At night I locked my bedroom door, and dreamed of masked burglars standing over me threatening with drawn revolver. For the thirty days I remained there, I knew more of nervousness and terror than the whole time I spent in the Philippines, and I came back to resume the old life where there is security in all things, barring a very remote insurrection and the possibility of hearing the roar of Japanese guns some fine morning. And through and through a grateful system I felt the lifting of the tremendous pressure, the agonizing strain, competition, and tumult of American life. Thank Heaven! there is still a manana country—a fair, sunny land, where rapid transportation and sky-scrapers do not exist.



CHAPTER XIX

Weddings in Town and Country

Filipino Brides, Their Weddings and Wedding Suppers—River Trip to a Rural Wedding—Our Late Arrival Delays the Ceremony Until Next Morning—The Ball—We Tramp Across the Fields to the Church—After the Marriage, Feasting and Dancing.

The composure with which a Filipino girl enters matrimony is astounding. There are no tears, no self-conscious blushes, none of the charming shyness that encompasses an American girl as a garment. It is a contradictory state of affairs, I must admit, for this same American girl is a self-reliant creature, accustomed to the widest range of action and liberty, while the matter-of-fact, self-possessed Filipina has been reared to find it impossible to step across the street without attendance. But the free, liberty-loving American yields shyly to her captor, while the sedateness of the prospective matron has already taken possession of the dusky sister.

Filipino marriages, among the upper class, are accompanied by receptions and feasts like our own, but differ greatly in the comparatively insignificant part played by the contracting parties. Whereas, in an American wedding, the whole object of calling all these people together seems to be a desire to silhouette the bride and groom against the festive background, one comes away from a Filipino celebration with a feeling that an excuse was needed for assembling a multitude and permitting them to enjoy themselves, and that the bridal pair unselfishly lent themselves to the occasion.

Most weddings take place about half-past six or seven in the evening; and immediately after the religious ceremony in the church, all the invited guests adjourn to the home of a relative (usually, but not necessarily, the nearest kinsman of the bride), where supper is served and is followed by a ball.

On these occasions, except for the candles on the altar, the church is unlighted, and in its cavernous darkness the footfalls of a gathering crowd ring on the stone floor, and the hum of voices rolls up into the arching gloom of the roof.

There are no pews, but two rows of benches, facing each other, up the middle length of the edifice, offer seats to the upper-class people, who seem chiefly interested in preserving the spotlessness of their gala attire. No attempt at exclusiveness is made, and a horde of babbling, gesticulating, lower-class natives surges to and fro at the rear, awaiting the bride.

Presently, to the clangor of half a dozen huge bells, she sweeps in, accompanied by her madrina, or chief witness. They take station at the back between the baptismal fonts and just in front of the overhanging choir gallery. Instantly they are hemmed in, mobbed, by that swarm of pobres, some speculating on the motive of the match and its probable outcome. Meanwhile the bridegroom is smoking a cigarette at one side, and chatting with a group of bachelor friends who are faithful to the last.

Just as one begins to wonder how much longer these unfortunate women can endure the position, the barefooted acolytes shuffle in, bearing six-foot silver candlesticks, and preceding the padre, who is carrying his illumination with him—or rather, having it carried in front of him. The bridegroom throws away his cigarette, and shouldering his way through the press, takes his position at the side of the bride. The mob closes in again, not infrequently incommoding the padre, who is peering at his half-lighted missal. The aristocrats on the benches pay no attention and continue to guard their ropa and converse on chance topics.

To one standing on the edge of that wriggling throng with the yellow flare just lighting the impassive countenances of its chief personages, and hearing a low monotone, broken only by the clink of metal as gold pieces fall into the plate, it is difficult to believe that this is a wedding, just like those pictured and tableau effects that one is treated to at home.

At last the voice stops, the mob and the smoky candles surge forward to the altar, where the benediction is said. Another impeded progress to the rear (everybody gets up without waiting for the bride and bridegroom to pass), the sorely tried couple step into a waiting victoria, and we troop after them, getting our felicitations ready.

On arriving at the house we are received by the groom and some female relative of his, or, perchance, the bride's papa. No opportunity of formally congratulating the young couple is offered. The bride retires into an inner room, where she removes her veil, and receives such of her lady friends as desire to kiss her on both cheeks. But by and by she comes out, self-possessed and unsmiling, to distribute the fragments of her artificial orange blossom wreath to her aspiring girl friends. This is a parallel to the distribution of wedding cake, which the American girl puts under her pillow and dreams upon.

By this time the orchestra has arrived and is playing triumphantly under the windows. Though engaged beforehand, it always accomplishes its appearance with a casual and unpremeditated air. The musicians are then (per contract) invited to enter, and strike up a rigadon. Generally, but not always, the most important man present invites the bride for this dance. But I have known brides to sit it out, for lack of a partner. The bridegroom chooseth as he listeth; when American women are present, the fathers of the bride and groom usually request the honor of leading them out.

After this first dance supper is served. If an important native official be present, it is a point of etiquette that he take the bride. Only a few men of high rank sit at the first table, which is given over to women. The service is not left to servants, but all male relatives of the family vie with each other in anticipating the wants of the guests.

It is a feast of solid and satisfying excellence. It begins usually with vermicelli soup (made from a lard stock) which is more than likely to have been dished a half-hour and to be stone cold. But Filipinos are not critical in this regard; and Americans, in view of all that is coming, may dispense with this one dish.

Then follow meats innumerable, each with its own garnish, but without separate vegetables. There is goat's flesh stewed with garbanzos, onions, potatoes, and peppers; chicken minced with garlic, and green peas; chicken boned and made to look and taste like breaded cutlet; boiled ham; a fat capon, boned, stuffed, and seasoned with garlic, his erstwhile proud head rolling in scarified humility; breaded pork chops; roast pork, with unlimited crackling; cold turkey; baked duck, and several kinds of fish.

There are no salads, but plenty of relishes, including the canned red peppers of Spain; olives, pickles, cheese, and green mango pickles. At intervals along the table are alluring glass dishes, filled with crystallized fruits.

