Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/254

Rh customs; as for instance, the Quakers, with their simple costume, their thee and thou to all the world, their silent divine worship, their women, who are allowed to preach and participate in church and social government; the Shakers, with their dancing divine-worship; and those small Socialist communities which seek in a spirit of love to make all true workers participate alike in the good gifts of the earth.

Among the peculiar, picturesque scenes of the American soil, must be mentioned public baptisms on the banks of rivers and lakes, where both white and black neophytes are initiated into a life of holiness; and the religious festivals, called “camp-meetings,” where in the depth of night and the forest, by the flames of fire-altars, thousands of voices uniting in harmonious hymns, and souls trembling in religious ecstasy, are alternated with abundance both in eating and drinking. These festivals are the saturnalia of the negro-slaves, and their prayers and songs are as ardent and living as the sun of the south.

When we leave the United States and betake ourselves to the southern hemisphere of America, we find that in three days' time we have removed into a new world. And this first meets us as in Cuba. Heaven and earth, the people, language, laws, manners, style of building, everything is new, and the refreshment produced by this rapid change of scene is indescribable, although at the time everything in it is not good.

The scenery of South America, its dominant people and language, meet us in Cuba; we are in the region of the palm, of the tropical sun, of the language and rule of the Spaniard. One-half of America belongs to the Germanic and Anglo-Norman race; the other half to the Roman. In the former Protestantism prevails, in the latter Catholicism. But in Cuba, that glorious island, situated between the two hemispheres, in the midst of the salt sea of the world, both races seem to have