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him; while everything is open for a Filipino. This is sometimes a fact, and has happened to me more than once; but everything needs explanation, and one must not pass judgment without hearing both sides. One must remember that there are at present many vicious and abandoned swindlers in the islands, especially of the class of creoles; and that such men very often form the plan to go to travel through the provinces at the cost of the curas, either to amuse themselves or to seek their fortunes. But, for amusement, the silver spoons and other trifles of one [of the curas] have been carried away. There are various others; especially among the recently-arrived military men, who, brought up among disturbances, and accustomed to insult the religious with impunity, have no scruples about telling them what they call "the truths of the coxswain." "Who could eat free soup [100] as you do, father, without working?" "What matters to you the good or poor harvest, so long as you have fools to impose upon?" "How is the stewardess?" "How many children have you?"--and innumerable others of the same kind, and even much worse. Anyone can recognize that it is very natural for these things to happen, and I myself have been a witness of them. There are more things--namely, that many of those persons who have been in the convents take delight immediately in publishing the weaknesses of the cura, abusing the confidence that the latter reposed in him, and (what is worse) exaggerating, and even mentioning things that never occurred. If the friar, carried away by the good humor born of the company of a compatriot, drank a little and became jolly, then he relates that the friar was drunk. If he saw a woman with a child in her arms who had come to speak to the friar on any of the innumerable matters that arise in the village, then he says that he knew the sweetheart and a child of the friar. If some curas of neighboring villages assembled, and engaged in playing _brisca_, or "thirty-one," [101] in order to pass the time, then it is said that they engaged in gambling. On that account the curas are so cautious of giving the freedom of their houses and their friendship to transient Spaniards, that they will now scarcely receive anyone who does not bring a letter of recommendation; and, considering this sensibly, it does not seem that they are to be censured for this caution toward people whom they do not know, in consideration of the fact that in Manil
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