"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Yes, truly, if you can get it, Jack Falstaff; but it is one thing to pay for comfort, and another thing to have it. You certainly pay for it, in Havana; for the $3 or $3.50 _per diem_, which is your simplest hotel-charge there, should, in any civilized part of the world, give you a creditable apartment, clean linen, and all reasonable diet. What it does give, the travelling public may like to learn.
Can Grande has left Woolcut's. The first dinner did not please him,--the cup of tea, with only bread, exasperated,--and the second breakfast, greasy, peppery, and incongruous, finished his disgust; so he asked for his bill, packed his trunk, called the hotel detestable, and went.
Now he was right enough in this; the house is detestable;--but as all houses of entertainment throughout the country are about equally so, it is scarcely fair to complain of one. I shall not fear to be more inclusive in my statement, and to affirm that in no part of the world does one get so little comfort for so much money as on the Island of Cuba. To wit: an early cup of black coffee, oftenest very bad; bread not to be had without an extra sputtering of Spanish, and darkening of the countenance;--to wit, a breakfast between nine and ten, invariably consisting of fish, rice, beefsteak, fried plantains, salt cod with tomatoes, stewed tripe and onions, indifferent claret, and an after-cup of coffee or green tea;--to wit, a dinner at three or four, of which the inventory varieth not,--to wit, a plate of soup, roast beef, tough turkeys and chickens, tolerable ham, nameless stews, cajota, plantains, salad, sweet potatoes; and for dessert, a spoonful each of West India preserve,--invariably the kind you do not like,--oranges, bananas, and another cup of coffee;--to wit, tea of the sort already described;--to wit, attendance and non-attendance of negro and half-breed waiters, who mostly speak no English, and neither know nor care what you want;--to wit, a room whose windows, reaching from floor to ceiling, inclose no glass, and are defended from the public by iron rails, and from the outer air, at desire, by clumsy wooden shutters, which are closed only when it rains;--to wit, a bed with a mosquito-netting;--to wit, a towel and a pint of water, for all ablutions. This is the sum of your comforts as to quantity; but as to their quality, experience alone can enlighten you.