker_. Jack turns to his messmates with a bewildered air. Then, addressing the masker, 'What, Joe?' says he at a venture.