24 
THE STANDARD GUIDE. 
HOUSES IN JESUS DEL MONTE. 
This open air system of Cuban life lias produced, as a natural result, an 
openness of living. The grilled windows affording full view of the interior 
of the house give a measure of domestic publicity which is strange to the 
northern eye accustomed to a privacy of home life, which in its turn is 
largely a product of a climate that compels the shutting up of houses to 
keep out the cold. In warm, sunny, open air Havana, people live in their 
homes in the public view, eat and drink and visit in the public view; and 
even do their courting where they may be seen of all men; for the con¬ 
ventional trysting place is the front window, the amante de ventana— 
“window lover”—leaning against the bars on the outside, the inamorata 
within, the iron grating between, and another member of the family always 
present to hear everything that is said. Looking in through tire windows 
at night, the passerby sees the chairs arranged for the family and their 
visitors, placed in two rows facing one another, in lines at right angles 
with the front wall of the house, one row for the men, the other for the 
women, as etiquette strictly demands. 
The central feature of the Cuban home is the patio, the interior court 
about which the house is built. This is paved, open to the sky, and sur¬ 
rounded by arcades and galleries. All the rooms open on it; below are the 
parlors in front, the kitchen in the back, and if there be a horse we shall 
find the stable back by the kitchen; while in two-story houses an open 
stairway leads to the upper gallery, upon which open the sleeping rooms. 
The patio is often filled with a profusion of shrubbery—lemon and palm 
