By this time we had begun to understand—just to understand in infinitely small proportion—what the old resident Americans meant when they joked about the Philippines as a manana country. When we inquired when a boat would be in, the reply was "Seguro manana"—"To-morrow for sure." When would it leave? "Seguro manana." Nothing annoys or embarrasses a Filipino more than the American habit of railing at luck or of berating the unfortunate purveyor of disappointing news, or, in fact, of insisting on accurate information if it can be obtained. They are ready to say anything at a minute's notice. A friend of mine in Ilocos Norte once lost a ring, and asked her servant if he knew anything about it. The boy replied instantly, "Seguro raton," which is an elliptical form of "Surely a rat ate it." The boy had not stolen the ring, but he jumped at anything to head off complaint or investigation.

Time is apparently of no value in the Philippines. On the second day of our stay in Iloilo the Treasurer sent up two pieces of furniture for our use, a wardrobe and a table. They were delivered just before lunch, about ten o'clock, and the Treasurer would not be at home to sign for them till nearly one. When I came in from a shopping expedition, I found eight or ten taos sitting placidly on their heels in the front yard, while the two pieces of new furniture were lying in the mud just as they had been dumped when the bearers eased their shoulders from the poles. The noonday heat waxed fiercer, and the Treasurer was delayed, but nobody displayed any impatience. The men continued to sit on their heels, to chew their betel nut, and to smoke their cigars, and, I verily believe, would have watched the sun set before they would have left. In an hour or so the Treasurer appeared, and settled the account, the taos picked up the furniture and deposited it in the house, and the object lesson was over.

In spite of shopping, time hung somewhat heavy on our hands at Iloilo. We made few acquaintances, for there were few civilian women, and the army ladies, so we were informed, looked askance at schoolteachers, and had determined that we were not to be admitted into "society." The army nurses asked us to five o'clock tea, and we went and enjoyed it. They were, for the most part, gentlewomen born, and the self-sacrifice of their daily lives had accentuated their native refinement. I have few remembrances more pleasant than those of the half-hour we spent in their cool sala. As for the tea they gave us and the delicious toast, mere words are inadequate to describe them. We became sensible that the art of cooking had not vanished from the earth. After the garbanzos and the bescochos and the guava jelly, how good they tasted!

In the course of two or three days we were notified that the vapor General Blanco would leave for Capiz on Saturday at five P.M., and some ten or twelve of us, destined for the province of that name, made ready to depart. I was the only woman in the party, but our Division Superintendent, who was personally conducting us and who was having some little difficulty with his charges, assured me that I was a deal less worry to him than some of the men were. I told him that I was quite equal to getting myself and my luggage aboard the Blanco. I had employed a native servant who said he knew how to cook, and I was taking him up to Capiz with an eye to future comfort. Romoldo went out and got a carabao cart, heaping it with my trunks, deck chair, and boxes. I followed in a quilez, and we rattled down to the wharf in good time.

The General Blanco was not of a size to make her conspicuous, and I reflected that, if there had been another stage to the journey and a proportional shrinkage in the vessel, it surely would have had to be accomplished in a scow. Although by no means palatial, the Buford was a fair-sized, ocean-going steamer. The Francisco Reyes was a dirty old tub with pretensions to the contrary; and the General Blanco—well, metaphorically speaking, the General Blanco was a coal scuttle. She was a supercilious-looking craft, sitting at a rakish angle, her engines being aft. She had a freeboard of six or seven feet, and possessed neither cabin nor staterooms, the space between the superstructure and the rail being about three feet wide. You could stay there, or, if you did not incommode the engineer, you could go inside and sit on a coal pile. There was a bridge approached by a rickety stair, and I judged that my deck chair would fill it completely, leaving about six inches for the captain's promenade. Behind the superstructure there was a sort of after-deck, nearly four feet of it. When my trunks and boxes had been piled up there, with the deck chair balancing precariously atop, and with Romoldo reclining luxuriously in it, his distraught pompadour was about on a level with the top of the smokestack.

I really didn't see any room aboard for me, and sat down on a hemp bale to consider. Shortly after, the Division Superintendent arrived, accompanied by several young men. He looked blank, and they whistled. Then he went on board to talk with the captain, while his assembled charges continued to ornament the hemp bales. Filipinos of all ages and sizes gathered round to stare and to comment.

At last the Division Superintendent came back with the information that the Blanco would tow up a lorcha which was lying a little distance down the river, and that we should find her a roomier and cooler means of transportation than the steamer. "Lorcha" is the name given to the local sailing vessels. Our lorcha was about sixty feet long, and, according to one of the teachers who had once seen Lake Michigan, was "schooner rigged." There was a deck house aft, which was converted into a stateroom for me. There were two bunks in it, each of which I declined to patronize. Instead I had my steamer chair brought over, and found there was plenty of room for it. There were little sliding windows, which with the open door afforded fairly decent ventilation. But the helm was just behind the deck house, and the helmsman either sat or stood on the roof, so that all night his responses to the steersman on the Blanco interfered with my sleep. Then, too, they kept their spare lanterns and their cocoanut oil and some coils of rope in there. At intervals soft-footed natives came in, and I was never certain whether it was to slay me or to get some of their stores. Once a figure blocked out the starlight at one of the windows, and I heard a rustling and shuffling on the shelf where my food tins were piled. So I said, "Sigue! Vamos!" and the figure disappeared.

The men opened their army cots on the forward deck, where the big sail cut them off from the rest of the ship. The next morning they reported a fine night's rest. I could not make so felicitous a report, for my stateroom was considerably warmer than the open air, and a steamer chair, though comfortable by day, does not make an acceptable bed.

We breakfasted from our private stores, and I found myself longing for hot coffee, instead of which I had to drink evaporated milk diluted with mineral water. The day was sunny, the heat beat fiercely off the water, and I burned abominably. Near noon we sighted a town close to the coast, and knew that we were nearing our journey's end.

We skirted the horn of a crescent-shaped bay, found a river's mouth, and entered. Here at least was the tropical scene of my imagination—a tide-swollen current, its marshy banks covered with strange foliage, and innumerable water lanes leading out of it into palmy depths. Down these lanes came bancas, sometimes with a single occupant paddling at the stern, sometimes with a whole family sitting motionless on their heels. Once we passed the ruins of what had been a sugar mill or a bino factory—probably the latter. Then the Blanco, puffing ahead, whistled twice, we rounded a curve and came full upon the town.

Though subsequent familiarity has brought to my notice many details that I then overlooked, that first impression was the one of greatest charm, and the one I love best to remember. There were the great, square, white-painted, red-tiled houses lining both banks of the river; the picturesque groups beating their clothes on the flat steps which led down to the water; and the sprawling wooden bridge in the distance where the stream made an abrupt sweep to the right.

On the left of the bridge was a grassy plaza shaded with almond trees, a stately church, several squat stone buildings which I knew for jail and municipal quarters, and a flag staff with the Stars and Stripes whipping the breeze from its top. Over all hung a sky dazzlingly blue and an atmosphere crystal clear. Back of the town a low unforested mountain heaved a grassy shoulder above the palms, and far off there was a violet tracery of more mountains.

I knew that I should like Capiz.



CHAPTER VII

My First Experiences As a Teacher of Filipinos

After Resting in a Saloon I Arrive at My Lodging—I Attend an Evening Party—Filipino Babies—I Take Temporary Charge of the Boys' School—How the Opening of the Girls' School Was Announced—Curiosity of the Natives Regarding the New School—Difficulty of Securing Order at First.

The municipality of Capiz was expecting a woman teacher, for cries of "La maestra!" began to resound before the boat was properly snubbed up to the bank; and when I walked ashore on a plank ten inches wide, there had already assembled a considerable crowd to witness that feat. They gathered round and continued to stare when I was seated in the principal saloon. Meanwhile a messenger was sent to find the American man teacher, who had been notified by telegram to arrange for my accommodation. The saloon was a very innocent-looking one, so that I mistook it for a grocery storeroom. Such as it was, it represented the best the Filipinos could do in the saloon line. One sees, in Manila and, for that matter, all up and down the Chinese and Japanese coasts, the typical groggery of America with somebody's "Place" printed large over the entrance, and a painted screen blocking the doorway with its suggestions of unseemliness. But the provincial saloon is still essentially Spanish—a clean, light room with no reservations, the array of bottles on the shelves smiling down on the little green cloth-covered tables where the domino and card games go on. There may be an ancient billiard table in one corner with its accompanying cue rack, and there is almost sure to be a little hole in the ceiling through which the proprietor's wife, who resides above, can peep down and watch the card games. It is a genuine family resort, too, for between four and seven all the town is likely to drop in, the women chaffering or gossiping while their lords enjoy a glass of beer and a game of dominoes.