After this come the sweets. There is no cake, as we know it, but meringues (French kisses), baked custard coated with caramel sauce, which they call flaon; a kind of cocoanut macaroon, the little gelatinous seeds of the nipa palm, boiled in sugar syrup, and half a dozen kinds of preserves and candied fruits. Tinto accompanies the supper, and possibly champagne.

As two or three hundred people are served on such an occasion, the intermission for supper is a long one, and dancing is not resumed till half-past nine or ten o'clock. It may then continue till midnight or dawn, just as the actions of a few important guests may determine. Filipinos are very quick to follow a lead; and if, owing perhaps to a concurrence of events which may be perfectly foreign to the occasion, a number of prominent people leave early, the rest soon take flight.

In one of the later years of my stay my good fortune led me to witness a wedding of another type, which differed from the class I have described as the simple rural gathering at home differs from the exotic atmosphere of a fashionable reception. It was just after my return from vacation that one morning a group of my pupils burst in, accompanying a middle-aged Filipina who hesitatingly made known her errand. Her niece, who lived some five or six miles up the river, was to be married that night, and a large number of people from town were going up. Could I accompany them, and would I act as one of the three madrinas for the occasion? As the bride was of an insurrecto family, whose name was familiar through bygone military acquaintances, I snapped at an opportunity to view the insurrecto upon his own (pacified) hearth, and after consuming a hasty lunch and packing a valise, I set out for the river bank where we were to rendezvous.

Our craft, a catamaran made by securing three barotos side by side and flooring them with bamboo, was the centre of great public excitement. It had a walk dutrigged at each side for the men who were to punt, or pole us up the river. It was roofed with a framework of bamboo, which was covered with palm, leaves and wreathed in bonoc-bonoc vines, and from this green bower were suspended the fruits of the season.—bananas, the scarlet sagin-sagin, and even succulent ears of sweet corn.

Cane stools were provided for a few, but many of the young people sat flat on the floor. When we were embarked, to the number of about forty, the barotos were so deep in the water that the swirling current was within an inch of their gunwales. A tilt to one side or a wave in the river would have sunk us.

The baggage and a few supernumerary young men and a mandolin orchestra were loaded into an enormous baroto, and ten sturdy brown backs bent forward as the boatmen pushed with all their strength against the great bamboo poles, which looked as if they would snap under the strain.

The river was swollen with three days' tropical downpour and running out resistlessly in the teeth of a high tide. As we slipped out of the shallow water at the bank, the current caught us and hurled us fifty feet down stream. The baroto left apparently for the port, which was four miles away. Our valiant punters were useless against the river; but amid a hubbub in which every man, woman, and babe aboard, except one American man and myself, appeared to be giving orders, we got back to the bank and shipped an additional crew. This consumed time, because the spectators, who had seen what work it was going to be, were coy of enlisting. But at last we got away, eight men to a side, and the water perceptibly nearer the gunwales, and with infinite labor we succeeded in poling around a bend and leaving the town behind us.

But there we stuck again in a swift reach, and there were time and opportunity to marvel at the impenetrable green and silence of the nipa swamps. The banks—or rather limits of the current—were thickets of water grass six feet high, its roots sunk in ooze. Here and there a rise of ground betrayed itself in a few cocoanuts, the ragged fans of tall bouri palms, or a plume-like clump of bamboo and the hospitable shade of a magnificent mango tree.

The atmosphere was close and muggy, and now and then a shower pattered down on us. Suddenly, through the strange desolation of this alien landscape, the familiar thump of guitars and mandolins assailed the stillness. The music carried me back to half-forgotten experiences—red sunsets between the cathedral bluffs of the Mississippi, and sad-eyed negroes twanging the strings on the forward deck of a nosing steamboat; crisp July afternoons on the Straits of Mackinac when the wind swept in from froth-capped blue Huron, and the little excursion steamer from St. Ignace rollicked her way homeward to the cottage-crowned heights of the island.

I shut my eyes and tried to "make believe" that they would open on far-off, familiar scenes. Nothing could have been more weird and incongruous than the American air with this alien soil and people. It was "Hiawatha," and to the inspiring strains of "Let the women do the work, let the men take it easy," our forgotten baroto swept into sight in the easy water under the opposite bank. We made a herculean effort, inspired by envy, and got away. Space forbids me to enumerate the hairbreadth escapes of that journey. We put men ashore when the banks permitted and were towed like a canal boat. Once we were swept into mid-stream, where the poles were useless on account of the great depth, and had to drift back till the water shoaled again. In late afternoon we took on a supply of sugar cane, and chewed affably all the rest of the way.

At first I had been nervous, but my native friends were quite unconcerned. So remembering that Heaven protects the insane and the imbecile, and regarding them as the former and myself as the latter, I ceased to speculate on the probabilities of another incarnation.

We consumed six hours in a journey normally accomplished in two, and night overtook us in a labyrinth of water lanes above whose forested swamps the outlines of a stern old church were magnified in the gloom. One by one the stars sprang mysteriously into view in the soft void overhead, and somehow—marvellously—we found our destination. A group of friends and servants flared their torches on the bank, and we dragged our stiffened limbs to them. It was too dark to see where we were going, until we stumbled almost into a lighted doorway and found the company awaiting us. Owing to the delay in our arrival, the wedding was deferred till the next morning, but the ball was about to open.

Food was given us, and after a freshening up and a change of raiment we joined the reunion, which was in full swing. The prospective husband and wife were enjoying their usual state of effacement, but I discovered them finally. I talked with the insurrecto and found him a man of ability.

I left the ball, exhausted, at one o'clock, but those indefatigable people kept it up all night. I awoke at dawn to find the floor occupied by about twenty yawning maidens who were merely resting, for there was no time for a nap. We dressed in the cool dawn breeze and went out in time to see the morning mists rise from a broad oval of rice and maize fields, and hang themselves in ever-changing folds on the sides of the purple mountains beyond.

But for the character of the vegetation that rimmed the arable land, and the bare green shoulders of the hills, streaked here and there with pink clayey ravines, it might have been a peaceful sunrise in middle America. The homelike atmosphere was accentuated by the roofs of a town and by a church spire, still silvered with mist, half a mile away. We tramped across the fields to our objective point. As madrina, I walked with the bride, but conversation did not thrive because she spoke little Spanish, and I less Visayan.

