s of which stalk men in eighteenth-century court
costumes, which include huge shoe buckles, black silk stockings,
and powdered wigs. The carriages flock behind with little pretence of
order, and at a sharper pace than is customary with us. The populace
are, however, most respectful; rich and poor alike remove their hats
when the funeral _cortege_ is passing.

In the provinces where there are no hearses, a funeral consists
usually of a coffin carried on the shoulders of four men, and
followed by a straggling concourse of mourners. If the corpse be
that of a child, it not infrequently lies, gorgeously dressed,
upon the blue-and-pink-beribboned cushions of a four-wheeled baby
carriage. New-born babes are buried in tiny coffins covered with pink
or blue cambric.

The Filipinos say that when a child dies its pure little soul goes
straight to _gloria_, wherefore it is much to be congratulated on
leaving this abode of sorrow for one of unending happiness, and only
gay music is used at the funeral. The local bands play solely by ear,
and make the most of whatever music they hear sung or whistled on
the streets, with the result that strangely inappropriate selections
are used on these occasions. At the first child's funeral I ever saw,
the band was playing "Hot Time," and a friend to whom I related this
fact, declared that at the first one he ever saw they were playing,
"I don't care if you never come back." This sounds too fortuitously
happy to be true, but it is quite within the possible.

When I had lived in Capiz a year or two, my washerman, or _lavandero_,
died, and his widow, pointing to a numerous progeny, besought for
an advance of five pesos for necessary funeral expenses. She wanted
ten, but I refused to countenance that extravagance. She did not
seem overcome by grief, and her plea of numerous offspring was really
valueless, for, if anything, they were all better off than before. Her
lord had been only a sham washerman, collecting the garments for her
to wash, delivering them, and pocketing the returns, of which he gave
her as small a moiety as would sustain life, and spent the rest on
the cockpit.

Funerals in a country where there are no preservatives take place
very soon. The lavandero died at dawn, his widow made her levy on
me before seven o'clock, and, coming home that afternoon, I met the
funeral in a thickly shaded lane.

Local tradition disapproves of the appearance of near female
relations at a funera