The proprietor's wife must have had a fine look at me as I sat mopping my sunburned face. At last the American teacher came, a pleasant-faced young man who spoke Spanish excellently and was quite an adept at the vernacular. In due time I was ushered into a room in a house on the far side of the river, the window of which commanded a fine view of the bridge, the plaza, the gray old church, and the jail, with the excitements of guard mount and retreat thrown in.

The room had a floor of boards, each one of which was at least two feet wide. They were rudely nailed and were separated by dirt-filled cracks, but were polished into a dark richness by long rubbing with petroleum and banana leaves. The furnishings consisted of a wardrobe, a table, a washstand, several chairs, and a Filipino four-poster bed with a mattress of plaited rattan such as we find in cane-seated chairs. A snow-white valence draped the bed. The mattress was covered with a petate, or native mat, and there were two pillows—a big, fat, bolstery one, and another, called abrazador, which is used for a leg-rest.

I bathed in the provincial bathroom. Manila, being the metropolis of the Philippines, has running water and the regular tub and shower baths in tiled rooms. The Capiz bathroom had a floor of bamboo strips which kept me constantly in agony lest somebody should stray beneath, and which even made me feel apologetic toward the pigs rooting below. There was a tinaja, or earthenware jar, holding about twenty gallons of water, and a dipper made of a polished cocoanut shell. I poured water over my body till the contents of the tinaja were exhausted and I was cool. Already I was beginning to look upon a bath from the native standpoint as a means of coolness, and incidentally of cleanliness.

When I got back to my room, my hostess and her sister came and sat with me while I unpacked my trunk and applied cold cream to my sunburnt skin. They were afraid that I should be triste because I was so far from home and alone, and they inquired if I wanted a woman servant to sleep in my room at night. I was quite unconscious that this was an effort to rehabilitate their conception of the creature feminine and the violated proprieties; and my indignant disclaimer of anything bordering on nervousness did not raise me in their estimation.

They left me finally in time to permit me to dress and gain the sala when the bugles sounded retreat. The atmosphere was golden-moted—swimming in the incomparable amber of a tropical evening. The river slipped along, giving the sense of rest and peace which water in shadow always imparts, and as the long-drawn-out notes were caught and flung back by the echo from the mountains, the flag fluttered down as if reluctant to leave so gentle a scene. When the "Angelus" rang just afterwards, it was as if some benignant fairy had waved her wand over the land to hold it at its sweetest moment. The criss-crossing crowds on the plaza paused for a reverent moment; the people in the room stood up, and when the bell stopped ringing, said briskly to me and to one another, "Good evening." Then the members of the family approached its oldest representative and kissed his hand. It was all very pretty and very effective.

Afterwards we went out for a walk—at least they invited me to go for a walk, though it was a party to which we were bound. Filipinos, being devout Catholics, have a fashion of naming their children after the saints, and, instead of celebrating the children's birthdays, celebrate the saints' days. As there is a saint for every day in the year, and some to spare, and it is a point of pride with every one of any social pretension whatever to be at home to his friends on his patron saint's day, and to do that which we vulgarly term "set 'em up" most liberally, there is more social diversion going on in a small Filipino town than would be found in one of corresponding size in America. At these functions the crowd is apt to be thickest from four till eight, the official calling hours in the Philippines.

Starting out, therefore, at half-past six, we found the parlors of the house well thronged. At the head of the stairs was a sort of anteroom filled with men smoking. This antesala, as they call it, gave on the sala, or drawing-room proper, which was a large apartment lighted by a hanging chandelier of cut glass, holding about a dozen petroleum lamps. Two rows of chairs, facing each other, were occupied by ladies in silken skirts of brilliant hues, and in camisas and panuelos of delicate embroidered or hand-painted pina. We made a solemn entry, and passed up the aisle doing a sort of Roger de Coverley figure in turning first to one side and then to the other to shake hands. No names were mentioned. Our hostess said, by way of general announcement, "La maestra," and having started me up the maze left me to unwind myself. So I zigzagged along with a hand-shake and a decorous "Buenas noches" to everybody till I found myself at the end of the line at an open window. Here one of those little oblong tables, across which the Filipinos are fond of talking, separated me from a lady, unquestionably of the white races, who received the distinction of personal mention. She was "la Gobernadora," and her husband, a fat Chino mestizo, was immediately brought forward and introduced as "el Gobernador." He was a man of education and polish, having spent fourteen years in school in Spain, where he married his wife. After having welcomed me properly, he betook himself to the room at the head of the stairs where the men were congregated. A fat native priest in a greasy old cassock seemed the centre of jollity there, and he alternately joked with the men and stopped to extend his hand to the children who went up and kissed it.

I did my best to converse intelligently with the Gobernadora and the other ladies who were within conversational distance. A band came up outside and played "Just One Girl," and presently one of the ladies of the house invited the Governor's wife and me to partake of sweets. We went out to the dining-room, where a table was laid with snow-white cloth, and prettily decorated with flowers and with crystal dishes containing goodies.

There were, first of all, meringues, which we call French kisses, the favorite sweet here. There was also flaon, which we would call baked custard. In the absence of ovens they do not bake it, but they boil it in a mould like an ice-cream brick. They line the mould with caramel, and the custard comes out golden brown, smooth as satin, and delicately flavored with the caramel. Then there was nata, which is like boiled custard unboiled, and there were all sorts of crystallized fruits—pineapple, lemon, orange, and citron, together with that peculiar one they call santol. There were also the transparent, jelly-like seeds of the nipa palm, boiled in syrup till they looked like magnified balls of sago or tapioca.

I partook of these rich delicacies, though my soul was hungering for a piece of broiled steak, and I accepted a glass of muscatel, which is the accepted ladies' wine here. My hostesses were eager that I should try all kinds of foods, and a refusal to accept met with a protest, "Otra clase, otra clase." Then the Gobernadora and I went back to the sala, and another group took our places at the refreshment table.

I was much interested in the babies, who were strutting about in their finest raiment and were unquestionably annoyed at its restrictions. Filipino babies are sharp-eyed, black-polled, attractive little creatures. Whether of high or low degree, their ordinary dress is adapted to the climate, and consists usually of a single low-necked garment, which drapes itself picturesquely across the shoulders like the cloaks of Louis the Fourteenth's time seen on the stage.

On state occasions, however, they are inducted into raiment which their deluded mothers fancy is European and stylish; but there is always something wrong. Either one little ruffled drawers leg sags down, or the petticoat is longer than the dress skirt, or the waistband is too tight, or mamma has failed to make allowance in the underclothing for the gauziness of the outer sheathing. As for the sashes with which the victims are finally bound, they fret the little swelled stomachs, and the baby goes about tugging at his undesirable adornment, and wearing the frown of one harassed past endurance. Sometimes it ends in flat mutiny, and baby is shorn of his grandeur, and prances innocently back into the heart of society, clad in a combination of waist and drawers which is associated in my memory with cotton flannel and winter nights. Nobody is at all embarrassed by the negligee; and as for the baby himself, he would appear in the garments of Eve before the Fall without a qualm.

After everybody had been served with sweets, a young Filipina was led to the piano. She played with remarkable technique and skill. Another young lady sang very badly. Filipinos have natural good taste in music, have quick musical ears, and a natural sense of time, but they have voices of small range and compass, and what voice they have they misuse shamefully. They also undertake to sing music altogether too difficult for any but professionals.

When the music was over, I was rather anxiously anticipating a "recitation," but was overjoyed to discover that that resource of rural entertainment has no foothold in the Philippines. Dancing was next in order. The first dance was the stately rigodon, which is almost the only square dance used here. When it was finished and a waltz had begun, I insisted on going home, for I was tired out. Somebody loaned us a victoria, and thus the trip was short. A deep-mouthed bell in the church tower rang out ten slow strokes as I threw back the shutters after putting out my light. The military bugles took up the sound with "taps," and the figure of the sentry on the bridge was a moving patch of black in the moonlight.

The Division Superintendent started inland the next morning to place the men teachers in their stations, and as he required the services of the American teacher in interpreting, I was told to go over and take charge of the boys' school, at that time the only one organized.

