ey 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