[51] “Where the wind wrinkles the silent waves, that rapidly break,
    of their own movement, with a gentle murmur on the shore.”—­Tr.

[52] “Where rapid and winged engines will rush in flight.”—­Tr.

[53] There is something almost uncanny about the general accuracy of the prophecy in these lines, the economic part of which is now so well on the way to realization, although the writer of them would doubtless have been a very much surprised individual had he also foreseen how it would come about.  But one of his own expressions was “fire and steel to the cancer,” and it surely got them.

On the very day that this passage was translated and this note written, the first commercial liner was tied up at the new docks, which have destroyed the Malecon but raised Manila to the front rank of Oriental seaports, and the final revision is made at Baguio, Mountain Province, amid the “cooler temperatures on the slopes of the mountains.”  As for the political portion, it is difficult even now to contemplate calmly the blundering fatuity of that bigoted medieval brand of “patriotism” which led the decrepit Philippine government to play the Ancient Mariner and shoot the Albatross that brought this message.—­Tr.

[54] These establishments are still a notable feature of native life in Manila.  Whether the author adopted a title already common or popularized one of his own invention, the fact is that they are now invariably known by the name used here.  The use of macanista was due to the presence in Manila of a large number of Chinese from Macao.—­Tr.

[55] Originally, Plaza San Gabriel, from the Dominican mission for the Chinese established there; later, as it became a commercial center, Plaza Vivac; and now known as Plaza Cervantes, being the financial center of Manila.—­Tr.

[56] “The manager of this restaurant warns the public to leave absolutely nothing on any table or chair.”—­Tr.

[57] “We do not believe in the verisimilitude of this dialogue, fabricated by the author in order to refute the arguments of the friars, whose pride was so great that it would not permit any Isagani to tell them these truths face to face.  The invention of Padre Fernandez as a Dominican professor is a stroke of generosity on Rizal’s part, in conceding that there could have existed any friar capable of talking frankly with an Indian.”—­W.  E. Retana, in note to this chapter in the edition published by him at Barcelona in 1908.  Retana ought to know of what he is writing, for he was in the employ of the friars for several years and later in Spain wrote extensively for the journal supported by them to defend their position in the Philippines.  He has also been charged with having strongly urged Rizal’s execution in 1896.  Since 1898, however, he has doubled about, or, perhaps more aptly, performed a journalistic somersault—­having written a diffuse biography and other works dealing with Rizal.  He is strong in unassorted facts, but his comments, when not inane and wearisome, approach a maudlin wail over “spilt milk,” so the above is given at its face value only.—­Tr.