I went across the plaza and found two one-story buildings of stone with an American flag floating over one, and a noise which resembled the din of a boiler factory issuing from it. The noise was the vociferous outcry of one hundred and eighty-nine Filipino youths engaged in study or at least in a high, throaty clamor, over and over again, of their assigned lessons. When I went in, they rose electrically, and shrieked as by one impulse, "Good morning, modham." They were so delighted at my surprise at their facility with English that they gave it to me over and over again, and I saw that they had intuitions of three cheers and a tiger.

When I had explained to the teacher that I was there to relieve him, he explained it to the boys, and they replied with the same unanimity and the same robustness of voice, "Yis, all ri'!" So he went away, leaving me in charge of the boiler factory.

It stays in my recollection as the most strenuous five hours' labor I ever put in. Only two personalities were impressive, those of the pupil teacher who aided me, and who has since graduated from the University of Michigan (agricultural department), and of a very small boy who had possessed himself of a wooden box, once the receptacle of forty-eight tins of condensed milk, which he used for a seat. He carried the box with him when he went from one place to another, and more than one fight was generated by his plutocracy. He also sang "Suwanee River" in a clear but sweet nasal voice, and was evidently regarded as the show pupil of the school.

The school was popular not only with boys but with goats. Flocks of them wandered in, coming through the doors or jumping through the windows. I soon found that Filipino children are more matter-of-fact than American children. Nobody giggled when our four-footed friends came in, and until I gave an order to expel them their presence was accepted as a matter of course. When I suggested putting them out, I found the Filipino youth ready enough at rough play. The first charge nearly swept me off my feet, and turned the school into a pandemonium. After that the goats were allowed to assist in the classes at their pleasure.

During the next three days, what with the labor of school and the fatigue of entertaining most of the population of Capiz during calling hours, I was almost worn out. The Division Superintendent came back the latter part of the week, and the Presidente, or mayor, sent out, at his request, a bandillo to announce the opening of a girls' school.

The bandillo corresponds to the colonial institution of the town crier. It consists usually of three native police, armed with most ferocious-looking revolvers, and preceded by a temporary guest of municipal hospitality from the local calabozo. This citizen, generally ragged and dirty and smoking a big cigar, is provided with a drum which he beats lustily. The people flock to doors and windows, and the curious and the little boys and girls who are carrying their baby relations cross saddle on their hips, fall in behind as for a circus procession. At every corner they stop, and the middle policeman reads the announcement aloud from a paper. Then the march is taken up again by those who desire to continue, and the rest race back to their doorways to wag their tongues over the news. The bandillo makes the rounds of the town and returns to the municipal hall whence it started. The prisoner goes back to jail, the police lay aside their bloodthirsty revolvers, and such is the rapidity with which news flies in the Philippines that, in a little more than twenty-four hours, the essentials of the bandillo may be known all over the province.

In spite of the bandillo I waited long for a pupil on the day of opening my school. My little friend of the milk box deserted his own classes and stationed himself at my door. After an interminable time he thrust his head inside the door and announced, "One pupil, letty."

It was a very small girl in a long skirt with a train a yard long and with a gauzy camisa and panuelo—a most comical little caricature of womanhood. She was speechless with fright, but came on so recklessly that I began to suspect the cause of her determination. It was, in truth, behind her as my groom of the front yard soon let me know. Again the elfin face and the wiry pompadour leaned round the door-jamb—"One more pupil, letty,—dthe girl's modther."

But she was not a pupil, of course, and she had only come in response to the heart promptings of motherhood, white, black, or brown, to talk about her offspring to the strange woman who was to usurp a mother's place with her so many hours of each day. She was quite as voluble as American mothers are, and her daughter was quite embarrassed by her volubility. The child sat stealing frightened glances at me and resentful ones at her mother.

Half an hour later, three more girls came in, and they continued to drop in during the rest of the morning till I had forty-five enrolled. Some of them were accompanied by their dogs, which curled up under the benches without disturbance. Several nursemaids also happened along to give their charges a peep at the American school, and a crowd of citizens peered in at doors and windows and made audible remarks about the new institution.

Within a few days the enrolment ran up to one hundred and forty-nine. As this was too large a body to be handled by me alone, the teacher of Spanish days was brought back to the school, pending the arrival of more teachers from the States. She was a plump, middle-aged body who had a little—a very little—English, but whose ideas of discipline, recitation, and study were too well fixed to permit of accommodation to our methods. She was unfailingly polite and kind, though I could see that she was often harassed by the innovations to which she could not accustom herself.

The school-house was one immense room, and one of the first acts of the Division Superintendent was to set in motion the forces which should separate it into three. This took time. First the Presidente had to approve, and the town council to act on his suggestion. The Municipal Treasurer, a native official, had to certify the cost to the Provincial Treasurer, an American civil appointee, and if the last-named official approved, the council could make the appropriation and order the work done.

Pending these changes, the Filipino teacher took one end of the room and I the other. We were sufficiently far apart not to interfere with each other's recitations. In order that all the pupils should have their reading and grammar recitations under my personal supervision, we changed classes at intervals. For the sake of the drill, I made the children move from one part of the room to the other, instead of changing with the other teacher myself. We made great efforts to accomplish this movement with order and decorum, but the result at first was a fizzle. The double column always began to move with dignity, but by the time it had advanced ten steps, excitement began to wax, the march became a hurry, the hurry grew to a rush, and the rush ended in a wild scramble for front seats. One little maid in particular was such an invariable holder of an advantageous position that my curiosity was aroused to see how she did it. I watched her, saw her glistening brown body—perfectly visible through the filmy material of her single garment—dive under the last row of seats and emerge triumphant at the front while the press was still blocking the aisles.

Disorder and excitement were, however, mere temporary conditions. Under repeated admonition and practice, the Filipino children moved about with more order and regularity, the habit of studying aloud was overcome, and the school began to show the organization and discipline to which Americans are accustomed.

The hardest thing to overcome was their desire to aid me in matters that I could manage better alone. If some one whispered and I tapped a pencil, instantly half the children in the room would turn around and utter the hiss with which they invoke silence, or else they would begin to scold the offender in the vernacular. Such acts led, of course, to unutterable confusion, and I had no little trouble in putting a stop to them.



CHAPTER VIII

An Analysis of Filipino Character

American Pupils and Filipino Pupils Contrasted—The Filipinos' Belief That They Are Highly Developed Musicians—Their Morbid Sensitiveness to Criticism—Explanation of Their Desire for Education—Their Belief That They Could Achieve Great Success in Manufactures, Arts, and Literature If Left to Govern Themselves—Their Lack of Creative Ability—Dillettanteism of Leading Filipinos—Manual Jealousies of the People—Lack of Real Democratic Spirit in America—The Pride of Filipino Men Compared to That of American Women.

So long as they find firmness and justice in the teacher, Filipino children are far easier to discipline than are American children. At the first sign of weakness in the teacher or in the Government which is behind him, they are infinitely more unruly and arrogant than are the children of our own race. There is, in even the most truculent American child, a sense of the eternal fitness of things which the Filipino lacks. American children are restless and mischievous. They are on the alert for any sign of overstepping the limits of lawful authority on the part of the teacher, and they have no compunctions about forcing him to recognize that he rules by the consent of the governed, and that he must not mistake their complaisance for servility. On the other hand, they have, with rare exceptions, a respect for the value of a teacher's opinion in the subjects which he teaches, and will seldom contradict or oppose him in matters that pertain wholly to learning. A class of American children which would support in every possible way one of their number in defying authority would not hesitate to make that same companion's life a burden to him if he should set up his own opinion on abstract matters in contradiction to his teacher's. Except when a teacher signally proves his incapacity, American children are willing to grant the broad premise that he knows more than they do, and that, if he does not, he at least ought to know more. Filipino children reverse this attitude. They are quite docile, seldom think of disputing authority as applied to discipline, but they will naively cling to a position and dispute both fact and philosophy in the face of quoted authority, or explanation, or even of sarcasm. The following anecdote illustrates this peculiarity. It happened in my own school and is at first hand.

One of the American teachers was training a Filipino boy to make a recitation. The boy had adopted a plan of lifting one hand in an impassioned gesture, holding it a moment, and of letting it drop, only to repeat the movement with the other hand. After he had prolonged this action, in spite of frequent criticism, till he looked like a fragment of the ballet of "La Poupee," the teacher lost patience.

"Domingo," she said, "I have told you again and again not to make those pointless, mechanical gestures. Why do you do it? They are inappropriate and artificial, and they make you look like a fool."

Domingo paused and contemplated her with the pity which Filipinos often display for our artistic inappreciativeness.

"Madame," he replied in a pained voice, "you surprise me. Those gestures are not foolishness. They are talent. I thought they would please you."

