A Trip to Cuba

by Julia Ward Howe

American. What knowledge do you consider necessary for a woman? only reading and writing, I suppose.

Schoolmaster. Yes, and a little arithmetic. They must fill up the rest of their time with sewing, and household matters.

American. But supposing you were required to add something to this small amount of instruction, what would it be?

Schoolmaster (after some reflection). I scarcely know, unless indeed a slight coloring of Grammar.

Our American, now excited, brings in view the good of the race. "Do you not think," he says, "that by elevating the organism of the mothers, you elevate the intellectual chances of the whole race? Stupid mothers will have stupid sons,—the results of culture are inherited."

The master replies that that is not his business, but Don Juan, who happens to be present, being appealed to, assents, and thinks it might be as well if a mother could have an idea. So far, so good, but a jealous-hearted woman to whom the conversation was reported smiled to observe how both American and Cuban made woman subservient to the interests of the race. "And if she should never be a mother," said this one, "educate her for herself, that she may give good counsel, and discern the noble and the beautiful. For women are good to inspire men, as well as to bear them, and for their own sakes, they have a right to know all that elevates and dignifies life." And this brings to mind another brief conversation overheard in one of our voyages.

Young Wife (holding up a number of the "Atlantic Monthly"). Ought women to learn the alphabet, dear? what do you think?

Young Husband. Oh! certainly—don't they have to teach it?

But the time draws nigh for us to leave San Antonio. Our return passages are engaged in the next Isabel. If this steamer prove such a Bird of Gladness as the papers and her consignees say, then our once weary voyage will become a veritable translation,—only three days of sunshine, smoothness, and turtle-soup for luncheon, and you land in Charleston in undisturbed equilibrium of manners and of dress. Well, more of this anon.

But to-night is our last night in San Antonio. We have danced our last contra-danza with Dotor Hernandez, and had our last chat with Maria Luisa and her mother. Juanito was there, that evening, and as we were all in a musical mood, he played through whole piano-forte arrangements of "Norma" and "Lucia," and we all screamed through the score, some six notes too high for the voice, Papa and Mamma applauding us, and did wonders in "Casta Diva" and "Chi mi frena." But this is all at an end, and one of us stands alone at her open window, and looks for the last time on the quiet scene,—just before her is the little pasture where the goats pick up a scanty subsistence all day, and where shadows and moonlight play such wild freaks at night. This morning, as she sat at that window and worked, two men in haste carried a coffin past it. She always sees coffins, and sometimes writes about them,—that one gives tone to her thoughts to-night. For the house opposite is now dark and still,—the parlor where Mariquilla embroiders her chemises, and Dolores pulls lint for the sick is silent and deserted. The trees stand up there in the moonlight, and the river runs among its shallows so near that one hears its voice. And Hulita thinks: fifty years from this time—that river will be running just as it is now, and those trees, or others like them, will be standing at the angle of the picture as I now see them, but where shall we, friends of to-day, be? Dead, or old enough to die. Juanito will be a man in years, then, with white hairs, scarcely remembering the American lady who praised his compositions in church-music. The Dotor, Papa, and Mamma cannot be alive, Maria Luisa will be a Grandmother, and if Hulita lives, her infirmities will make death a welcome deliverance. So she envies that moon, the trees, the river, who can all stay and be eternal. She saw the coffin to-day,—very like she will see the whole no more. Good-night, dear moon, dear shadows, dear unlearned, unsophisticated people,—I shall leave you to-morrow, forget you never.