apers as one of the social events
of the season. We had really a good programme, we transacted quite
a little business in accordance with parliamentary usage: we elected
the Governor, the Presidente, and several prominent citizens honorary
members, and they acknowledged the compliment with appropriate remarks.

About a week after our open session I was about to retire
one night, when I heard the sound of music and saw lights
approaching. Transparencies were waving about in the warm air. As there
was no cholera, and therefore no occasion for a San Roque procession,
I hung out of the window, local fashion, to find out what it was all
about. It was a newly organized parliamentary society parading. In less
than a month three new societies had blossomed among the youths and old
men of the town. American teachers were engaged as parliamentarians,
although the societies were conducted in Spanish, not English. The
societies all died a natural death in a little while; but of course,
the school society being compulsory could not die, and so far as I know
is still going on. Every public school of the secondary class has its
school societies, and they must form the ideals of the new generation.

One of the most irritating features of life in those early days,
and one which offered a problem rather difficult for the Government
to solve, was the matter of currency. The money in use was silver,
with a small paper circulation of Banco Espagnol-Filipino notes. The
notes were printed on a kind of pink blotting paper which looked as if
it would be easy to counterfeit. The silver was what we called at first
"Mex" and later "Dobie." There were some pieces coined especially for
the Philippines, but in general "Mex" was made up of coins of Spain,
Mexico, Islas Filipinas, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Canton, and Amoy--only
the experts of the Government could tell where it all came from. With
the public at large, any coin that looked as if it contained the fair
average of silver was accepted. Every month the paymasters of the
United States Army and Navy issued thousands of dollars in American
silver and paper, but this disappeared in a twinkling, swallowed up
by the local agents who were buying gold with which China paid her
indemnity. Each incoming steamer brought loads of "Dobie" from the
Asiatic coast, but our good dollars and quarters went out of sight
like falling stars.

The silver coins consisted of pesos, medio-pesos, pesetas (twenty-cent
p