In my own early days I was once criticised by one of the young ladies of Capiz for my pronunciation of the letter c in the Spanish word ciudad. I replied that my giving the sound of th to the letter was correct Spanish, whereupon she advised me to pay no attention to the Spanish pronunciation, as the Filipinos speak better Spanish than do the Spanish themselves. What she meant was that the avoidance of th sounds in c and z, which the Filipinos invariably pronounce like s, is an improvement to the Spanish language. I imagined some of that young lady's kindred ten years later arguing to prove that the Filipino corruption of th in English words—pronouncing "thirty" as "sirty," and "thick" as "sick"—arguing that such English is superior to English as we speak it. Here are some typically mispronounced English sentences: "If Maria has seben fencils and see loses sree, see will hab four fencils left, and if her moser gibs her eight fencils, see will hab twel' fencils in all." Here is another: "Pedro has a new fair of voots." Another: "If one fint ob binegar costs fi' cents, sree fints will cost sree times fi' cents, or fikteen cents." It would, I think, be hard to convince us that the euphonic changes in these words are an improvement to our language.

Some four years ago, I was teaching a class in the Manila School of Arts and Trades, and was giving some directions about the word form of English sentences. I advised the class to stick to simple direct sentences, since they would never have any use for a literary style in English. Some six or eight young men instantly dissented from this proposition, and insisted that they were capable of acquiring the best literary style. Not one of them could have written a page of clear, grammatical, idiomatic English. I tried to make it clear to them that literary English and colloquial English are two different things, and that what they needed was plain, precise English as a medium of exchange in business, and I said, incidentally, that such was the English possessed by the major portion of the English-speaking race. I said that although the American nation numbered eighty millions, most of whom were educated and able to make an intelligent use of their language in conversation or in writing, the percentage of great writers and speakers always had been small and always would be so.

When I had finished, the son of a local editor, arose and replied as follows: "Yes, madame, what you say of Americans is true. But we are different. We are a literary people. We are only eight millions, but we have hundreds and thousands of orators. We have the literary sense for all languages."

Nearly thirty years ago, when I was a pupil in the Kansas City, Missouri, High School, the stepson of a United States Circuit judge made a brutally rude and insubordinate reply to a woman teacher who said to him, in reference to an excuse which he had given for tardiness, "That is not a good excuse." The young man turned an insolent eye upon the teacher—a gray-haired woman—and replied, "It's good enough for me. What are you going to do about it?"



I cannot conceive that a Filipino child would be guilty of such insolence, such defiance of decency and order. But never have I met an American child who would have the artless indiscretion to put himself in the position of Domingo. The American child does not mind violating a rule. He is chary of criticising its propriety or its value. In other words, the American child does not mind doing wrong, but he is wary of making a fool of himself; and I have yet to meet the Filipino child who entertained the faintest suspicion that it was possible for him to make a fool of himself. Nor is the attitude of dissent among Filipinos limited to those who express themselves. It is sometimes very trying to feel that after long-winded eloquence, after citation and demonstration, you have made no more real impression upon the silent than upon the talkative, and that, indeed, the gentle reserve of some of your auditors is based upon the conviction that your own position is the result of indomitable ignorance. One of my friends has met this spirit in a class in the Manila High School. A certain boy insists that he has seen the iron head of a thunderbolt, and although he makes "passing grades" in physics, he does not believe in physics. He regards our explanations of the phenomena of lightning as a parcel of foolishness in no wise to stand the test of his own experience, and nothing can silence him. "But, ma'am," he says, when electricity is under discussion, "I am see the head of a thunder under our house." This young gentleman will graduate in a year or two, and the tourist from the States will look over the course of study of the Manila High School and go home telling his brethren that the Filipino children are able to compete successfully with American youth in the studies of a secondary education. I myself had a heart-breaking time with a sixth-grade class in one of the intermediate schools of Manila. The children had been studying animal life and plant life, and could talk most learnedly about anthropoid apes, and "habitats" and other things; but they undertook to convince me that Filipino divers can stay under water an hour without any diving apparatus, and that the reason for this power is that the diver is "brother to a snake"—that is, that when the mother gave birth to the child, she gave birth to a snake also, and that some mysterious power remains in persons so born.

Filipino children are not restless and have no tradition of enmity between teacher and pupil to urge them into petty wrong-doing. Their attitude toward the teacher is a very kindly one, and they are almost uniformly courteous. Their powers of concentration are not equal to those of American children, and they cannot be forced into a temporarily heavy grind, but neither do they suffer from the extremes of indolence and application which are the penalty of the nervous energy of our own race. They are attentive (which the American child is not) but not retentive, and they can keep up a steady, even pull at regular tasks, especially in routine work, at which American children usually rebel. In fact, they prefer routine work to variety, and grow discouraged quickly when they have to puzzle out things for themselves. They will faithfully memorize pages and pages of matter which they do not understand, a task at which our nervous American children would completely fail. They are exceedingly sensitive to criticism, and respond quickly to praise. Unfortunately the narrow experience of the race, and the isolation and the general ignorance of the country, make praise a dangerous weapon in the hands of a teacher; for a child is apt to educe a positive and not a relative meaning from the compliment. Filipino children have not attained the mental state of being able to qualify in innumerable degrees. If a teacher hands back a composition to an American boy with the words "Well done," the child understands perfectly that his instructor means well as compared with the work of his classmates. The Filipino is inclined to think that she means positively well done—above the average for all the world. I once complimented a class in Capiz on the ease with which they sang four-part music, and said, what I truly feel, that the Filipinos are a people of unusual musical ability. They managed to extract from the compliment the idea that the musical development of the Filipinos is far in advance of that of the Americans.

Middle-class Filipinos have a very inadequate conception of the tremendous wealth of artistic, literary, and musical talent interwoven with the world's development, and are especially inclined to pride themselves upon their racial excellence in these lines, where, in truth, they have achieved almost no development whatever in spite of the possession of undoubted talent. They do not understand the value of long training, and are inclined to assume that the mere possession of a creative instinct is final evidence of excellence in any art.

It will be some time before what real talent they have will make itself felt in any line, because it will take a great deal of tactful handling to make them reveal their natural artistic trend instead of falling into imitation of Europe and America. It is strange that a people so tenacious of its opinions with regard to matters of fact should be so willing to surrender its ideal with regard to the thing of which a nation has most reason to be tenacious, its natural expression. But the whole race is so morbidly sensitive to the sneer that everything Filipino is necessarily crude that the young art student or the young musical student feels that his only hope of winning commendation is in painting or playing or composing after European models; while as for the populace at large it has its own standards in which other motives than artistic excellence play the largest part.

I had a friend, a young Filipino girl, who has been one of the most diligent among the pupils of the American schools. She was staying with me two or three years ago when my publisher sent me a copy of a primer intended for use in the Philippines, and which had just been gotten out in the United States. The publisher had spared no expense in his illustrations, and we were tremendously proud of the artistic side of the book. This Filipino girl had heard me use the expression "poor white trash," and I had explained to her how the Southern negroes use the words as a term of derision of those who fail to live up to the traditions of race and family. When I took my book to her in the joy of an author in her first complete production, she looked at it a minute and burst into tears. "Poor Filipino trash!" was all she could say for a long time, and I finally pieced it out that she was enraged because the Filipino boys and girls in my book were sometimes barefooted, sometimes clad in chinelas, and wore native camisas instead of American suits and dresses. I pointed out to her that not one Filipino child in a hundred dresses otherwise, but my argument was of no avail. The children in the American readers wore natty jackets and hats and high-heeled shoes, and winter wraps, even at play, and she wanted the Filipino children to look the same.

A great deal has been said in the American press about the eagerness for education here. The desire for education, however, does not come from any real dissatisfaction which the Filipinos have with themselves, but from eagerness to confute the reproach which has been heaped upon them of being unprogressive and uneducated. It is an abnormal condition, the result of association of a people naturally proud and sensitive with a people proud and arrogant. At present the desire for progress in things educational and even in things material is more or less ineffective because it is fed from race sensitiveness rather than from genuine discontent with the existing order of things. The educated classes of Filipinos are not at all dissatisfied with the kind and quality of education which they possess; agriculturists are not dissatisfied with their agricultural implements; the artisans are not, as a class, dissatisfied with their tools or ashamed of their labor. If you talk to a Filipino carpenter about the carefully constructed houses of America, he does not sigh. He merely says, "That is very good for America, but here different custom," Filipino cooks are not dissatisfied with the terrible fugons which fill their eyes with smoke and blacken the cooking utensils, and have to be fanned and puffed at every few minutes and occasionally set the house on fire. The natural causes of growth are not widely existent, and it is still problematic if they will ever come into being. Meanwhile growth goes on stimulated by the eternal criticism, the sting of which the Filipinos would move heaven and earth to escape.

