obscene double-picture slides for a stereoscope. What an entertainment
for a guide in morals! This same friar had held a vicarage before
in another province, but having become an habitual drunkard, he was
removed to Manila, and there appointed a confessor. From Manila he
had just been again sent to take charge of the _cure of souls_.

I knew a money-grabbing parish priest--a friar--who publicly announced
raffles from the pulpit of the church from which he preached morality
and devotion. On one occasion a 200-peso watch was put up for P500--at
another time he raffled dresses for the women. Under the pretext of
being a pious institution, he established a society of women, called
the Association of St. Joseph (_Confradia de San Jose_), upon whom
he imposed the very secular duties of domestic service in the convent
and raffle-ticket hawking. He had the audacity to dictate to a friend
of mine--a planter--the value of the gifts he was to make to him,
and when the planter was at length wearied of his importunities,
he conspired with a Spaniard to deprive my friend of his estate,
alleging that he was not the real owner. Failing in this, he stirred
up the petty-governor and headmen against him. The petty-governor was
urged to litigation, and when he received an unfavourable sentence,
the priest, enraged at the abortive result of his malicious intrigues,
actually left his vicarage to accompany his litigious _protege_ to the
chief judge of the province in quest of a reversion of the sentence.

A priest of evil propensities brought only misery to his parish and
aroused a feeling of odium against the Spanish friars in general. As
incumbents they held the native in contempt. He who should be the
parishioner was treated despotically as the subject whose life,
liberty, property, and civil rights were in his sacerdotal lord's
power. And that power was not unfrequently exercised, for if a
native refused to yield to his demands, or did not contribute with
sufficient liberality to a religious feast, or failed to come to
Mass, or protected the virtue of his daughter, or neglected the
genuflexion and kissing of hands, or was out of the priest's party in
the municipal affairs of the parish, or in any other trivial way became
a _persona non grata_ at the "convent," he and his family would become
the pastor's sheep marked for sacrifice. As Government agent it was
within his arbitrary power to attach his signature to or withhold it
from any m