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e end of the cylinder, and the workman commences by fastening the strips of fern stalk to it. The size of the case corresponds to the diameter of the roller, and a small wooden disk is placed in the bottom of the case to keep it steady while the sides are being plaited. [A Filipino theater.] When my ankle began to get better, my first excursion was to Legaspi, where some Filipinos were giving a theatrical performance. A Spanish political refugee directed the entertainment. On each side of the stage, roofed in with palm leaves, ran covered galleries for the dignitaries of the place; the uncovered space between these was set apart for the common people. The performers had chosen a play taken from Persian history. The language was Spanish, and the dresses were, to say the least, eccentric. The stage was erected hard by a public street, which itself formed part of the auditorium, and the noise was so great that I could only catch a word here and there. The actors stalked on, chattering their parts, which not one of them understood, and moving their arms up and down; and when they reached the edge of the stage, they tacked and went back again like ships sailing against the wind. Their countenances were entirely devoid of expression, and they spoke like automatons. If I had understood the words, the contrast between their meaning and the machine-like movements of the actors would probably have been droll enough; but, as it was, the noise, the heat, and the smoke were so great that we soon left the place. [An indifferent performance.] Both the theatrical performance and the whole festival bore the impress of laziness, indifference, and mindless mimicry. When I compared the frank cheerfulness I had seen radiating from every countenance at the religious holidays of Europe with the expressionless and immobile faces of the natives, I found it difficult to understand how the latter were persuaded to waste so much time and money upon a matter they seemed so thoroughly indifferent to. [Interest in festival.] Travellers have remarked the same want of gaiety amongst the Indians of America; and some of them ascribe it to the small development of the nervous system prevalent among these peoples, to which cause also they attribute their wonderful courage in bearing pain. But Tylor observes that the Indian's countenance is so different from ours that it takes us several years to rightly interpret its expression. There probably is som
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