Carabaos sniffed at us as we passed, and people crowded their windows to look. We crossed a slough upon a bridge of quaint and ancient architecture on the thither side of which were a grassy plaza and the stern lines of the church. The wedding bells broke forth in a furious joy and flung their notes to the distant hill flanks, which in turn flung them back to the blue, sparkling sea.

The church was tiled in black and white marble, and inhabited by a lusty family of goats. Their innate perversity and an apparent curiosity led them to resent exclusion; but after a lively pursuit they were ejected, and the bride and I sat on a bench to rest. The bridegroom took a last smoke, and the strangers deciphered obituary notices on the mural tombstones.

The padre came along finally, smelling of a matutinal appetizer, and they distributed pillows and candles to the madrinas and padrinos. As evidence of change of heart in the late insurrecto, the pillows were some of red, some of white, and some of blue cloth.

It was over at last, when I was stiff with kneeling and had ornamented myself with much candle grease. I went up to congratulate the bride, but felt that the handshake was not coming off properly. Finally I discovered that I was resisting an effort on her part to bring my hand to her lips. So I succumbed and submitted to the distinction, and she then proceeded to salute the other madrinas.

There was nothing coy or sentimental about that bride. She needed no support, moral or other. Sweet sixteen, "plump as a partridge," she gathered up her white silk skirt with its blue ribbons and struck out for home. Her husband made no attempt to follow her. She beat us all home by a quarter of a mile. When we arrived, she had changed her gown and was supervising breakfast preparations.

I was tired, and when a native sled drawn by a carabao came along, was glad enough to seat myself on its flat bottom, together with one or two wearied maidens, and be drawn back in slow dignity. We intercepted a boy with roasting ears, and the wedding guests sat about, nibbling like rodents while we waited breakfast.

After that meal dancing began again and continued until dinner. Once the floor was cleared, and the bridal pair danced one waltz together. They did not glance once at each other, and seemed bored.

Dinner was another feast, and afterwards we sought our state barge and the perils of the return journey. The newly married couple came down to see us off, still bearing themselves with a preoccupied and listless air. The orchestra remained until the next day, and we threaded the water lanes in quiet, emerging at last on the full-breasted river. The home journey consumed only three hours, and was comparatively uneventful. The wife of the Presidente gathered her family about her and artlessly searched their raven pates for inhabitants which pay no taxes, and most of the young people drooped with weariness. We rounded the bend at five o'clock; and thankful I was to put foot on terra firma once more. I was tired, but glad that I had gone.



CHAPTER XX

Sickbeds and Funerals

Customs in the Treatment of the Sick—Stately Funeral Processions—The Funeral of a Poor Man—Unsociableness of the Poor—Wakes and Burial of the Rich—A "Petrified" Man.

Filipinos are punctilious about many things concerning which we have passed the extremely punctilious stage. Some of their strictest observances are in the matters of sickness and death. The sick have what we would consider a hard time. To begin with, they are immured in rooms from which, as far as possible, all light and air are excluded. In a tropical climate, where the breeze is almost indispensable to comfort, the reader may imagine the result. Then all their relatives, near and far, flock to see them; they crowd the apartment, and insist on talking to keep the patient from becoming triste. When the sufferer finds this insupportable and gives up the struggle to live, the whole clan, out to the last connection, set about preparing their mourning.

Every woman makes a black dress, and every man ties a band of black cloth around his white coat sleeve. When there is a wake, it is noisy enough to be Irish. Our Eastern friends resemble the Irish also in their love of a fine funeral. To go to the last resting-place escorted by a band and with all possible ceremony seems to make even death acceptable to them.

Among the very poor this ambition is quite disproportionate to their resources. The percentage of infant mortality, owing to poor nutrition, is especially high; yet babe after babe whose mother unwittingly starved it to death is given a funeral in which the baby carriage hearse is preceded by a local band, and hired mourners stalk solemnly behind the little coffin in place of the mother, who is, in etiquette, required to remain at home.

In Manila funerals resemble our own, save that the hearse, be it white for a child or black for an adult, is drawn by stately caparisoned horses, at the bridles of which stalk men in eighteenth-century court costumes, which include huge shoe buckles, black silk stockings, and powdered wigs. The carriages flock behind with little pretence of order, and at a sharper pace than is customary with us. The populace are, however, most respectful; rich and poor alike remove their hats when the funeral cortege is passing.

In the provinces where there are no hearses, a funeral consists usually of a coffin carried on the shoulders of four men, and followed by a straggling concourse of mourners. If the corpse be that of a child, it not infrequently lies, gorgeously dressed, upon the blue-and-pink-beribboned cushions of a four-wheeled baby carriage. New-born babes are buried in tiny coffins covered with pink or blue cambric.

The Filipinos say that when a child dies its pure little soul goes straight to gloria, wherefore it is much to be congratulated on leaving this abode of sorrow for one of unending happiness, and only gay music is used at the funeral. The local bands play solely by ear, and make the most of whatever music they hear sung or whistled on the streets, with the result that strangely inappropriate selections are used on these occasions. At the first child's funeral I ever saw, the band was playing "Hot Time," and a friend to whom I related this fact, declared that at the first one he ever saw they were playing, "I don't care if you never come back." This sounds too fortuitously happy to be true, but it is quite within the possible.

When I had lived in Capiz a year or two, my washerman, or lavandero, died, and his widow, pointing to a numerous progeny, besought for an advance of five pesos for necessary funeral expenses. She wanted ten, but I refused to countenance that extravagance. She did not seem overcome by grief, and her plea of numerous offspring was really valueless, for, if anything, they were all better off than before. Her lord had been only a sham washerman, collecting the garments for her to wash, delivering them, and pocketing the returns, of which he gave her as small a moiety as would sustain life, and spent the rest on the cockpit.

Funerals in a country where there are no preservatives take place very soon. The lavandero died at dawn, his widow made her levy on me before seven o'clock, and, coming home that afternoon, I met the funeral in a thickly shaded lane.

Local tradition disapproves of the appearance of near female relations at a funeral, so the dead man's escort consisted only of the four bearers, and three small boys, all under eleven years of age. The coffin was one in general use—rented for the trip to the cemetery! Once there, the body, wrapped in its petate, or sleeping mat, would be rolled into a shallow grave.

