but there is still much of the old custom, the old atmosphere.  The old wall, with its soldier-guarded gates, is gone, and there are a few modern buildings, but only a few, for which fact I always feel thankful, but the old city is much what it was when Mr. Ballou, and Mr. Dana, and Mr. Kimball, and numerous others wrote about it soon after 1850, and when Mr. Hazard wrote about it in 1870.  The automobile is there now in large numbers, in place of the old volante, and there are asphalted streets in place of cobble-stones.  The band plays in the evening in the Parque Central or at the Glorieta, instead of in the Plaza de Armas, but the band plays.  The restaurants are still a prominent feature in Havana life, as they were then.  The ladies wear hats instead of mantillas, but they buy hats on Calle Obispo just as and where their mothers and grandmothers bought mantillas.  Bull-fighting is gone, presumably forever, but crowds flock to the baseball grounds.  The midday suspension of business continues, generally, and the afternoon parade, on foot and in carriages, remains one of the important functions of the day.  There are many who know Havana, and love it, who pray diligently that it may be many years before the city is Americanized as, for instance, New Orleans has been.

Most of the life of the city, as it is seen by most visitors, is outside the old city, and probably few know that any distinction is made, yet the line is drawn with fair clearness.  There is a different appearance in both streets and buildings.  While there are shops on San Rafael and Galiano and elsewhere, the principal shopping district is in the old city, with Calle Obispo as its centre.  They have tried officially, to change the name of the street, but the old familiar name sticks and seems likely to stick for a long time yet.  Far be it from a mere man to attempt analysis or description of such a place.  He might tell another mere man where to buy a hat, a pair of shoes, or eyeglasses, or a necktie, or where to find a lawyer, but the finer points of shopping, there or elsewhere, are not properly for any masculine description.  The ladies may be trusted to learn for themselves, and very quickly, all that they need or want to know about that phase of Havana’s commerce.  I am leaving much to the guide books that can afford space for all necessary information about churches, statues, and other objects of interest for visitors.  Havana’s retail merchants have their own way of trading, much as they do in many foreign countries, and in not a few stores in our own country.  Prices are usually a question of the customer’s ability to match the commercial shrewdness of the dealer.  Much of the trade of visitors is now confined to the purchase of such articles as may be immediately needed and to a few souvenirs.  One of the charms of the place is the cheap transportation.  If you are tired, or in a hurry, there is always a coach near at hand that will take you where you wish