ife here is a boon. Remember
that for an expenditure of forty or fifty dollars a month the single
woman can maintain an establishment of her own--a genuine home--where
after a day's toil she can find order and peace and idleness awaiting
her. Filipino servants are not ideal, but any woman with a capacity
for organization can soon train them into keeping her house in the
outward semblance at least of order and cleanliness. She had better
investigate it pretty closely on Saturdays and Sundays; if she does
so, she can leave it to run itself very well during the five days of
her labor. And what a joy it is--I speak in the bitter remembrance
of a long line of hotels and boarding-houses--to go back to one's
home after a day's labor instead of to a hall bedroom; to sit at
one's own well-ordered if simple table, and escape the chatter of
twenty or thirty people who have no reason for association except
their economic necessities!

In the six years I have lived in these Islands, I have never heard of
indignity or disrespect shown to American women. [1] They are perfectly
safe, and if they choose to exercise any common sense, need not be
nervous. Housebreaking outside of Manila is unknown. I myself lived
for four years in a provincial town, the greater part of the time quite
removed from the neighborhood of other Americans, with only two little
girls in the house with me. I remember one evening having a couple of
civil engineers, who had been fellow passengers on the transport and
were temporarily in town, to dinner. When they were ready to leave,
at half-past ten, the little girls had both gone to sleep, so I went
downstairs to let them out and bar the door after them. One burst
out laughing and remarked that my bolting the door was a formality,
and that I must have confidence in the honesty of the natives. The
door was of bamboo, tied on with strips of rattan in place of hinges,
which any one could have cut with a knife. I admitted that the man was
right, but the closed door was the symbol that my house was my castle,
and I had no fear of Filipino thieves. The only time I was ever really
afraid was when there were two or three disreputable Americans in town.

The two girls from Radcliffe were in a town in Negros where there was
no other American, man or woman, and held their position for over a
year; nor were they once affrighted in all that time.

After five years of this peace and security in the "wilds," I went back
to th