to and fro in silver dishes by Chinese philosophers
dressed up to look like waiters.

But on ordinary days there are no ladies in the club,
but only the shepherds. You may see them sitting about
in little groups of two and three under the palm trees
drinking whiskey and soda; though of course the more
temperate among them drink nothing but whiskey and Lithia
water, and those who have important business to do in
the afternoon limit themselves to whiskey and Radnor, or
whiskey and Magi water. There are as many kinds of
bubbling, gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the
Mausoleum Club as ever sparkled from the rocks of Homeric
Greece. And when you have once grown used to them, it is
as impossible to go back to plain water as it is to live
again in the forgotten house in a side street that you
inhabited long before you became a member.

Thus the members sit and talk in undertones that float
to the ear through the haze of Havana smoke. You may hear
the older men explaining that the country is going to
absolute ruin, and the younger ones explaining that the
country is forging ahead as it never did before; but
chiefly they love to talk of great national questions,
such as the protective tariff and the need of raising
it, the sad decline of the morality of the working man,
the spread of syndicalism and the lack of Christianity
in the labour class, and the awful growth of selfishness
among the mass of the people.