languages of two towns a few miles apart are so different that one
would scarcely recognize them as belonging to the same race of people.

Such are the two extremes of life in our new far Eastern provinces:
the one is active, progressive, and cosmopolitan; the other, inactive,
decadent, and narrow; but, whether one enjoys the first or endures the
second, there comes to him after leaving a longing to lounge again in
tropic airs and listen to the lullaby of the winds among the palms.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FILIPINO AT HOME.

As one enters a Filipino sitting-room for the first time, there is one
feature in the arrangement of the furniture that impresses itself upon
him at once, and it may be stated without fear of serious
contradiction that this same peculiar feature in its arrangement will
continue to face him, as he enters different homes, about as certainly
as he crosses the threshold.

The arrangement referred to is that of one large mirror, one settee,
and some ten or a dozen chairs that appear to have had a certain
orderly affection for one another. The mirror is hung upon one of the
large interior parts of the house about four feet above the floor. The
wooden houses in the Philippines are built by setting large posts
upright into the ground, extending into the air from twenty to thirty
feet. Cross timbers are fastened to these upright posts about eight or
ten feet above the ground and then not sawed off even with the posts,
but allowed to extend beyond them each way. The framework of the house
is built upon these extending cross timbers, a style of building by
which these large upright posts are left standing out on the inside of
the room from one to three feet from the walls. It is on that one of
these posts most nearly opposite the door that the mirror always finds
its place. Immediately beneath the mirror is the settee; and the
chairs are arranged in two parallel lines facing one another and at
right angles with the ends of the settee. However odd this arrangement
may appear to one when he first enters a Filipino drawing-room, there
are two things to be said in its favor. In the first place, it places
you face to face with the person with whom you are conversing so that
you can watch him,--a matter of no small moment in the Philippines. In
the next place, it enables you to give one of the young ladies a
sheep's-eye in the mirror while the others present are left where
Moses was in our much abused conundr