The four bearers were dirty and were chewing betel-nut as they trudged along under their burden. Behind them came the dead man's son, apparelled in a pair of blue denim trousers. His body, naked to the waist, was glistening brown after a bath, and he carried under one arm a fresh laundered camisa, or Chino shirt, of white muslin, to be put on when he reached the church.

His two supporters were the brothers of my muchacha, who lived in the same yard and who evidently had convictions about standing by a comrade in misfortune. The elder, a boy of seven, was fairly clean; but the younger, somewhere between three and five, was clad in a single low-necked slip of filthy pink cotton, which draped itself at a coquettish angle across his shoulders, and hung down two or three inches below his left knee. His smile, which was of a most engaging nature, occupied so much of his countenance that it was difficult to find traces of the pride which actually radiated from the other two.

My curiosity was enough to make me turn and follow them to the church. There the body was deposited on the floor at the rear, just below a door in the gallery which led to the priest's house, or convento. The bearers squatted on their heels and fell to wrapping up pieces of betel-nut in lime paste and buya leaf, while a sacristan went to call the priest. The dead man's son reverently put on his clean shirt, and the youngest urchin sucked his thumb and continued to grin at me.

Presently a priest came through the door and leaned over the gallery, followed by two sacristans, one bearing a censer and the other a bell. The censer-bearer swung his implement vindictively in the direction of the corpse, while the other rang a melodious chime on the bell. At this all the babies fell on their knees. The priest muttered a few lines of Latin, made the sign of the cross, and disappeared to another chime of the bells and a last toss of the censer. The bearers picked up the coffin, and the little procession went on its way to the cemetery. The ceremony lasted about one minute and a half, and consumed three out of my five pesos.

This incident illustrates neatly the friendless condition in which most Filipino poor live. Filipino lower-class people are gregarious, but not sociable. They are averse to solitary rural life and tend everywhere to live in villages, but they visit little with each other, and seem very indifferent to the cordial relations which bind our own laboring classes together.

In the same yard with the dead lavandero lived at least ten or twelve other families, yet no one could be found to accompany him to his grave save two play-mates of his son.

If the poor are fond of display, the rich outvie them. The pomp of a rich man's obsequies finds its beginning while he is yet on earth, when the padre goes in state to administer extreme unction. His vehicle, a gilt coach which looks like the pictures of those of the seventeenth century, is often preceded by a band, while the priest within is arrayed in embroidered vestments. When the surra, or horse disease, had made a scarcity of those animals, the padre's gilded equipage had to be drawn by a cebu, or very small and weary-looking cow, imported from Indo-China. The spectacle of this yoke animal, the gilt coach, and the padre in all his vestments was one not to be forgotten.

When the rich man dies, there is generally a wake, noisy enough, as before stated, to be Irish, and a pretentious funeral. Five o'clock in the afternoon seems to be a favorite hour for this. In the rainy season, with sodden clouds hanging low in the sky, with almond trees dripping down, and the great church starred with candles which do not illuminate but which dot the gloom, the occasion is lugubrious indeed. Fresh flowers are little used, but immortelles and set designs accompanied by long streamers of gilt-lettered ribbon attest the courtesy of friends.

They bury the dead—that is, all the upper-class dead—in nichos, or ovens, such as are found in the old cemeteries of New Orleans. The cemetery, which is usually owned, not by the municipality but by the church, is surrounded by a brick or stone wall six or eight feet high surmounted by a balustrade of red baked clay in an urn design. The ovens form their back walls against this, and are arranged in tiers of four or five, so that the top of the ovens makes a fine promenade around three sides of the enclosure. In the centre there is generally a mortuary chapel, where the final words are said. From the chapel tiled walks lead out to the ovens. The plan is a very pretty one, and if the cemeteries were kept in good condition, it would be beautiful. But they are nearly always dirty and neglected.

In the open ground between the chapel and the sides, the poor people are rolled into graves so shallow that a little digging would soon exhume the body.

The nichos, or ovens, are rented by the year; if the tenant's surviving family are not prompt with the annual payment, the body is taken out, the bones cast ruthlessly over the back fence, and the premises once more declared vacant.

When we first came, there used to be a great heap of these bones at the back of the Paco Cemetery in Manila, but so much was said about them that the Church grew sensitive and removed them. Our cemetery at Capiz also had its bone heap.

An American negress, a dressmaker who was working for me, told me that there was a petrified man, an American, in the Paco Cemetery, and that the body was on exhibition. She had been to see it, and it was wonderful. I had my doubts about the petrifying, but as I had to pass the cemetery on leaving her house, I asked the custodian at the gate if there was such a body there. He said that the body had just been removed by the city authorities to be placed in the "Cemeterio del Norte," where there is a plot for paupers. The body was that of an American, buried in the cemetery five years before. His rent, five pesos a year, had been prepaid for five years, but his time had run out. When they came to take out the body, which had been embalmed, it was found in a remarkable state of preservation. The custodian said, with an irreligious grin, that in the old days the condition of the body would have been called a miracle, and a patron saint would have been made responsible, and all the people would have come, bearing lighted candles, to do honor to the saint; and he added regretfully that it was no good in these days. The Americans would say that it was because of their superior embalming process. "But what a chance missed!" he said, "and what a pity to let it go with no demonstration!" There are many ways of looking at the same thing. I could not help laughing, thinking of the negress. She said, "He's sittin' up there by the little church, lookin' as handsome as life—and him petrified!"



CHAPTER XXI

Sports and Amusements

Dancing, Cock-fighting, Gambling, Theatricals—Sunday in the Philippines—Lukewarmness of Protestant Christians in the Philippines—How a Priest Led Astray the Baptist Missionary's Congregation on Thanksgiving—Scarcity of Amusements in Provincial Life—An Exhibition of Moving Pictures—Entertainments for the Poorer Natives—The Tragedy of the Dovecot.

The Filipino's idea of a good time is a dance. Sometimes, in the country, a dance will go on for forty-eight hours. People will slip out and get a little sleep and come back again. Next to the dance, the cock-fight is their chief joy. A cock-fight is, however, not a prolonged or painful thing. Tiny knives, sharp as surgical instruments, are fastened to each bird's heels, and the cock which gets in the first blow generally settles his antagonist.

