that has saved them from being throttled is the powerful influence in
their discipline effected by the Roman Catholic Church. When our zealous
missionaries have succeeded in leading them into the confines of other
creeds, we shall have all the excitement we want in Puerto Rico, and the
part of our army stationed there will have no lack of exercise.

Despite a common belief to the contrary, the color-line is drawn as
rigidly in Puerto Rico as it is in Kentucky. The people having nothing but
Castilian blood in their veins are as proud as Virtue; and, while politics
and business see a certain mingling of skin-colors, the mixture ceases to
exist across the threshold of home. No true Spaniard would permit himself
to sing of his "coal-black lady" or his "cute little yallar gal"; and, if
he did, he would be ostracized.

The women are all very pretty or extremely ugly, and never simply plain.
The girls of the better class are brought up from babyhood under a constant
surveillance that knows no laxity until after marriage, and does not
altogether cease even then. The growing bud is taught to play the piano or
guitar, to embroider, to sing a little, to dance a little less, to speak
and read French, to powder her face with art, and to walk like a very
queen. She is usually married before she is seventeen, especially if her
father has money; and, until the day of her death, she never sees a modern
newspaper, never goes slumming, and never soils her gentle hands with work
of any degree. She is apt to love her husband devotedly, and does not think
her career fitly rounded until she is a mother.

[Illustration: Positions occupied by Spanish Soldiers in the Skirmish at
Hormigueros.]

The men of the same social footing are not so interesting--to me; but,