in a Noah's ark. Skim, if you ever get
hold of these few pages written in your honor, here's my compliments
and my best wishes for another bar upon your shoulder-straps, and--yes,
here's hoping that you "won't get killed no more."

II.

Last Days at Oroquieta.

I had been visiting the teachers at El Salvador, who occupied a Spanish
convent, with a broad veranda looking out upon the blue sea and a grove
of palms. It was a country of bare hills, which reminded one somewhat
of Colorado. _Nipa_ jungles bristled at the mouths of rivers, and the
valleys were verdant with dense mango copses. We made our first stop
on the way from Cagayan on Sunday morning at a village situated in
a prairie, where a drove of native ponies had been tethered near the
_nipa_ church. The roads were alive with people who had been attending
services or who were on the way to the next cock-fight. Falling in
with a loquacious native, who supplied us with a store of mangoes,
we rode on, and reached Tag-nipa or El Salvador late in the afternoon.

One of the teachers, "Teddy," might have actually stepped from out the
pages of Kate Greenaway. He had a large, broad forehead, and a long,
straight nose. He conducted a school of miserable little girls, and in
the evening, like a village preacher, he would make his pastoral calls
with a "Hello, girlie!" for each child he met. When he was pleased at
anything, he used to clap his hands, exclaiming, "Goodie!" "Teddy"
envied me "my baccalaureate enthusiasm," and, encouraged evidently
by this quality, he would read Chaucer in a sing-song voice, or,
when this recreation failed, would make up limericks to a guitar
accompaniment. His partner was the one who wore the transposed
leggings, and who walked as though continually following a plow.

Leaving for Oroquieta, in a Moro sailboat stocked with Chinese pigs and
commissaries that belonged to one called "Jac-cook" by the natives,
or "The Great White Father"--a New Zealander who could have posed as
an Apollo or a Hercules--the sailors whistled for wind, and finally
succeeded in obtaining it. The moon rose early over the dark waters,
and the boat, behaving admirably, rode the huge waves like a cockle. We
had nearly gone to pieces on a coral reef that night if "Jac-cook,"
suddenly aroused by the unusual sound of breakers, had not lowered
sail in time to save the ship from running on the sharp rock half a
mile from land. The sailors, perfectly incompetent, and