bility. It was only a question of how far the strength
of the batter could send the ball. When it was struck, everybody ran
to the next base, and seemed to feel if he got there before the ball
hit ground, he had scored something.

Rosario, as I said, was both third base and umpire (after a run they
always reverted to their original positions). Her voice rang out in
a symphony like this: "Wan stri'! Wan ball! Fou' ball! Ilapog! ilapog
sa acon! Hindi! Ilapog sa firs' base! Fou' ball."

At times when somebody on a base made a feint of stealing a run
(for they were acting out everything as they had seen it done at
the last public match), Manuel threatened all points of the compass
with his four-inch projectile, and again the voice of Rosario soared,
"Ilapog--Ilapog sa firs' base--Hindi! sa Ceferiana! ah (ow-ut)!" while
an enthusiastic onlooker who had set down a bamboo pipe filled with
_tuba dulce_ (the unfermented sap of the nipa palm or the cocoanut
tree) added his lungs to the uproar in probably the only two English
words he knew--"Play ball! play ball!"

Thus are the beginnings of great movements in small things. Those
children got more real Americanism out of that corrupted ball game
than they did from singing "My Country, 'tis of Thee" every morning.

From a baseball game to a fire is a far cry, but fire in the
Philippines has such distinctive features that I cannot pass it
without a word. The lack of all facilities for combating it makes it
an ever present menace. The combustible materials of which houses are
built, and their close crowding together, tend to spread it rapidly;
while the thatched roofs make even the burning of an isolated house
a danger to the entire community.

Manila has an up-to-date American fire department, but even there,
with water mains and a signal-box system for alarms, a fire once
started in a nipa district in the dry season can seldom be checked
until the neighborhood is clean swept. In the provinces, where there
is not so much as a bucket brigade, the first alarm sends everybody's
heart into his mouth.

The chief trouble is the lack of water for putting out a fire in its
incipiency. Never was there a land in which water was more abundant or
more scarce than it is in the Philippines. For five months of every
year the skies let down a deluge, but nothing appreciable of all the
downfall is saved. The rich--the haughty, ostentatious rich--have
great masonry tanks walled up at the ends