Gambling is the national vice. The men gamble at monte and pangingue, and over their domino games, their horses, and their game-cocks. The women of both high and low class not infrequently organize a little card game immediately after breakfast and keep at it till lunch, after which they begin again and play till evening. Women also attend the cock-fights, especially on Sunday. Often the cockpit is in the rear of the church and the convento; and the padre derives a revenue from it.

Manila, being the metropolis, has its theatres, cinematograph shows, and music halls. Nearly every year there is a season of Italian opera, in which the principals are very good, and the chorus, for obvious reasons, small and poor. Most of the theatrical talent which wanders in and out comes from Australia. One theatre, which American women do not patronize, keeps a sort of music-hall programme going all year. There are many smaller theatres, where plays in the Tagalog language, the products of local talent, are presented. I cannot say what is the trend of these at the present time, but seven years ago the plots nearly all embraced bad Spanish frailes who were pursuing innocent Filipino maidens, and who always came to an end worthy of their evil deeds. The disposition to express racial and political hatreds in those plays was so strong that a friend in asking me to go naively pictured his conception of them in the invitation. He said, "Let's go over to the Filipino theatre and see them kill priests."

Of course, there is no Puritan Sabbath in the Philippines. Theatres, balls, and receptions are carried on without any observance of that day. The Protestant churches make a valiant effort to keep a tight rein over their flocks, but with little success. It cannot truthfully be said that most Americans here are either fond of church-going or fond of the church social, which, with its accompanying features of songs, recitations, and short addresses by prominent citizens, who were never designed by the Creator to speak in public, and its creature comforts of home-made cake and ice cream, has leaped the Pacific.

During my third year in Capiz a Baptist missionary arrived and took up his work. He seemed to feel that he had a claim upon all Americans to rally to his support. But, alas! they did not come up to his expectations. Some were Roman Catholics; others, of whom I was one, had an affection for the more formal, punctilious service of the Church of England; and even two or three nonconformist teachers realized that a too open devotion to the missionary cause would hopelessly endanger their usefulness as teachers.

So the missionary carried on his services for nearly a year, and no single American appeared at them. His congregation, which was largely recruited from the poorer classes, and which had been hoping for the social advantage which would be derived from the American alliance, naturally pressed the unfortunate missionary for a reason. The sorely tried man spoke at last. He said briefly that the Americans in Capiz were pagans.

On one occasion the missionary arranged a service for Thanksgiving morning and invited us personally. Of course we all said that we should be glad to go. But the astute padre of the Church Catholic was not going to have any such object lesson as that paraded before his flock. He arranged for the singing of a Te Deum in honor of the day at half-past nine, just half an hour before the time set for the other service. Then he got the Filipino Governor to send out written invitations from his office in such a way that the affair assumed the complexion of a national courtesy offered by the Filipino to the American. For us, as Government employees, to disregard this was impossible. So we went en masse to the Roman Catholic church, where two rows of high-backed chairs were arranged facing each other up the centre of the church for our high mightinesses.

We had agreed privately that after the Te Deum we would go over to the Protestant chapel, and not leave the poor missionary to feel himself wholly deserted. But no opportunity came. The service was prolonged till any hope of our appearing in the rival chapel was effectually quashed. When we came out, we looked at one another and burst out laughing. It was one more evidence that the American is no match for the Filipino in finesse.

Naturally, unless one falls in with the Filipino devotion to dancing, there are few sources of so-called amusement in provincial life. The American women visit each other and give dinners, which, to the men who live in helpless subjection to an ignorant native cook, are less a social than a gastronomic joy. If we are near the seashore, we make up picnics on the beach, swim, dig clams, and cook supper over a fire of driftwood. If thirst overtakes us, we send a native up a tree for green cocoanuts. He cuts a lip-shaped hole in the shell with two strokes of his bolo, and there is water, crystal clear and fresh. The men hunt snipe and wild ducks, and sometimes wild pigs and deer.

In default of travelling theatrical companies, the provincial natives have their own organizations of local talent and present little plays in either Spanish or the native tongue. If American troops are stationed near a town, there will be one or two minstrel shows each year. The Filipinos all go to these, but they don't understand them very well and are not edified. I think they imagine that the cake walk is a national dance with us, and that the President of the United States leads out some important lady for this at inaugural balls.

Once in a while a travelling cinematograph outfit roams through the provinces, and then for a tariff of twenty-five cents Mexican we throng the little theatre night after night. I remember once a company of "barn-stormers" from Australia were stranded in Iloilo. They had a moving picture outfit, and a young lady attired in a pink costume de ballet stood plaintively at one side and sang, plaintively and very nasally, a long account of the courting of some youthful Georgia couple. The lovers embraced each other tenderly (as per view) in an interior that had a "throw" over every picture corner, table, and chair back. Some huge American soldier down in the pit said, "That's the real thing; no doubt about it," but whether his words had reference to the love-making or the room we could not tell.

The song went on, the lovers married and went North; but after awhile the bride grew heartsick for the old home, so "We journeyed South a spell." With this line the moving picture flung at us, head on, a great passenger locomotive and its trailing cars. To the right there were a country road, meadows, some distant hills, a stake and rider fence, and a farmhouse. The scene was homely, simple, typically American, and rustic, and it sent every drop of loyal American blood tingling. The tears rushed to my eyes, and I couldn't forbear joining in the roar of approbation that went up from the American contingent. An Englishman who was with our party insisted that I opened my arms a yard and a half to give strength to my applause. I said I didn't regret it. We poor expatriated wanderers had been drifting about for months with no other emotion than homesickness, but we had a lively one then. The Filipino audience at first sat amazed at the outburst; but their sympathies are quick and keen, and in an instant they realized what it meant to the exiles, and the wave of feeling swept into them too. The young lady in the pink costume grew perceptibly exalted, and in the effort to be more pathetic achieved a degree of nasal intonation which, combined with her Australian accent, made her unique.

