sing themselves in similar
pious acts. Its members aided the sick with the utmost solicitude,
striving to provide them with comforts and medicines; and when deaths
occurred they kept watch over the corpses, and accompanied them to
burial, to the great edification of all who saw them. As a natural
result, the confraternity came to be much esteemed and valued, and
many sought the intercession of influential persons in order to be
admitted to its membership. It is proverbial among the Spaniards that
its members can be recognized by their quiet and modest address,
for which they are much respected. Not to mention other details,
the devotion which they showed that year in the harvesting of their
rice was certainly a source of great consolation; for they would not
taste it until, after they had brought part of it as an offering to
our Lord in His temple, that part had been blessed which they must
immediately use. Their offering was a sort of grateful acknowledgment
that God had delivered their grain-fields from the plague of locusts,
and themselves from the sickness.

Care was taken to check offenses against our Lord, and to break up
vile illicit relations--some secretly, and others by other gentle
means--by which many Indian women were kept in bondage. These women,
in their eagerness for worldly gain and kind treatment, were gratified
by certain men, who maintained them in that mode of life without fear
of God. Indeed, there were two women who had killed their husbands
that they might gain greater freedom in this respect. Some, too,
had lived during many years in this wretched state--one ten years,
another twelve, another thirteen; and still another, twenty long
years. Yet God, in His infinite patience, had been waiting for them
all this time, and at the end received them into His most gentle mercy.

As in past years, our ordinary ministries were also exercised among
the Spaniards; in particular, many general confessions were made,
and friendly relations were established between certain prominent
persons. Among these latter was one notable case concerning
a prebendary of the cathedral of Manila--whom, for certain good
reasons, I do not name; but his noble conduct on this occasion gives
him sufficient fame. Knowing that another prebendary of the same
church, an aged and venerable man, was offended at him, he secured
an opportunity to meet him in the house of an auditor of Manila,
and in the presence of several dignified per