Our own national progress and that of the European nations from whom we are descended have been so differently conceived and developed that we can hardly realize the peculiar process through which Filipinos are passing. We cannot conceive of Robert Fulton tearing his hair and undertaking a course in mechanics with the ulterior view of inventing something to prove that the American race is an inventive one. We cannot imagine Eli Whitney buried in thought, wondering how he could make a cotton gin to disprove the statement that the Americans are an unprogressive people. Cyrus Hall McCormick did not go out and manufacture a reaper because he was infuriated by a German newspaper taunt that the Americans were backward in agriculture. Nor can we fancy that John Hay while dealing with the Chinese crisis in 1900 was continually distracting his mind from the tremendously grave points at issue by wondering if he could not do something a little cleverer than the other diplomats would do.

All the natural laws of development are turned around in the Philippines, and motives which should belong to the crowning years of a nation's life seem to have become mixed in at the beginning—a condition, due, of course, to the fact that the Filipinos began the march of progress at a time when the telegraph and the cable and books and newspapers and globe-trotters submitted their early development to a harrowing comparison and observation. The Filipino is like an orphan baby, not allowed to have his cramps and colic and to cut his teeth in the decent retirement of the parental nursery, but dragged out instead into distressing publicity, told that his wails are louder, his digestive habits more uncertain, his milk teeth more unsatisfactory, than the wails or the digestive habits or the milk teeth of any other baby that ever went through the developing process. Naturally he is self-conscious, and—let us be truthful—not having been a very promising baby from the beginning, both he and his nurses have had a hard time.

However, turned around or not, we are not responsible for the condition. The Filipinos had arrived at the self-conscious stage before we came here, and we have had to accept the situation and make the best of it.

The American press of Manila, with the very best of intentions, has indulged itself in much editorial comment, and the more the condition of things is discussed, the more the native press strengthens in its quick sensitiveness. The present attitude of the upper, or governing, class of Filipinos is this: "We want the best of everything in the world—of education, of morals, of business methods, of social polish, of literature, art, and music, of roads and bridges, of agricultural machinery, and of local transportation, and we can attain these things." They have laid down in the beginning a premise for which no inductive process can be found as justification,—that the Filipino people is capable of doing anything which any other nation has done; and that, given time and opportunity—especially the opportunity of managing their own process of development—they will demonstrate their capacity. The flat contradiction of this position which is not infrequently taken by Americans in discussing Filipinos is, of course, as extreme as the Filipino position itself, and, as an observer, I have little to do with either. But at the present time I do feel warranted in stating that the mass of intelligent Filipinos fail to distinguish between critical or appreciative ability and real creative ability, and that what they are acquiring in huge doses just now is the critical and not the creative. Moreover, of the great body of persons who make the demand for the best, only a very few have any idea of what is the best except in book learning and social polish. The prominent men among the Filipinos to-day are those who were educated in Europe or in Filipino schools modelled on European patterns. Their idea of education is a social one—an education which fits a man to be considered a gentleman and to be an adornment to the society of his peers. They have no conception of the American specialization idea in education which grants a doctor's degree to a man who says "would have went" and "He come to my house yesterday." The Filipino leaders have a perfectly clear idea of what they want educationally, of what they consider the best, and they are jealously watching the educational department to see that they get it. The American press urges more and more manual training, and the Filipino press, because manual training is in the list of things marked "best," echoes the general call. But there is no small body of hobbyists in the Islands keeping a jealous eye on the manual-training department of education. It could be dropped out of the curriculum by simply allowing it to become less and less effectual, and so long as no formal announcement was made the Filipinos would not find out what was being done. But in Manila and in most provincial towns there are enough Filipinos who know what musical instruction is to watch that the musical training be not too badly administered.

There is plenty of complaint about the Sanitary System of Manila, there are plenty of people to complain about what is being done, but there is no small organized body of Filipinos whose paramount interest in life is fixed upon sanitation and health, and who make it their thankless task to harry the department and to preach ceaselessly at the unthinking public till they get what they want. The legislators of the Philippines are gentlemen born, men educated in conformity to the ideals of education in aristocratic countries, but unfortunately they have not had, owing to the political conditions which have prevailed here, the practical experience of an aristocratic body in other lands. In Mrs. Ward's "William Ashe" there is an analysis of a gouty and rather stupid old statesman, who is so exactly a summary of what a Filipino statesman is not that I cannot forbear quoting it here:

"He possessed that narrow, but still most serviceable fund of human experience which the English land-owner, while our English tradition subsists, can hardly escape if he will. As guardsman, volunteer, magistrate, lord lieutenant, member (for the sake of his name and his acres) of various important commissions, as military attache even for a short time to an important embassy, he had acquired, by mere living, that for which his intellectual betters had often envied him—a certain shrewdness, a certain instinct both for men and affairs which were often of more service to him than finer brains to other persons."

The only large practical experience which Filipino leaders have enjoyed has come through their being land-owners and agriculturists. But agriculture has not been competitive; and when the land-owning class travelled, it was chiefly in Spain, which can hardly be called a progressive agricultural country. Of men of the artisan class who have worked their way up by their own efforts from ignorance to education, from poverty to riches; of men who have had any large available experience in manual labor or in specialised industries, the present Assembly feels the lack. The Filipino leaders are a body of polished gentlemen, more versed in law than in anything else, with varying side lines of dilettante tastes in numerous directions.

Such as they are, the schoolboy desires to be. One of the periodic frenzies of the local American press is an appeal to teachers—why are they not remodelling character, why do not the aims and ideals which it is their business to instil make a greater showing after ten years of American occupation? American teachers have talked themselves hoarse, and as far as talking can go, they have influenced ideals. The child's conscious ideal about which he talks in public, and to which he devotes about one one-thousandth of his thinking time, is some such person as George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or James A. Garfield, who drove the canal boat and rose to be President of the United States. But the subconscious ideal which is always in his mind, upon which he patterns unthinkingly his speech and his manners and his dreams of success, is—and it would be unnatural if it were otherwise—some local potentate who will not carry home his own little bag of Conant currency when he receives his salary at the end of the month. What are a name and a few moral platitudes about a dead-and-gone hero? What can they mean to a shirtless urchin with a hungry stomach, against the patent object-lesson of his own countryman whom not only his fellow citizens, but the invader, must treat with consideration? It would be far easier to distract the attention of the children of the State of Ohio from their distinguished fellow-citizens, William H. Taft and John D. Rockefeller, to fix it upon the late Lord Cromer or that Earl of Halifax known as the "Trimmer," than it is to tell a Filipino child that the way to distinction lies through toil and sweat. Children are very patient about listening to talk, but they are going to pattern themselves upon what is obvious. Twenty or thirty years from now, when the American school system will have aided certain sons of the people, men of elemental strength, to bully and fight their way to the front, and they will have become the evidence that we were telling the truth—then will the results be visible in more things than in annual school commencements and in an increase in the output of stenographers and bookkeepers.

The weakest point in a Filipino child's character is his quick jealousy and his pride. His jealousy is of the sort constitutionally inimical to solidarity. Paradoxical as the statement may seem, the Filipinos are more aristocratic in their theories of life than we are, and more democratic in their individual constitution. Our democracy has always been tempered by common sense and practicality. We like to say at church that all men are brothers, and on the Fourth of July to declare that they are born free and equal; but we do not undertake to put these theories into practice. Every individual citizen of the United States is not walking about with a harrowing dread of doing something that admits a lesser self-esteem than his neighbor may possess. If a fire breaks out in his neighborhood, and a little action on his part can stop it before it gets a dangerous start, he does not hesitate to act for fear doing so will show him possessed of less personal pride than his neighbor up the street. If he is earning sixty dollars a month, and learns that some other employee in another house is getting more money for the same work, he does not take the chances of starvation because to submit to the condition is to admit that he is less important than another man. Yet the whole laboring element of the Filipino people is permeated by just such a spirit. It is practically impossible to fix a price for labor or for produce by any of the laws of supply and demand that regulate such things elsewhere. The personal jealousies, the personal assertions of individuals continually interfere with the normal conditions of trade. If in the market some American comes along in a hurry and pays a peso for a fish, the normal price of which is about thirty-five cents, the price of fish goes up all through the market—for Americans. You may offer eighty cents and be refused, and the owner will sell two minutes after to a Filipino for thirty-five. But in so doing he does not "lose his face." The other man got a peso from an American, and a man who takes less—from an American—is owning himself less able than his companions.

