[A Filipino theater.] When my ankle began to get better, my first excursion was to Legaspi, where some Filipinos were giving a theatrical performance.  A Spanish political refugee directed the entertainment.  On each side of the stage, roofed in with palm leaves, ran covered galleries for the dignitaries of the place; the uncovered space between these was set apart for the common people.  The performers had chosen a play taken from Persian history.  The language was Spanish, and the dresses were, to say the least, eccentric.  The stage was erected hard by a public street, which itself formed part of the auditorium, and the noise was so great that I could only catch a word here and there.  The actors stalked on, chattering their parts, which not one of them understood, and moving their arms up and down; and when they reached the edge of the stage, they tacked and went back again like ships sailing against the wind.  Their countenances were entirely devoid of expression, and they spoke like automatons.  If I had understood the words, the contrast between their meaning and the machine-like movements of the actors would probably have been droll enough; but, as it was, the noise, the heat, and the smoke were so great that we soon left the place.

[An indifferent performance.] Both the theatrical performance and the whole festival bore the impress of laziness, indifference, and mindless mimicry.  When I compared the frank cheerfulness I had seen radiating from every countenance at the religious holidays of Europe with the expressionless and immobile faces of the natives, I found it difficult to understand how the latter were persuaded to waste so much time and money upon a matter they seemed so thoroughly indifferent to.

[Interest in festival.] Travellers have remarked the same want of gaiety amongst the Indians of America; and some of them ascribe it to the small development of the nervous system prevalent among these peoples, to which cause also they attribute their wonderful courage in bearing pain.  But Tylor observes that the Indian’s countenance is so different from ours that it takes us several years to rightly interpret its expression.  There probably is something in both these explanations.  And, although I observed no lively expression of amusement among my native friends at Legaspi, I noticed that they took the greatest possible pleasure in decorating their village, and that the procession which formed part of the festival had extraordinary charms for them.  Every individual was dressed in his very best; and the honor of carrying a banner inspired those who attained it with the greatest pride, and raised an amazing amount of envy in the breasts of the remainder.  Visitors poured in from all the surrounding hamlets, and erected triumphal arches which they had brought with them ready-made and which bore some complimentary inscription.  I am obliged to confess that some of the holiday-makers were very drunk.  The inhabitants of the Philippines