ed until the next day, and we threaded the
water lanes in quiet, emerging at last on the full-breasted river. The
home journey consumed only three hours, and was comparatively
uneventful. The wife of the Presidente gathered her family about her
and artlessly searched their raven pates for inhabitants which pay
no taxes, and most of the young people drooped with weariness. We
rounded the bend at five o'clock; and thankful I was to put foot on
_terra firma_ once more. I was tired, but glad that I had gone.

CHAPTER XX

Sickbeds and Funerals

Customs in the Treatment of the Sick--Stately Funeral Processions--The
Funeral of a Poor Man--Unsociableness of the Poor--Wakes and Burial
of the Rich--A "Petrified" Man.

Filipinos are punctilious about many things concerning which we have
passed the extremely punctilious stage. Some of their strictest
observances are in the matters of sickness and death. The sick
have what we would consider a hard time. To begin with, they are
immured in rooms from which, as far as possible, all light and air
are excluded. In a tropical climate, where the breeze is almost
indispensable to comfort, the reader may imagine the result. Then
all their relatives, near and far, flock to see them; they crowd the
apartment, and insist on talking to keep the patient from becoming
_triste_. When the sufferer finds this insupportable and gives up
the struggle to live, the whole clan, out to the last connection,
set about preparing their mourning.

Every woman makes a black dress, and every man ties a band of black
cloth around his white coat sleeve. When there is a wake, it is
noisy enough to be Irish. Our Eastern friends resemble the Irish
also in their love of a fine funeral. To go to the last resting-place
escorted by a band and with all possible ceremony seems to make even
death acceptable to them.

Among the very poor this ambition is quite disproportionate to their
resources. The percentage of infant mortality, owing to poor nutrition,
is especially high; yet babe after babe whose mother unwittingly
starved it to death is given a funeral in which the baby carriage
hearse is preceded by a local band, and hired mourners stalk solemnly
behind the little coffin in place of the mother, who is, in etiquette,
required to remain at home.

In Manila funerals resemble our own, save that the hearse, be it white
for a child or black for an adult, is drawn by stately caparisoned
horses, at the bridle