We talk of democracy, but we never know how little democratic we are till we come in contact with the real article. Can you conceive what would be the commercial chaos of America to-morrow if the humblest laborer had the quick personal pride of the millionaire? With all our alleged democracy, we realize the impossibility of ringing Mrs. Vanderbilt's doorbell and asking her to sell us a few flowers from her conservatory or to direct us to a good dressmaker, though we can take just such liberties with houses where the evidences that money would be welcome are patent.

The American laborer does not mind going to and from his work in laboring clothes, and he makes no attempt to seem anything but a laboring man. But you cannot tell in a Manila street car whether the white-clad man at your side is a government clerk at sixty pesos a month or a day laborer at fifteen. I once lost a servant because I commanded him to carry some clothes to my laundress. "Go on the street with a bundle of clothes, and get into the street car with them! I would rather die!" he said; and he quitted rather than do it.

Compare that with the average common-sense attitude of the American laboring man or even the professional man. Until he becomes really a great man and lives in the white light of publicity, the American citizen does not concern himself with his conduct at all as it relates to his personal importance. He is likely to argue that he cannot do certain things which violate his ideal of manhood, or other things which are inconsistent in a member of the church, or other things which are unworthy of a democrat, or of a member of the school board, or even of an "all-round sport." Whatever the prohibitive walls which hedge the freedom of his conduct, each is a perfectly defined one, a standard of conduct definitely outlined in his mind, to which he has pledged his allegiance; but he has no large conception that most useful things are forbidden pleasures to him because of a sense of personal importance. He has no God of the "I," no feeling that makes him stay his hand at helping a cochero to free a fallen and injured horse, while he looks to see that some other man of his class is helping also.

There is a perfectly defined class system in the Philippines, and, between class and class, feeling is not bitter; but within each class jealousy is rampant. The Filipino, though greatly influenced by personality, does not yet conceive of a leadership based upon personality to which loyalty must be unswervingly paid. He feels the charm of personality, he yields to it just so long as it falls in with his own ideas, but the moment it crosses his own assertiveness he is ready to revolt. Many Americans speak of this characteristic as if it were a twist in character. My own opinion is that it is a passing phase, due to the Filipino's lack of the "narrow, but most serviceable fund of human experience." But no matter to what cause the condition is due, it makes a great difference in the life of the individual and of the social body as a whole that each unit has fixed his ideal of conduct upon an illimitable consciousness of personal importance, instead of upon perfectly defined ideals in particular matters. It makes for femininity in the race.

If the reader will meditate a little upon the difference between masculine pride and feminine pride in America, he will probably agree with me that masculine pride centres largely in loyalty to well-defined ideals of what is manly, or honorable, or bold, or just, or religious—in short, it tries to live up to the requirements of a hundred separate standards. On the other hand, feminine pride, outside of its adherence to what is chaste and womanly, consists of pride in self, a kind of self-estimate, based frequently upon social position, sometimes on a consciousness of self-importance which comes through the admiration of men. In either case the pride is likely to show itself in a jealous exaction of consideration for the individual. Such is Filipino pride. It is almost wholly concerned in guarding its vested rights, in demanding and exacting the consideration due the importance of its possessor.

Filipinos are hard to enlist in any new undertaking until they are certain that success will bring "consideration." They love newspaper notices and publicity, they love the centre of the stage, and every new advance in intelligence is bulwarked by a disproportional demand for "consideration."

Filipino men are not lacking in manly qualities. They have the stronger courage, the relatively stronger will and passions which distinguish the men of our own race. But they are harder to get along with than are Filipino women, because their sense of sex importance is so much exaggerated, and because, as Mr. Kipling would put it, they "have too much ego in their cosmos." The secret consciousness of power is not enough for them. They must flash it every minute in your eyes, that you may not forget to yield the adulation due to power. Like women, they get heady on a small allowance of power; and indeed in both sexes there are emphasized certain characteristics which we are accustomed to look upon as feminine. Their pride is feminine as I have analyzed it. They rely upon intuition to guide them more than upon analysis. In enlisting cooeperation, even in public matters, they are likely to appeal to a sentiment of friendship for themselves instead of demonstrating the abstract superiority of their cause. They will make a haughty public demand, but will not scruple to support it with secret petition and appeal. They are adepts at playing upon the weakness and petty vanity of others; and they deal gently with the strong, but boldly with the weak. Both men and women possess an abundance of sexual jealousy, and have, in addition, the quick sensitiveness about rank, worldly possessions, and precedence which with us has become the reproach of the feminine. Lastly, they have, in its highest development, the capacity to make a volte-face with grace and equanimity. They are cunning, but not shrewd; their reasoning is wholly deductive, they are inclined to an enthusiastic assent to large statements, especially when these take the form of moral or political truisms; but they do not submit their convictions to practical working tests. They seem often inconsistent, but observation will show that, however inconsistent their practice is with their professions, it is always consistent with their pride, as I have analyzed it in these pages.



CHAPTER IX

My Early Experiences in Housekeeping

I Set Up Housekeeping—Romoldo's Ideas of Arranging Furniture—My Cheerful Environment—Romoldo's Success in Making "Hankeys"—He Introduces the Orphan Tikkia as His Assistant—The Romance of Romoldo and Tikkia.

At the period of my advent in Capiz there were but two other American women there, wives of military men. Later our numbers were increased by the wives of several civilian employees and two more women teachers. In those first days the hospitality of the military women made no small break in the routine of my daily life. At the time of our appointment we teachers had been assured by a circular from the War Department that we should enjoy the privileges of the military commissary; but this ruling had been changed in the several months that had elapsed, and I found myself stranded with practically no access to American tinned fruits and vegetables. I ate rice, fish, and bananas with the best grace I could; and when, after a month of boarding, I decided to set up housekeeping, and one of these ladies surreptitiously and with fear and trembling presented me with a can of concentrated lye, my gratitude knew no bounds. My Filipino servant, named Romoldo, whom I had dubbed "The Magnificent," was set to work cleaning up my prospective dwelling; and I went out and secured the services of a trooper of the Tenth Cavalry to supplement the deficiencies in Romoldo's housecleaning instincts by some American brawn and muscle.

The trooper, a coal-black African, had picked up a great deal of Spanish, which he spoke with the corruption of vowel sounds peculiar to his race and color. In addition to collecting the stipend agreed upon, he incidentally borrowed two dollars (U.S.) of me. Now, I was brought up in Missouri and knew enough of the colored race to be sure that I was bidding a fond adieu to the two dollars when I handed them to the trooper. But I was not prepared for my henchman's persistence in having the extension of time made formal. I was willing to forget the two dollars and have done with them, but the African would not permit them to rest in peace. He presented himself regularly every two weeks to ask for another fortnight's extension. Finally, when the regiment was about to leave the Islands, I insisted that he should accept the two dollars as an evidence of my good-will toward the United States Army and the defenders of the flag, and he was graciously pleased so to do.

The trooper's muscles were strong as his habits of renewal, and he and Romoldo scoured the floors of my new establishment until the shiny black accretions of twenty-five years of petroleum and dirt had given way to unpolished roughness, and then I set to work to get a new polish. Then we took hold of the furniture—heavy, wooden, Viennese stuff—and scrubbed it with zeal. My landlord came to look in occasionally and was hurt. He said plaintively that they had had no contagious diseases, and he asked why this deluge of soap and water. I basely declined to admit the flat truth, which was that the floors and chairs were too greasy for my taste, but attributed our energy to a mad American zeal for scouring. He said, "Ah, costumbre!" and seemed to feel that the personal sting of my actions had been removed.

In due time the house was clean, and I moved in. The sala, or drawing-room, was at least forty by thirty feet, with two sides arcaded and filled with shell windows, which, when drawn back, gave the room almost the open-air effect of a gallery. It was furnished with two large gilt mirrors, a patriarchal cane-seated sofa, several wooden armchairs, eleven majolica pedestals for holding jardinieres, and two very small tables. These last-named articles "the Magnificent" placed at the head of the apartment in such a position as to divide its cross wall into thirds, and then arranged all the chairs in two rows leading from the two tables, beginning with the most patriarchal armchair and ending with the dining-room chair, the leg of which was tied on with a string. The effect was rigidly mathematical; and when my landlady came in and adorned each table with a potted rose geranium, stuck all over with the halves of empty egg-shells to give it the appearance of flowering, I felt that it was time to assert myself. The egg-shells went promptly into the garbage box, and the chairs and tables were pulled about to achieve the unpremeditated effect of our own rooms. Then I went out for a walk, and returning found that Romoldo had restored things to his own taste. Again I broke up his formation, so the next time he tried a new device. He put one table at the top of the room and one at the bottom, with the chairs arranged in a circle around each one. This gave the pleasing impression to one entering the room that a card game was ready to begin. Again Romoldo's efforts were treated with contempt.

