About one-sixth of the population in this island--the educated class, and chiefly of pure Spanish blood--can be set down as valuable acquisitions to our citizenship and the peer, if not the superior, of most Americans in chivalry, domesticity, fidelity, and culture. Of the rest, perhaps one-half can be moulded by a firm hand into something approaching decency; but the remainder are going to give us a great deal of trouble. They are ignorant, filthy, untruthful, lazy, treacherous, murderous, brutal, and black Spain has kept her hand at their throats for many weary years, and the only thing 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, nevertheless, they possess many characteristics which claim attention and deserve applause. They are never drunkards or wife-beaters; they don't drag their business to the dinner-table and bed; they are not given to profane speech; and they show greater interest in a sonnet than in the price of pork. Life for both sexes and all grades in Puerto Rico is a rose, a kiss, and a cigarette; song, laughter, and mañana. The island is, unequivocally, a Paradise; and, if I remember rightly, dwellers in Paradise are not expected to labor. These people amply fulfill the expectation.