The poorer natives have one source of enjoyment in a sort of open-air play which they call colloquio. This is always in the hands of local talent, and is probably of Spanish mediaeval origin. The three actors are a captive princess, a villain, and a true knight. The villain is nearly always masked, and sometimes the princess and knight are masked also. The costuming is European. The performance may take place in a house if anybody is kind enough to offer one, but more frequently the street is the scene. A ring is marked off, and the captive princess stands in the middle, while knight and villain circle about her with their wooden swords, countering, and apparently making up verses and dialogue as they go along. When they get tired, the princess tells her sorrowful tale. The people will stand for hours about a performance of this sort, and for weeks afterwards the children will repeat it in their play.

Once a circo, or group of acrobats, came to Capiz and played for over a month to crowded houses. The low-class people and Chinese thronged the nipa shack of the theatre night after night from nine P.M. till two A.M. When a Filipino goes to the theatre, he expects to get his money's worth. I myself did not attend the circo, but judging from what I saw the children attempt to repeat, and one other incident, I fancy it was quite educative.

The other incident has to do with my henchman, Basilio, previously mentioned, who later arrived at the dignity of public school janitor. Basilio had been a regular patron of the circo, so much so that he came into my debt. One of the first things we had set ourselves to do was the clearing up of all school grounds and premises by pupil labor. Exactly in the middle of the back yard of the Provincial School was a great dovecot, which spoiled the lawn for grass tennis courts. So our industrial teacher decided to move the dovecot bodily to another place. I doubted if it could be accomplished without somebody's getting hurt, and Basilio, without offering any reason, vociferously echoed my sentiments, and jeered openly at the idea of the industrial teacher's getting that dovecot safe and sound to the other end of the yard.

I refused to risk the Provincial School boys on the task, so the teacher borrowed a file of prisoners from the Provincial jail. Basilio the incredulous was ordered to be on hand and to make himself useful. He appeared in a pair of white duck trousers, the gift probably of some departing American, and somebody's discarded bathing shirt in cherry and black stripes. He had cut off the trousers legs at the thighs, and, with bare arms and legs glistening, was as imposing an acrobat as one could wish to see.

I had long wanted a swing put up in a great fire-tree which stood near the dovecot, and while the prisoners were loosening the earth about the four supporting posts, I sent Basilio to put it up. He finished his work just as the prisoners were ready to heave up on the posts, and, to express his entire glee in what was shortly to occur, he came down the rope a la circo, and landed himself with a ballet dancer's pirouette, kissing both hands toward the tugging men. Anything more graceful and more comical than Basilio's antics, I have never seen.

The dovecot was supported, as I said, by four great posts sunk in the ground. On top of these was a platform, and on the platform rested the house. The American teacher had assumed that the platform was securely fastened to the posts and that the house was nailed to the platform. This was his great mistake. He had not been over very long, and he couldn't make allowance for the Filipino aversion for unnecessary labor. The dovecot would hold firm by its own weight, and the builders had not seen the necessity of wasting nails and strength.

Basilio with outstretched arms continued to stand on his toes while the prisoners grunted over the posts, which came up with difficulty. They were shamelessly lazy and indifferent to the commands of the industrial teacher, who had, however, the sagacity to get out of range himself. They lifted unevenly, there was a tipping, a sliding, and a smash, as by one impulse the prisoners jumped aside and let house, platform, and posts come thundering to the ground. Feathers drifted about like snow; there were wild flutterings of doves; and squabs and eggs spattered the lawn.

When I saw that nobody was hurt, I joined in the cackles of the prisoners, who were doubled up with joy at the discomfiture of the American teacher. He was in a blind rage, which was not diminished by the outcries and lamentations of the Governor and a horde of clerks, who swarmed out to express their grief over the wanton destruction of a landmark. Privately, I don't believe they cared a rap, but the opportunity to reproach an American for bad judgment comes so seldom to the Filipinos that they refuse to let it escape.

Basilio never moved a muscle when the crash came. He had stood buoyantly expectant; he received it flamboyantly calm. A smile of ineffable pleasure then seized upon his features, and with the breaking forth of the chorus he rose to joyous action. He spun on his heels like a dervish. He threw handsprings, he walked on his hands, he exhausted, in short, all that he had been able to acquire in the abandon of the previous weeks; and then gravely righting himself, he went over and began to pick up squabs. These he offered to the American with a perfectly wooden countenance, and with the simple statement that they were very good eating. He acted as if he thought the teacher had done it all for that purpose.



CHAPTER XXII

Children's Games—The Conquest of Fires

Children's Games—How Moonlight Nights Are Enjoyed—The Popularity of Baseball Among the Filipinos—My Domestics Play the Game—The Difficulty of Putting Out Fires—Need of Water-Storage for the Dry Season—Apathy of the Public at Fires—Examples Showing the Loyalty and Devotion of Servants When Fires Occur.

Filipino children are not so active as the children of our own race, and their games incline to the sedentary order. Like their elders, they gamble; and like all children, the world over, they have a certain routine in which games succeed one another. At one season in the year the youngsters are absorbed in what must be a second cousin to "craps." Every child has some sort of tin can filled with small spotted seashells. They throw these like dice; they slap their hands together with the raking gesture of the crap-player, and utter ejaculations in which numeral adjectives predominate, and which must be similar to "lucky six" and kindred expressions.

Following the crap game there is usually a season of devotion to a kind of solitaire which is played with shells on a circular board, scooped out into a series of little cup-like depressions. They will amuse themselves with this for hours at a time. The shells are moved from cup to cup, and other shells are thrown like dice to determine how the shells are to progress.

The commonest form of child gambling, however, is that of pitching coppers on the head and tail plan. You may see twenty or more games of this sort at any time around a primary school. Sometimes the game ends in a fight. Sometimes the biggest urchin gathers up everything in sight and escapes on the ringing of the bell, leaving his howling victims behind.

Not unnaturally, in consideration of the heat, there is comparatively little enthusiasm for rough sport. The only very active play in which little boys and girls engage, is leap frog, which differs slightly from the game in our own country.

