one to a dozen looms. The jusi,
made from the jusi that comes in the thread from China, is colored
to suit the fancy of the individual, but is not extensively used by
the natives, who usually prefer the abuka, pina, or sinamay, which
are products of the abuka tree, or pineapple fibre. The quality of
these depends on the fineness of the threads. It is very delicate,
yet durable, and--what is most essential--can be washed.

The common natives seem to have no fixed hours for their meals, nor
do they have any idea of gathering around the family board. After
they began to use knives and forks one woman said she would rather
not use her knife, it cut her mouth so. Even the best of them prefer
to squat on the floor, make a little round ball of half cooked rice
with the tips of their fingers and throw it into the mouth.

My next door neighbor was considered one of the better class of
citizens, and through my window I could not help, in the two years
of my stay, seeing much of the working part of her household. There
were pigs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys, either running freely about
the kitchen or tied by the leg to the kitchen stove. The floors of
these kitchens are never tight; they allow the greater part of the
accumulated filth of all these animals to sift through to the ground
below. There were about fifteen in the family; this meant fifteen or
twenty servants, but as there are few so poor in the islands as to be
unable to command a poorer still, these chief servants had a crowd
of underlings responsible to themselves alone. The head cook had
a wife, two children and two servants that got into their quarters
by crawling up an old ladder. I climbed up one day to see how much
space they had. I put my head in at the the opening that served them
for door and window, but could not get my shoulders in. The whole
garret was about eight feet long and six feet wide. One end of it
was partitioned off for their fighting cocks.

All the time I was there this family of the cook occupied that loft,
and the two youngest ones squalled night and day, one or other, or
both of them. There was not a single thing in that miserable hole
for those naked children to lie on or to sit on. The screams or the
wails of the wretched babies, the fighting of the rats under foot, the
thud of the bullets at one's head, the constant fear of being burned
out,--these things are not conducive to peaceful slumbers, but to
frightful dreams, to nightmare, to