For at least two weeks a deadly combat went on between Romoldo and me, in which I finally came off victor. At the end of that time he seemed to have accustomed himself to our ideas of decoration. He had, in our week's deluging, cleaned up the lamps of the chandeliers, brushed down the cobwebs, and removed some half-dozen baskets of faded and dust-laden paper flowers. He administered the ironical consolation meanwhile that their destruction did not matter, since my admiring pupils would see that the supply was renewed. To my eternal sorrow he was a true prophet, and I had to contemplate green chrysanthemums and blue roses, and a particularly offensive hand-painted basket made of plates of split shell. However, the potted palms and ferns with which I ornamented the eleven pedestals made atonement; and when I came in after a hard day's work and saw the unreal, golden-tinted light of afternoon filling the dignified old room, I found it home-like and lovely in spite of the paper flowers and the shell basket.

My bedroom was half as large as the sala, with a small room adjoining it which I used for a dining-room, and at the back there were a kitchen, a bathroom, closets, and a bamboo porch. For this shelter, furnished as it was, I paid the munificent sum of twenty-five pesos Mexican currency, or twelve and one-half dollars gold per month.

As my house was located over the second saloon in town—one of the regular, innocent, grocery-looking Filipino breed—and as it commanded a fine view of the plaza, guard mount, retreat, and Sunday morning church procession, I had at least all the excitement that was going in Capiz. The American soldiers swore picturesquely over their domino and billiard games down stairs; the "ruffle of drums" (though why so called I know not, for it consists of a blare of trumpets) woke up the sultry stillness at nine A.M.; the great church-bells struck the hours and threw in a frenzy of noise on their own account at some six or eight regular periods during the day; at twelve, noon, the village band stationed itself on the plaza to run a lively opposition to the bells; and at sunset the charming ceremony of retreat brought us all out to see the flag drop down, and to hear the clear, long bugle notes; and there were sick call, mess call, and several other calls. Not the least beautiful of these was "taps." I used to wait for it in the perfect stillness of starlit nights when the Filipinos had all gone to bed, and the houses were ever so faintly revealed by the lanterns burning dimly in front, and the faintest gleam told where the river was slipping by. There would be no sound save the step of the trumpeter picking his way up the street. Then the church clock would strike—not the ordinary bell, but a deep-throated one that could have been heard for miles—and as the vibrations of the last stroke died away, the first high-pitched, sweet notes would ring out, to fade away in the ineffable sadness of the closing strain.

But if there was much that was novel and more that was noisy in those first experiences, there was also plenty of irritation. As I stated before, I had brought Romoldo from Iloilo to Capiz with the idea of using him for a cook. In the days when I was still boarding, he had confirmed me in this intention by stating that he had had experience in that line with an American army officer. He was particularly enthusiastic over his achievements with "hankeys." For a long while, I could make nothing of this word, but at last I discovered that it was his corruption of "pancakes." I found out this fact by asking Romoldo to explain how he made "hankeys," and by recognizing among his ingredients milk, eggs, and flour.

As the Filipina with whom I boarded professed to be eager to learn American cookery, I told Romoldo to make some "hankeys." In the language of Virgil, I "shudder to relate" what those "hankeys" were. There were three, nicely piled on top of one another, after our time-honored custom. No words could fitly describe them. They resembled unleavened bread, soaked in a clarifying liquid, heated, pressed down, and polished on both sides. The Filipina tried to conceal her disgust, and pretended to accept my explanation that they were only a caricature of our loved breakfast delicacy; but I could see that she thought I was trying to cover up my newly acquired sense of national deficiency.

However, when I set up housekeeping, Romoldo was promoted to the office of chief cook and only bottle washer. He conveyed to me a delicate intimation that it was not proper for me to live without a female attendant, and said that he had a friend—a young woman lately orphaned—who needed work and would be glad to have the position. I was sufficiently unsophisticated in Filipino ways to take this statement at its face value. As the orphan was willing to labor for a consideration of one dollar gold per month and room, the experiment could not be an expensive one.

The orphan duly arrived, escorted by Romoldo. He carried her trunk also, consisting of several garments tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

Her name, as Romoldo pronounced it, was Tikkia (probably Eustaquia), and I could have wished she had been handsomer and younger. She was a heavy-browed, pock-marked female, with a mass of cocoanut-oiled tresses streaming down her back, and one leg, bare from the knee down, rather obtrusively displaying its skinny shin where her dress skirt was looped up and tucked in at the waist. She had no petticoat, and her white chemisette ended two inches below the waist line. As it was not belted down, it crept out and lent a comical suggestion of zouave jacket to the camisa, or waist, of sinamay (a kind of native cloth made of hemp fibres). She understood not one word of Spanish or English.

When I occupied my new home for the first night, I "ordered" fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, and then went out in the kitchen and cooked them. The army quartermaster had loaned me a range. Romoldo displayed an intelligent interest in the cooking lesson, but Tikkia seemed bored. When the potatoes were done, I gave them to Tikkia to mash. Romoldo was in the dining-room, setting the table. I told her in my best mixed Spanish and Visayan to mash them, and then to put them on the stove a few minutes in order to dry out any water in them. She understood just that one word "water"; and when I returned, after being out of the kitchen a minute, the potatoes were swimming in a quart of liquid. So I dined on fried chicken.

For the first two or three weeks there were many ludicrous accidents in my kitchen and some irritating ones. But on the whole Romoldo took hold of things very well; and though my menu broadened gradually, it was not long before he had learned a few simple dishes, and my labor of supervision was much lighter. I said that I was pleased with Romoldo to the enlisted man who was in charge of the officers' mess and who incidentally made some market purchases for me. He said, "You ain't particular," with a finality that left me no defence. He was mistaken, however. I am particular, but at that time I was still in the somnambulance of philanthropy which brought us pedagogues to the Philippines.

I am willing to admit to-day that I vastly overrated Romoldo's services, and yet, considering the untutored state of his mind and the extent of his salary, they were a good investment. There has been among some Americans here a carping and antagonistic spirit displayed toward Filipinos, which reflects little credit upon our national consistency or charity. We have a habit of uttering generalities about one race on the authority of a single instance; whereas, with our own, the tendency is to throw out of consideration those single instances in which the actual, undeniable practice of the American is a direct confutation of what his countrymen declare is the race standard. My kitchen under Romoldo's touches was not perfect, but I have seen worse in my native land.

Romoldo being a young and rather attractive man, and Tikkia such a female pirate, I insist that my failure to suspect a romance is at least partially justified; and certainly never by word or glance did they betray the least interest in each other. But some days after my establishment had begun to run smoothly, one of the military ladies asked me to dinner. The punkah string was pulled by a murderous-looking ex-insurrecto, who fixed me with a basilisk glance, half entreaty, half reproach. It became so painful that toward the end of dinner I asked my hostess if his expression was due to his general frame of mind or to a special aversion toward pedagogues. She replied that he was probably bracing himself to approach me on a topic consuming his very vitals, or as much of them, at least, as may be expressed in absent-mindedness. Tikkia was his matrimonio, and I, the maestra had taken her and given her to Romoldo, and the twain lived in my house! The lady added that Tikkia was not matrimonio en iglesia—that is, married in church—but only matrimonio pro tem.

Pedro came into the sala after dinner and made his petition with humility. He extolled his kindness to the ungrateful Tikkia, and denounced Romoldo as a fiend and liar. He tried hard to weep, but did not succeed.

0 tempora! O mores! Such are the broadening effects of travel and two short months in the Orient. Conceive of the old maid schoolteacher in America assuming the position of judge in a matrimonial—or extra-matrimonial—scandal of this sort.

I promised justice to the sniffling Pedro, and told him to call for it next day at ten A.M. Like me, he supposed it would take the form of Tikkia. But when I reached home and summoned the culprits before the bar of a "moral middle class," they were not disconcerted in the least. Romoldo stood upon high moral ground. Tikkia might or might not be married. It was nothing to him, and he did not know. She was an orphan of his acquaintance to whom he wished to do a kindness. Tikkia promptly drew up her skirt over the unexposed knee and showed a filthy sore which she said was caused by Pedro's playful habit of dragging her about on stony ground by the hair. Moreover she stood upon her legal rights. She was not matrimonio en iglesia, and she had a right to leave Pedro when she chose.

