of long illness, are so minutely reproduced
that even their contents may be distinguished. In looking at these
pictures, which excite the appetite and inspire gay bucolic ideas, one
may perhaps be led to think that the malicious host is well acquainted
with the characters of the majority of those who are to sit at his
table and that, in order to conceal his own way of thinking, he has
hung from the ceiling costly Chinese lanterns; bird-cages without
birds; red, green, and blue globes of frosted glass; faded air-plants;
and dried and inflated fishes, which they call _botetes_. The view is
closed on the side of the river by curious wooden arches, half Chinese
and half European, affording glimpses of a terrace with arbors and
bowers faintly lighted by paper lanterns of many colors.

In the sala, among massive mirrors and gleaming chandeliers, the
guests are assembled. Here, on a raised platform, stands a grand
piano of great price, which tonight has the additional virtue of not
being played upon. Here, hanging on the wall, is an oil-painting of a
handsome man in full dress, rigid, erect, straight as the tasseled cane
he holds in his stiff, ring-covered fingers--the whole seeming to say,
"Ahem! See how well dressed and how dignified I am!" The furnishings
of the room are elegant and perhaps uncomfortable and unhealthful,
since the master of the house would consider not so much the comfort
and health of his guests as his own ostentation, "A terrible thing
is dysentery," he would say to them, "but you are sitting in European
chairs and that is something you don't find every day."

This room is almost filled with people, the men being separated from
the women as in synagogues and Catholic churches. The women consist of
a number of Filipino and Spanish maidens, who, when they open their
mouths to yawn, instantly cover them with their fans and who murmur
only a few words to each other, any conversation ventured upon dying
out in monosyllables like the sounds heard in a house at night, sounds
made by the rats and lizards. Is it perhaps the different likenesses
of Our Lady hanging on the walls that force them to silence and a
religious demeanor or is it that the women here are an exception?

A cousin of Capitan Tiago, a sweet-faced old woman, who speaks Spanish
quite badly, is the only one receiving the ladies. To offer to the
Spanish ladies a plate of cigars and _buyos_, to extend her hand to
her countrywomen to be kissed, exa