Fast as her sawdust scatters. Fa
Sole rose of your mama's posy, Sol
Laugh at your mama, so! La
Seal up your eyes all cozy. Si
La Sol Fa Mi Re Do.
With Spanish children, as with ours, Christmas Eve, or Noche Buena, is a season of gleeful excitement. They do not hang up stockings for Santa Claus, but they put out their shoes on the balcony for the Kings of the East, riding high on camel-back, to fill with sweets and playthings. Considerate children, too, put out a handful of straw for the tired beasts who have journeyed so far over the Milky Way. On some balconies the morning sun beholds rocking-horses and rocking-donkeys, make-believe theatres and bull-rings, with toy images of soldiers, bulls and Holy Families; but if the child has been naughty and displeased the Magi, his poor little shoes will stand empty and ashamed.
The dramatic instinct, so strong in Spaniards, is strikingly manifested in the children's games. These little people are devoted to the theatre, too, and may be seen in force at the matinées in the Apolo, Lara, and Zarzuela. Afternoon performances are given only on Sundays and the other Catholic fiestas, which last, numerous enough, are well within reach of the Puritan conscience. At these matinées more than half the seats in the house are occupied by juvenile ticket-holders, from rows of vociferous urchins in the galleries, to round-eyed babies cooing over their nurses' shoulders. If the play is an extravaganza, abounding in magic and misadventure, the rapture of the childish audience is at its height.
The close attention with which mere three-year-olds follow the action is astonishing. "Bonito!" lisping voices cry after each fantastic ballet, and wee white hands twinkle up and down in time with the merry music. When the clown divests himself, one by one, of a score of waistcoats, or successively pulls thirty or forty smiling dairy-maids out of a churn, little arithmeticians all over the house call out the count and dispute his numbers with him. When the dragon spits his shower of sparks, when chairs sidle away from beneath the unfortunates who would sit down or suddenly rise with them toward the ceiling, when signboards whirl, and dinners frisk up chimney, cigars puff out into tall hats, and umbrellas fire off bullets, the hubbub of wonder and delight drowns the voices of the actors.
The house is never still for one single instant. Babies cry wearily, nurses murmur soothingly, mystified innocents pipe out questions, papas rebuke and explain, exasperated old bachelors hiss for silence, saucy boys hiss back for fun—all together the Madrid matinée affords a far better opportunity to study child life than to hear the comedy upon the boards.
The boy king of Spain is, of course, a fascinating figure to his child subjects. We were told at San Sebastian, where the Queen Regent has a summer palace, that on those red-letter days when the king takes a sea dip, children come running from far and near to see him step into the surf, with two stalwart soldiers gripping the royal little fists. And no sooner has the Court returned to the sumptuous, anxious palace of Madrid, than the boy bathers of San Sebastian delight themselves in playing king, mincing down the beach under the pompous military escort that they take turns in furnishing one another.