Two children sit upon the ground and clasp their right hands. A leader starts out, clears this barrier, and all the rest of the players follow. Then one of the sitting children clasps his unoccupied left hand upon the upraised thumb of his companion, thus raising the height of the barrier by the width of the palm. The line starts again and all jump this. Then the second sitter adds his palm and thumb to the barrier, and the line of players attack this. It is more than likely that some one will fail to clear this last barrier, and the one who does so squats down, pressing close to the other two, and puts in his grimy little paw and thumb. So they continue to raise the height of the barrier till, at last, nobody can jump it.

When they play drop the handkerchief, Filipino children squat upon their heels in a circle instead of standing. They have also the familiar "King William was King James's Son"; I do not know whether the words in the vernacular which they use are the equivalent of ours or not. The air, at least, is the one with which we are all familiar.

They have one more game which seems to be something like our hop-scotch but more complicated. The diagram, which is roughly scratched out on the ground, is quite an extensive one. The player is blindfolded, and hops about, kicking at his bit of stone and placing it in accordance with some mysterious rule which I have vainly sought to acquire. The children play this in the cool, long-shadowed afternoons, when they have returned from school, have doffed their white canvas shoes and short socks, and have reverted to the single slip of the country.

There is a local game of football which is played with a hollow ball or basket of twisted rattan fibres. The players stand in a ring, and when the ball approaches one, he swings on one heel till his back is turned, and, glancing over his shoulder, gives it a queer backward kick with the heel of his unoccupied foot. It requires some art to do this, yet the ball will be kept sometimes in motion for two or three minutes without once falling to the ground.

On moonlight nights the Filipinos make the best of their beautiful world. The aristocrats stroll about in groups of twenty, or even thirty, the young people snatching at the opportunity to slip into private conversation and enjoy a little solitude a deux while their elders are engrossed in more serious topics. The common people enjoy a wholesome romp in a game which seems to be a combination of "tag" and "prisoner's base." Groups of serenaders stroll about with guitars and mandolins, and altogether a most sweet and wholesome domesticity pervades the village.

At present the nearest real bond between American and Filipino is baseball—"playball" the Filipinos call it, having learned to associate these words with it from the enthusiastic shouts of American onlookers. Baseball has taken firm hold, and is here to stay. In Manila every plot of green is given over to its devotees. Every secondary school in the country has its nine and its school colors and yell, and the pupils go out and "root" as enthusiastically as did ever freshmen of old Yale or Harvard. No Fourth of July can pass without its baseball game.

We had a good baseball team at Capiz as early as 1903, and played matches with school teams from neighboring towns. I did not realize, however, how popular the game had become until one warm afternoon, when I was vainly trying to get a nap.

The noise under my window was deafening. Thuds, shrieks, a babble of native words, and familiar English terms floated in and disturbed my rest. Finally I got up and went to the window.

The street was not over twenty-five feet wide, the houses, after native custom, being flush with the gutter. In this narrow space my servants had started a game of ball. They had the diamond all marked out, and one player on each base. There was Ceferiana, the cook, a maid of seventeen, with her hair twisted into a Sappho knot at the back with one wisp hanging out like a horse's tail. Her petticoat was wrapped tightly around her slim body and its back fulness tucked in at the waist. She was barefooted, and her toes, wide apart as they always are when shoes have never been worn, worked with excitement. There was Manuel, who skated the floors, an anaemic youth of fifteen or sixteen, dressed in a pair of dirty white underdrawers with the ankle strings dragging, and in an orange and black knit undershirt. There was Rosario, the little maid who waited on me and went to school. She was third base and umpire. A neighbor's boy, about eight years old, was first base. Manuel was second base and pitcher combined. Ceferiana was at the bat, while behind her her youngest brother—he whose engaging smile occupied so much of my attention at the funeral of the lavandero aforementioned—was spread out in the attitude of a professional catcher. His plump, rounded little legs were stretched so far apart that he could with difficulty retain his balance. He scowled, smacked his lips, and at intervals thumped the back of his pudgy, clenched fist into the hollowed palm of the other hand with the gesture of a man who wears the catcher's mitt. Had a professional baseball team from the States ever caught sight of that baby, they would have secured him as a mascot at any price.

The ball was one of those huge green oranges which the English call pomeloes, about twice the size of an American grape-fruit. Being green, and having a skin an inch thick; it withstood the resounding thwacks of the bat quite remarkably. It was fortunate that the diamond was so small, for it would have taken more strength than any of the players possessed to send that plaything any distance. Catching it was only the art of embracing. It had to be guided and hugged to the breast, for it was too big to hold in the hands. The valorous catcher, in spite of his fiercely professional air, invariably dodged it and then pursued it.

The bat was a board about eight inches wide, wrenched from the lid of a Batoum oil case and roughly cut down at one end for a handle. With the size of the ball, and the width of the bat, missing was an impossibility. It was only a question of how far the strength of the batter could send the ball. When it was struck, everybody ran to the next base, and seemed to feel if he got there before the ball hit ground, he had scored something.

Rosario, as I said, was both third base and umpire (after a run they always reverted to their original positions). Her voice rang out in a symphony like this: "Wan stri'! Wan ball! Fou' ball! Ilapog! ilapog sa acon! Hindi! Ilapog sa firs' base! Fou' ball."

At times when somebody on a base made a feint of stealing a run (for they were acting out everything as they had seen it done at the last public match), Manuel threatened all points of the compass with his four-inch projectile, and again the voice of Rosario soared, "Ilapog—Ilapog sa firs' base—Hindi! sa Ceferiana! ah (ow-ut)!" while an enthusiastic onlooker who had set down a bamboo pipe filled with tuba dulce (the unfermented sap of the nipa palm or the cocoanut tree) added his lungs to the uproar in probably the only two English words he knew—"Play ball! play ball!"

Thus are the beginnings of great movements in small things. Those children got more real Americanism out of that corrupted ball game than they did from singing "My Country, 'tis of Thee" every morning.

From a baseball game to a fire is a far cry, but fire in the Philippines has such distinctive features that I cannot pass it without a word. The lack of all facilities for combating it makes it an ever present menace. The combustible materials of which houses are built, and their close crowding together, tend to spread it rapidly; while the thatched roofs make even the burning of an isolated house a danger to the entire community.

