ked in
to offer condolences and comforts; a priest received the young woman's
confession and performed the last rites; the doctor plied his patient
with drugs, fomentations, and stimulants; father, mother, and friends
groaned, prayed, and tore their hair. All the time the poor creature
sank steadily, the color left her face, her breath grew labored,
and as night fell the doctor's warning was fulfilled,--she was dead.

In a single day the fame of this wonderful physician spread through
all the city, and people flocked to his lodging with money and
diseases. He was dazzled at the prospect of riches. After three or
four years of this kind of thing, if the tax man did not hear too
much of his success, he could return to Spain and live in comfortable
retirement. Alas! for human hopes, he returned sooner than he had
intended. A few days after the death of his first patient somebody
asked how he forecast her fate so exactly.

"It was easy enough,--she spat blood," he answered.

"Are you sure it was blood?"

"Certainly. It was red."

"Ah, senor, every one spits red in Manila."

"Bah!"

"Oh, it is true! Everybody chews the buyo leaf, which is like the
betel of India, that you have heard of, just as everybody smokes in
Luzon. The juice of the buyo is red."

Then the doctor realized that he had killed his patient by making
her believe she was doomed to die, and with the earnings of his brief
career in the Philippines he bought a passage back to Spain in the same
ship that had carried him to the East. So, if you hear that a person
is ill, but if your informant winks and says that he is spitting red,
you may believe that the invalid will be out after a good sleep and
a little bromide.

The Widow Velarde's Husband

Enchanted Lake, near Los Banos, on the Pasig, fills an ancient crater
and is an object of natural interest. Its enchantment, so far as is
generally known, consists in the visits of Widow Velarde's husband to
its shores, and his occasional moonlight excursions over its waters
in a boat that has the same pale green shine as himself. This Velarde
was a fisherman and being somewhat of a gallant he had roused the
mortal jealousy of his wife. In revenge for his supposed slights she
engaged two of his friends to confer on her the joys of widowhood,
which they agreed to do for a consideration. The amount promised was
six dollars, but the preliminary negotiations appear to have been
hasty, for when these wor