The Cuban Gentleman

TIe appears to you at íirst a man all hair, eyes,teeth and shirt collar. It is not precisely the correct view, but such is apt to be the inapression conveyed to a conservative and doubting rnind. Af ter better acquaintanee he gi ves you the idea of a man who is at least sui generis, with a unique forni of body and ii hitherto unclassified type of mind. After a year or two he begins to seem to you to be a rather clever fellow, with traite that are seldom observed to exist in a character otherwise excellent, but an agreeable man in every respect, to a coun teñan ce always expreessivo of a certain refinement, often of great beauty, and almost never coarse, lar or hard, he joins a poysiqueuie minnest and most attenuated ever found compatible with locomotion and the general control of a muscular system. His legs are spindles, his arms much like flattened sticks somewhat enlarged at the articulations. Of stomach he usually has about as much as birds of the crane species are remarkable for, and is seldom disposed to undue enlargemenf in the región of the waistband. His shoulders are thin and spare, and if he stoops slightly, it need not necessarily be regarded as an indication either of scholarship or disease of the lungs. His complexion is seldom fair, and generally of a not untr-mdsome swarthiness, though sometimes approaching a hue that, by the present opinión of prejudiced mankind, is not exactly a society color. But I have never seen a Cuban with what we cali a "dumb" face or an unintelligeut eye. This man is the born dandy. He wears jewelry like a woman, and like a woman's. He pinclies feet that iire small enough naturally into agonizing shoes. He wears collars monstrous in size or ridiculous in smallness, with shirts of dazzling colors and cut so very decollele that you may observe the sharp ends of his collar-bones and tbe very bottom of his thin throat. At the date of thia writing he goes about the streets with pantaloons that hang upon his little legs like bags.and flap and yaw in the breeze. His coat seems to have been made for a taller man, whereas a year ago it had a tendency to ereep upward toward the back of his neck. But the centrepiece and glory of his eostume is his hat. "Where such fashions in headgear as he delights himself with really liavc their origin I know not. As the clitnate is warm, and seemingly for that reason, the hat is narrow, black, heavy and shaped like an inverted stove kettle. This man sometimes attends a ball in a black dress suit, a white necktie and a green shirt. A Cuban town is full of such figures, and few of them are, by any chance, at work at anything. Born in a slave country, the presumptive, probable or actual heir to a share in some sugar plantation, or if not, living by his wits or upoii hia relations, the young Cuban imagines that his destiny is to ornament the trópica; to be a thing of beauty, and kill time while he is thus gantly occupied. - i