red with hand embroidered flowers, and their filmy pina
waists and broad collar pieces were rich with needle-work. They all
wore a kind of heelless velvet slipper, very common as a dress shoe in
the Philippines, or high-heeled patent leather shoes with neatly
fitting black stockings.

The men were dressed in white coats and white pantaloons or black
coats and white pantaloons. White shirts and collars, together with
all sorts and styles of cravats and low-cut patent leather shoes with
highly colored socks completed their dress.

It was easy to see that the Filipinos really had a good deal of money;
that they liked to dress was apparent; and that they believed in a
table loaded with good things was a fact to which all of us were
enthusiastic witnesses.

CHAPTER VI.

A SKETCH OF LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES.

House-keeping in the Philippines presents some interesting phases. Our
club of American officials decided to run a mess, so we employed a
cook and a house boy, then each of us provided himself with a personal
servant, making a total of six servants for four men--it takes about
this proportion of servants to live in any sort of comfort in the
Philippines--and launched ourselves boldly upon the sea of domestic
economy. But there were shoals ahead of us, for the question of
regulating servants is one of no small importance in the Philippines,
and one of its most disadvantageous features is the long chain of
dependents that usually attends it.

We gave the cooks so much a day with which to buy supplies in the
local market, for our own table, making him render a daily list of
expenditures, and a fixed amount besides to purchase rice and fish for
himself and the other servants. Of course, if they wished to vary
their diet and get chicken and fresh pork, which could be had at far
distant intervals, it was wholly a matter of their option, but the
allowance was made on the basis of so much rice and fish a day for
each. This allowance was about fifteen cents a day in Spanish coin per
servant.

Thus far all was well. We had agreed to give the cook eight dollars a
month in Spanish money, thinking that good wages would procure good
service, but the visions of affluence that floated before him on such
floods of wealth were so alluring that they drew him from the kitchen
to the cooler veranda. In less than a week he had employed an
assistant at four dollars a month; in less than another week that
assistant had employed