From Flag to Flag; A Woman's Adventures and Experiences in the South During the War, in Mexico, and in Cuba

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXXII. DULLNESS--ISOLATION WEARINESS--CUBA, FAREWELL! A Cubast life is intolerably monotonous to one who has always known activity and enterprise. In the cities there are amusements and distractions, though of a very insipid and languid nature, but in the country the dullness is oppressive. We wearied of the eternal soft, mild air; the never-varying green of the landscape; the perpetual equable temperature that made the thinnest linen comfortable--the seasons only varied by dry and wet--the dry very dry and dusty, and the wet--very wet and muddy. The country roads are so narrow that the constant travel with loaded ox-teams all winter cuts them into deep ruts, and the summer rain soon makes them well-nigh impassable. A climate like this palls upon one who has been accustomed to the variations of the temperate zone. Unchanging verdure is like the everlasting, simpering smile on a pretty woman's face--so constant as to become meaningless and insipid. We wearied of the senseless platitudes of our few visitors, and of the foreign tongue, that, with all its smoothly flowing euphony, could never be to our ears as sweet as the voices of our fatherland. In our isolation, every new book, magazine article, or newspaper topic, started a discussion that enlivened the table at meals from one steamer-day to the next; and even a quaint advertisement was commented upon, giving food for thought and speech other than the details of the plantation, that were becoming so tiresome and threadbare. As Ellie and I could not spend all our leisure in reading--neither of us being particularly literary or studious--the wonderfully brilliant heavens offered attractive astronomical research, and with the aid of an odd volume of Dick's "System "--the only book...