ns of a few important guests may
determine. Filipinos are very quick to follow a lead; and if, owing
perhaps to a concurrence of events which may be perfectly foreign to
the occasion, a number of prominent people leave early, the rest soon
take flight.

In one of the later years of my stay my good fortune led me to
witness a wedding of another type, which differed from the class I
have described as the simple rural gathering at home differs from the
exotic atmosphere of a fashionable reception. It was just after my
return from vacation that one morning a group of my pupils burst in,
accompanying a middle-aged Filipina who hesitatingly made known her
errand. Her niece, who lived some five or six miles up the river,
was to be married that night, and a large number of people from town
were going up. Could I accompany them, and would I act as one of the
three _madrinas_ for the occasion? As the bride was of an insurrecto
family, whose name was familiar through bygone military acquaintances,
I snapped at an opportunity to view the insurrecto upon his own
(pacified) hearth, and after consuming a hasty lunch and packing a
valise, I set out for the river bank where we were to rendezvous.

Our craft, a catamaran made by securing three barotos side by
side and flooring them with bamboo, was the centre of great public
excitement. It had a walk dutrigged at each side for the men who were
to punt, or pole us up the river. It was roofed with a framework
of bamboo, which was covered with palm, leaves and wreathed in
_bonoc-bonoc_ vines, and from this green bower were suspended the
fruits of the season.--bananas, the scarlet _sagin-sagin_, and even
succulent ears of sweet corn.

Cane stools were provided for a few, but many of the young people sat
flat on the floor. When we were embarked, to the number of about forty,
the barotos were so deep in the water that the swirling current was
within an inch of their gunwales. A tilt to one side or a wave in
the river would have sunk us.

The baggage and a few supernumerary young men and a mandolin orchestra
were loaded into an enormous baroto, and ten sturdy brown backs bent
forward as the boatmen pushed with all their strength against the great
bamboo poles, which looked as if they would snap under the strain.

The river was swollen with three days' tropical downpour and running
out resistlessly in the teeth of a high tide. As we slipped out of the
shallow water at the bank, the current