Manila has an up-to-date American fire department, but even there, with water mains and a signal-box system for alarms, a fire once started in a nipa district in the dry season can seldom be checked until the neighborhood is clean swept. In the provinces, where there is not so much as a bucket brigade, the first alarm sends everybody's heart into his mouth.

The chief trouble is the lack of water for putting out a fire in its incipiency. Never was there a land in which water was more abundant or more scarce than it is in the Philippines. For five months of every year the skies let down a deluge, but nothing appreciable of all the downfall is saved. The rich—the haughty, ostentatious rich—have great masonry tanks walled up at the ends of their houses, capable of holding two or three thousand gallons of water. With the contents of these tanks the rich people supply themselves with drinking water during the dry season, and net a considerable income from its sale to their less fortunate neighbors. The merely well-to-do people content themselves with a galvanized iron tank, which may store from two to six hundred gallons, which is seldom enough to last out the dry season. In this case they buy water from the mountaineers, who fill their tinajas, or twenty-gallon earthenware jars, with water from mountain springs, and bring them to the nearest towns in bancas.

The poor people have no way whatever of storing rain-water, and either beg a few quarts each day from the rich people to whom they are feudally attached, or else they fall back upon the ground wells, or pozos, which, even they know, breed fevers and dysentery.

By no means every house has its well. Sometimes there are only two or three to a block. Sometimes the well is merely a shallow hole, uncemented, to catch the seepage of the upper strata. Sometimes it is a very deep stone-walled cavity. Rarely is there a pump or a windlass or any other fixed aid for raising the water.

When a fire starts, therefore, with such an inadequate water supply, nothing can be done except to tear down communicating houses or roofs. Enterprising natives who live even at a considerable distance, usually mount their ridge-poles and wet down their roofs if they can get the water with which to do it.

In the immediate vicinity of the fire itself tumult reigns. Filipino womankind, who are so alluringly feminine, are also femininely helpless in a crisis, and if there be no men around to direct and sustain them, often lose their heads entirely. They give way to lamentations, gather up their babies, and flee to the homes of their nearest relatives. Often they forget even their jewels and ready money, which are locked in a wardrobe.

Meanwhile, if there be men folks about, they make a more systematic effort to save things, and as all relatives and connections who are out of danger themselves rush in at the first alarm, quite a little may be rescued. The things which are traditional with us as showing how people lose their heads at a fire are just as evident here as in our own land. They throw dishes, glassware, and fine furniture out of the windows, and carry down iron pots and pillows. The poor gather their little store of clothing in sheets, release the tethered goats, puppies, game-cocks, and monkeys, which are always abundant about their shacks, and toddle off with their doll trunks in their arms. The sight is a pitiful one, especially when the old and decrepit, of which almost every house yields up one or more, are carried out in hammocks or chairs. Yet in a few hours all will have found shelter with friends, and probably the suffering consequent upon a fire is less than in our own country, where people have more to lose and where the rigor of climate is a factor not to be overlooked.

There is very little use in combating fire under such circumstances, and perhaps long experience has contributed to the apathy with which such disasters are treated. The American constabulary and military officials generally turn out their men, and lend every effort themselves to quell the flames. Here and there individual Filipinos, such as governors or presidentes, who feel the pressure of official responsibility, display considerable activity; but, on the whole, the aristocratic, or governing, class rather demonstrates its weakness at such times. The men whose property is not threatened seldom exert themselves, but stand in groups and chatter about how this could be done or that. Everybody is full of suggestions for somebody else to execute, but nobody does anything. The municipal police nose about in the crowd, and at intervals seize upon some obscure and inoffensive citizen, propelling him violently in the direction of the conflagration with orders to "work." He half-heartedly picks up an old five-gallon petroleum can or a bamboo water-pipe, and starts off to the nearest well, but as soon as he is out of range of the policeman's eye he drops the article, shuffles back into the gazing crowd, and does no more work.

At such time the loyalty and devotion of servants are put to a severe test. Two incidents came under my notice which it is a pleasure to describe. During my third year at Capiz our own home (I was "messing" with another American woman teacher) was threatened by fire one night, and all our household goods were carried out and saved by American men. The house was on fire more than once, but they managed to extinguish the fire each time.

Mention has previously been made of my little maid, Ceferiana. At the first alarm that night, she rushed into my room, and, spreading out a sheet, began to throw clothes into it from my drawers and wardrobe. When she had gathered up a full bundle, she rushed off to a place of safety, deposited it and came back for more. Meanwhile I had gathered up some silver and other valuables, and locked them in a trunk. Ceferiana helped me to carry this out, and as we were returning, the sweep of the flames seemed to be almost engulfing our house. For the first time Ceferiana gave a thought to her own possessions. With a wail—"Ah, Dios mio, mi ropa!" ("Oh, my God! my clothes!")—she sank down on her knees, beating her breast, and bewailing the loss of a wardrobe made up chiefly from my cast-off garments, but even then far richer than that of most girls of her class.

About this time the American men began to arrive on the scene, and though they would not permit us to return to the house, they chivalrously rescued Ceferiana's possessions as well as mine.

The lady who lived with me had some time before discharged a servant for a cause which we others considered not very just. She was timid, and as her husband was away, she was unwilling to permit the servant to leave the premises for even a brief time. Filipino servants simply cannot be handled in that way. A certain amount of time for recreation and pleasure is their just due, and they will have it. Adolphus, robbed of his paseo, reported that his grandmother was dying, and demanded an evening off to visit her. His mistress happened to take a walk that evening and beheld Adolphus the perfidious, not sitting by a dying grandmother, but tripping the light fantastic in a nipa shack, eight by twelve. She forthwith discharged Adolphus, and even levied on the services of a friendly constabulary officer to thrash him with a stingaree, or sting ray cane. Adolphus retaliated by forging her husband's name to some chits for liquors. She had him arrested, prosecuted, and jailed. He had just finished his sentence when the fire came. He was almost the first person to appear, and worked like a Trojan for two hours, his services being of no mean value. I think the reader will agree with me that Adolphus showed a Christian and forgiving spirit.

The End



NOTE

[1] Since the writing of the above sentence, one American woman has been murdered in Batangas, one young girl violated in Manila, and knowledge has come to the writer of three cases of attempted assault on American women, which were kept out of the newspapers.