Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/180

Rh architects, painters, and poets ought to come hither for new knowledge and new inspiration. Air and light, the vegetation above ground, and the caverns below it, are full of life and beauty! There is also a remarkable grotto not far from this plantation, which we, if possible, shall visit early in the morning.

We have now as visitor in the house a lively young girl, a French Creole, Eudoxia B., whose cheerful conversation and natural, healthy and graceful manners it is a pleasure both to hear and see. I hear from her that young girls have sometimes in Cuba, as well as in Sweden, certain Utopian dreams of a home (a kind of paradise for young girls) into which no man shall be allowed to enter. Eudoxia's only brother is said also to have similar dreams of a corresponding paradise for young men, from which all ladies are to be excluded. I am mistaken if these young exclusives will not, one fine day, exclude themselves from their paradise by entering the marriage state; I would not be surety for the pretty Eudoxia's vocation as a nun. I have drawn this charming young girl's portrait in my album. A little green lizard sate all the while, certainly for two hours, upon a vine-branch by the window, and peeped in; another lizard, its counterpart or spouse, sate a little higher up, just opposite, and seemed to watch its movements. The little creatures amuse me greatly, they look so wise and so reflective. When they would make themselves agreeable one to another, they open a kind of wing on one side, of the brightest red colour, and wave it about like a fan.

I found this morning to my astonishment that all my cuculios had disappeared from the glass which always stands upon my toilet table. I could not comprehend how it could be, for I knew that they had not energy enough to leave the sugar-cane and fly away. Somewhat later in the forenoon, I beheld a huge coal-black spider—as large as a little child's hand—sitting upon the