Pedro came next day at ten A.M., but he did not get justice. On the contrary, justice, as embodied in Tikkia, stood at the head of the stairs and said, "No quiero" as often as I (and Pedro) turned our imploring eyes upon her.

Things went on in this way for some time, and my perplexities offered amusement to my friends. I felt sure that Romoldo and Tikkia were lying, and at one time I resolved to discharge them both. The young American teacher who had been in the Islands since the beginning of our occupation gave me some sound advice. He said: "What on earth are these people's morals to you? Romoldo is a good servant. He speaks Spanish, and if you let him go for one who speaks only Visayan, your own housekeeping difficulties will be greatly increased." Then I pleaded the old-fash-ioned rural American fear that people might think the worse of me for keeping such a pair in my employ; and Mr. S—— simply collapsed. He sat and laughed in my face till I laughed too. "We are not in America now," was his parting remark; and I am still learning what a variety of moral degeneration that sentence was created to excuse.

I have already given more space than is warranted by good taste to the romance of Tikkia and Romoldo. The affair went on till I began to fear lest Pedro, in one of the attacks of jealousy to which Filipinos are subject, should take vengeance and a bolo in his own hands. Fortunately, at the critical moment, Romoldo and Tikkia fell out. She kicked his guitar off the back porch and he complained that she neglected her work. Then she asked leave to return to her own town for a few days, and the request was joyfully granted. Pedro also obtained a vacation. Their town was round the corner one block away, and there they retired. They greeted me pleasantly whenever I passed by, and Tikkia seemed in no wise embarrassed by her change of front.

If I have described this incident in full, it is because it illustrates so perfectly the attitude of a large portion of the Filipino people on marriage. The common people seldom marry except, as we would term it, by the common-law marriage. When they do marry in church, it is quite as much for the eclat of the function as for conscientious reasons. Marriage in the church costs usually eight pesos (four dollars gold), though cheaper on Sundays, and to achieve it is quite a mark of financial prosperity.

Of course, among the educated classes our own view of marriage prevails, though I have heard of instances where the common-law form was still observed. In some towns it is customary for marriages to take place but once a year; an American told me of descending on a mountain town where the annual wedding festival was due, and of finding fifty-two happy couples in their gala attire wending a decorous procession toward the church.



CHAPTER X

Filipino Youths and Maidens

Manners and Social Condition of Filipino Girls—Sentimental Boy Lovers—Love-making by Proxy—How Courtship is Usually Performed—Premature Adolescence of Filipino Youth—The Boda Americana—Filipino Girls Are Coquettes, But Not Flirts—Exposure of Filipino Girls to Unchaste Conversation—Unceasing Watchfulness over Girls—Progressive Changes in All the Above Matters.

With regard to their women the Filipinos are an Occidental people rather than an Oriental one. Marriage is frequently entered upon at the will of the parent, but few parents will insist upon a marriage where the girl objects. While the social liberty accorded a young girl is much less than what is permitted in our own country, there is no Oriental seclusion of women. Children accompany their parents to balls and fiestas, and maidens are permitted to mingle freely in society from their baby-hood. At fourteen or fifteen they enter formally into society and begin to receive attentions from men. In the upper classes seventeen or eighteen is the usual time for marriage. By the time a girl is twenty-two or twenty-three she is counted passee, and, if unmarried, must retire into the background in favor of her younger sisters.

The young girls are exceedingly attractive. They are slender, and their heads sit beautifully above long swan-like necks. They dress their hair in a rather tightly drawn pompadour, and ornament it with filigree combs set with seed pearls, or, if they are able, with jewelled butterflies and tiaras. Jewellery is not only a fashion here, but an investment. Outside of Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, banks are practically unknown. The provincial man who is well to do puts his money into houses and lands or into jewellery for his womankind. The poor emulate the rich, and wear in imitation what their wealthy neighbors can afford in the real.

Filipino women never affect the dominating attitude assumed by young American coquettes. They have an infinite capacity for what we call small talk and repartee; and, as they never aim for brilliancy and are quite natural and unaffected, their pretty ways have all the charm that an unconscious child's have. They love dress, and in one lightning flash will take you in from head to foot, note every detail of your costume, and, the next day, imitate whatever parts of it please their fancy and fall in with their national customs. They are adepts at mimicry and among themselves will lash us mercilessly. They straighten up their shoulders, pull in the abdomen, and strut about with a stiff-backed walk and with their hands hanging stiffly at their sides. They themselves are full of magnetism and can advance with outstretched hand and greet you in such a way as to make you believe that your coming has put sunshine in their lives. Their chief talk is of lovers in the two stages of pretendiente and novio, and they are full of hints and imputations to one another of love affairs. Among young people, in spite of the restrictions put about them to keep the opposite sexes from meeting tete-a-tete or the remotest chances of "spooning," the air is surcharged with romance. Apparently the Filipino boy has no period in his development in which he hates girls. At twelve or fourteen he waxes sentimental, and his love notes are the most reeking examples of puppy love and high tragedy ever confiscated by an outraged teacher. When written in the vernacular they are not infrequently obscene, for one of the saddest phases of early sentiment here is that it is never innocent; but in English they run to pathos. One ludicrous phase of love-making is the amount of third-person intervention—an outsider thrusting himself into the matter to plead for his lovelorn chum. For some years I made a collection of confiscated billet-doux, but they were destroyed in one of the frequent fires which visit Manila. I can, however, produce a fair imitation of one of these kindly first aids to the wounded. This is the prevailing style:

Miss——,

Lovely and Most Respectable Lady:

I am do me the honor to write to you these few unworthy lines to tell you why you are breaking the heart and destroying a good health of my friend Pedro. Always I am going to his house every night, and I am find him weeping for you. He is not eating for love of you. He cannot sleep because he is think about your eyes which are like the stars, and your hairs which are the most beautiful of all the girls in this town. Alas! my friend must die if you do not give him a hope. Every day he is walking in front of your house, but you do not give to him one little word of love. Even you do not love him, you can stop his weep if you like to send him one letter, telling to him that you are not angry to him or to me, his friend.

I have been informed by several persons that there is an official etiquette about this sort of correspondence. When a boy decides that he has fallen in love with a schoolmate or with any other young girl, no matter whether he knows her or not, he writes her a letter in the first person similar to the above. If she ignores the letter utterly, he understands that he does not please her—in brief, that "No Irish need apply." But if she answers in a highly moral strain, professing to be deeply shocked at his presumption, and informing him that she sees no way to continue the acquaintance, he knows that all is well. He sends her another letter, breathing undying love, and takes steps to be introduced at her home. Once having obtained a calling acquaintance, he calls at intervals, accompanied by seven or eight other young men, and, in the general hilarity of a large gathering, endeavors to snatch a moment in which to gaze into the star-like eyes of his innamorata, or to gloat over her "hairs which are the most beautiful."

The lover's habit of fortifying himself with the society of his fellow men would be the last which an American boy could understand. But a Filipino swain rarely presents himself alone at a house to call. He feels, perhaps, that it makes him conspicuous. The whole race, for that matter, is given to the habit of calling in droves. If a Filipino girl goes to an office on business, her mother and father do not constitute a sufficient escort. Her brothers, cousins, a few admirers, and possibly a female friend or two are added to the parental guardians, till the bodyguard assumes the appearance of a delegation large enough to negotiate a treaty. One of the division superintendents tells a story which shows the humorous American recognition of the inconveniences of this habit. The Superintendent had recommended two young girls as pensionadas, or government students, in the Manila Normal School. It was their duty, on arriving in Manila, to report to the Director of Education; and they must have done so in the usual force, for the Director's official telegram, announcing their arrival, began in this pleasing strain: "Miss—— and Miss——, with relatives and friends, called this morning."

The premature adolescence of the Filipino youth makes him very repellent to the American. One of the most frightful things which I ever saw was a play given in Spanish by children. The play itself was one which Americans would never have permitted children to read or to see, much less to present. The principal character was a debauched and feeble old man of the "Parisian Romance" type; it was played by a nine-year-old boy, who made the hit of the evening, and who reminded me, in his interpretation of the part, of Richard Mansfield. His family and friends were proud of his acting, which was masterly, and laughingly declared that his conception of the role was wholly his own. If so, there was no need of laughter and there was much cause for tears.