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Points of Pictures: Alfonso

A king squirting the garden hose on his mentor is the lively picture that a contemporary presents to us of the youthful ruler of Spain. Alfonso is now ten years old. In six years he will come of age, and will assume absolute control of the nation, which is now fighting to retain a colony as it has never had to fight before.

Maria Christina, queen regent, the mother of Alfonso, is a graceful and elegant woman, who is bringing up her boy and his two sisters with the best possible home influences. Alfonso will be educated as few Spanish rulers have been. And he is not backward in learning either. His spirit is proud, fiery, and quick, and his mental activity in studies has to be restrained rather than encouraged.

Besides squirting the garden hose and listening to reports about the Cuban rebellion, he rides the bicycle, and disports himself much as do other boys of his age.

He has passed the ordeal of his first bull fight. The custom of Spain prescribes, as a part of the education of its Christian monarch, attendance on bull fights. The queen regent, who has a horror of these barbaric exhibitions, put off her son's initiation as long as possible. The little chap viewed the sport without betraying any enthusiasm, and departed without rewarding the successful matador, in accordance with custom. And some Spaniards, therefore, fear that he may bring discredit on his order and race by taking a stand against the national sport when he grows to man's estate. Recently the boy king received a letter, on the occasion of his first communion, from his godfather, the Pope. He decided to answer it himself. He made six draughts, tearing each up in succession, before he was satisfied. He gave the final one to his mother to correct, and she found but one error, a misspelled word. It was sent off to the Pope.

King Alfonso XIII.'s jealousy of his rights is illustrated by his reply to a youthful friend, who said to his monarch: "`I am going to England.' "`How is that ?' asked Alfonso. "`My papa has been made ambassador in London by Canovas de Castillo,' was the answer. "`It is unheard of,' retorted the miniature ruler, `that I was not consulted about this.'" The Valley of the Yumuri, which is situated in the province and near the city of Matanzas, has the reputation of being the most beautiful in the world. It is a combination of mountains and ocean inlets and a river, and a broad plain of exquisite loveliness, and it is the scene of many romantic stories and much pathetic history.

The cocoanut palm is a glorious tree, immensely rich in leaves and fruit. It grows wild in the Island and the green nuts each contain about a quart of palatable and nutritious water. As they get ripe the shell is hard and brown and the water precipitates its sweetness, forming the white nutty pulp, with a little milk in the centre, that the American boys and girls know so well, and of which the cocoa of commerce is made.

There are pictures that cannot be painted with the brush, but a poet's pen may impart their tints and outlines and atmosphere. The most exquisite examples are found in an old volume on the United States and Cuba, by James M. Phillippo, London. "The splendor of the early dawn in Cuba, as in the tropical islands in its vicinity, has been referred to. The whole sky is often so resplendent that it is difficult to determine where the orb of day will appear. Small fleecy clouds are often seen floating on the north wind, and as they hover over the mountains and meet the rays of the sun, are changed into liquid gold, and a hundred intensely vivid dyes more splendid than the tints of the rainbow. During the cooler months the mornings are delightful until about ten o'clock, the air soon after dawn becoming agreeably elastic, and so transparent that distant objects appear as if delineated upon the bright surface of the air; the scenery everywhere, especially when viewed from an eminence, is indescribably rich and glowing; the tops of the rising grounds, and the summits of the mountains, are radiant with a flood of light; while the vapor is seen creeping along the valleys, here concealing the entrance to some beautiful glen, and there wreathing itself fantastically around a tall spire or groves of palm-trees, that mark the site of a populous village. "The finest and most gorgeous sunsets occur in the West Indian Archipelago during the rainy seasons. The sky is then sublimely mantled with gigantic masses of cloud, glowing with a thousand gorgeous dyes, and seeming to collect at the close of day as though to form a couch for the sun's repose. In these he sinks, flooding them with glory, touching both heavens and earth with gold and amber brightness long after he has flung his beams across the other hemisphere, or perhaps half revealing himself through gauge-like clouds--a crimson sphere at once rayless and of portentous size. "The azure arch, which by an optical illusion limits our view on every side, seems here, and in, the tropics generally, higher than in England--even higher than in Italy. Here is seen, in a perfection compared to which even Italian heavens are vapid and uninteresting, that pure, serene, boundless sky--that atmosphere of clear blue or vivid red, which so much contributes to enrich the pencil of Claude Lorraine. The atmosphere of Cuba, as everywhere within the tropics, except when the high winds prevail, is so unpolluted, so thin, so elastic, so dry, so serene, and so almost inconceivably transparent and brilliant, that every object is distinct and clearly defined as if cut out of the clear blue sky. All travelers agree in praising the calm depths of the intensely blue and gloriously bright skies of inter-tropical latitudes. In the temperate zone, it is estimated that about 1,000 stars are visible to the naked eye at one time; but here, from the increased elevation and wider extent of the vault, owing to the clearness of the atmosphere, especially as seen from a high mountain chain, the number is greatly augmented. If, however, these luminaries may not be seen here in greater numbers, they certainly shine with greater brilliancy. The different constellations are indeed so greatly magnified as to give the impression that the power of the eye is increased. Venus rises like a little moon, and in the absence of the greater casts a distinguishable shadow. . . . "The Milky Way, which in the temperate zone has the appearance of a luminous phosphorescent cloud, and, as is well known, derives its brightness from the diffused light of myriads of stars condensed into so small space that fifty thousand of them are estimated to pass across the disc of the telescope in an hour, is here seen divided into constellations, and the whole galaxy is of so dazzling a whiteness as to make it resemble a pure flame of silvery light thrown across the heavens, turning the atmosphere into a kind of green transparency. Besides this, there are vast masses of stellar nebulae of indefinite diversity and form--oval, oblate, elliptical, as well as of different degrees of density, diffused over the firmament, and discoverable through a common telescope, all novel to an inhabitant of temperate climes, and recalling the exclamation of the psalmist: `The heavens declare the glory of God. . . . the firmament showeth forth his handiwork.' "`The stars Are elder scripture, writ by God's own hand, Scripture authentic, uncorrupt by man.' "An interesting phenomenon sometimes occurs here as in other islands of the West Indies, which was long supposed to be seen only in the eastern hemisphere. A short time before sunrise or sunset, a flush of strong, white light, like that of the Aurora Borealis, extends from the horizon a considerable way up the zenith, and so resembles the dawn as to prove greatly deceptive to a stranger. As he watches the luminous track he sees it decrease instead of becoming more vivid, and at length totally disappear, leaving the heavens nearly as dark as previous to its appearance. This is the zodiacal light."