III.
Instead of being the dumping-ground for all the garbage of the city and the location for unsightly warehouses, the quay at San Juan is a perfect delight. I happened to-day to turn to a precious volume of Washington Irving’s “Life of Columbus.” While reading along I came across a letter in which the valiant discoverer endeavours to bring to his king some conception of the beauty of his newly found lands; saying that he fears his Majesty may have reason to doubt the veracity of his statements, for each new island surpasses in beauty the one before; in fact that one could live there for ever. Time cannot efface the noble bearing of Puerto Rico, and although far, far removed from the picture which met the eyes of her early discoverers, she is to-day not only from the standpoint of the picturesque, but from the practical aspect of cleanliness and order, a place to which every American may turn with pride.
To find upon landing a noble water-front finely paved, relieved by grassy quadrangles in which choice varieties of palms are set with the unfailing intuition of the true nature lover, places one at once en rapport with the best things of life. Why, why are we of the North so blind to the soul’s necessity for beauty? Why are we so dumbly indifferent to that craving? If we but looked deeply enough into the psychological influence of beauty, we would be forced to recognise man’s necessity for its expression in public places. There is no city among the Spanish-speaking peoples but has its restfully attractive plaza, varying in beauty as the wealth of the community permits—a playground and a club-house and a concert-hall in one for all the people. And when my mind reverts in unwilling retrospection to the innumerable hideous and barren cities large and small of our United States, it seems to me that we are hopelessly lost in the fog of the common-place. If we Americans were a poor people, there might be palliating circumstances, but we are not poor, we have more wealth than any people on earth, and surely a republic should give its equal citizens all the beauty and pleasure possible. We are merely blind, that is all. Pray God that our eyes may be opened and that right soon!
In these islands the plaza, where the people live largely in the open air, is the synonym for all that is congenial to the eye and soothing to the ear, and this explains much of the enthusiasm which we starved Northerners express when once within the satisfying influences of such surroundings.
Captain B—— and his wife are graciously willing to wait our pleasure, while we linger idly content, but we must not trespass too long upon their indulgence; so we enter the coach and rumble up the steep narrow streets after four lustrous army mules. Our driver, a native Puerto Rican, speaks to the mules in English, and ready with the explanation before I could form the question, Captain B—— says: “Yes, the boys use English, because their mules were brought here from the States, and of course they wouldn’t understand if the boys spoke Spanish to them.” Stopping for the passage of an army freight wagon, it seemed very comical to me to hear those Puerto Rican lads “gee-hawing” to the sleek American mules.
If the politics of our American cities could be as well administered as those of San Juan appear to be from the cleanliness and order of her streets we would indeed have cause to rejoice. The streets of San Juan were so clean that even the trailer of skirts might for once be forgiven her lack of common decency. She could have walked the full length of San Juan and not gathered up as much filth as she would in one block of one of our Northern sidewalks. Such was the cleanliness of the place that again and again we exclaim over the fine condition of the city; and Captain B—— bore out our impression that Uncle Sam had done his house-cleaning most effectively, and was now trying to maintain that condition by educating a force of native police,—“spigitys,” our boys call them.
As we were going through the Plaza we saw a great crowd on the far side, gathered about a regular American “trolley-car,” and wondering at their enthusiastic demonstrations, we were told that this was the first trip of the first electric car in Puerto Rico—a great step toward becoming Americanised.