fore which all Spaniards should prostrate themselves and
adore him. As a _religieux_ he was a most worthy minister of the Lord;
as a patriot he was a hero."

Within my recollection, too, a friar absconded from a Luzon Island
parish with a large sum of parochial funds, and was never heard of
again. The late parish priests of Mandaloyan and Iba did the same.

I well remember another interesting character of the monastic
Orders. He had been parish priest in a Zambales province town, but
intrigues with a _soi-disant cousine_ brought him under ecclesiastical
arrest at the convent of his Order in Manila. Thence he escaped, and
came over to Hong-Kong, where I made his acquaintance in 1890. He
told me he had started life in an honest way as a shoemaker's boy,
but was taken away from his trade to be placed in the seminary. His
mind seemed to be a blank on any branch of study beyond shoemaking
and Church ritual. He pretended that he had come over to Hong-Kong
to seek work, but in reality he was awaiting his _cousine_, whom he
rejoined on the way to Europe, where, I heard, he became a _garcon
de cafe_ in France.

In 1893 there was another great public scandal, when the friars were
openly accused of having printed the seditious proclamations whose
authorship they attributed to the natives. The plan of the friars was
to start the idea of an intended revolt, in order that they might be
the first in the field to quell it, and thus be able to again proclaim
to the Home Government the absolute necessity of their continuance in
the Islands for the security of Spanish sovereignty. But the plot was
discovered; the actual printer, a friar, mysteriously disappeared,
and the courageous Gov.-General Despujols, Conde de Caspe, was,
through monastic influence, recalled. He was very popular, and the
public manifestation of regret at his departure from the Islands was
practically a protest against the Religious Orders.

In June, 1888, some cases of personal effects belonging to a friar
were consigned to the care of an intimate friend of mine, whose guest
I was at the time. They had become soaked with sea-water before he
received them, and a neighbouring priest requested him to open the
packages and do what he could to save the contents. I assisted my
friend in this task, and amongst the friar's personal effects we
were surprised to find, intermixed with prayer-books, scapularies,
missals, prints of saints, etc., about a dozen most disgustingly