In the provinces market produce is very limited.  In fresh foods there is nothing but sweet potatoes, several varieties of squash, a kind of string bean, lima beans, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers (in season), spinach, and field corn.  Potatoes and onions can be procured only from Manila, bought by the crate.  If there be no local commissary, tinned foods must be sent in bulk from Manila.  The housekeeper’s task is no easy one, and the lack of fresh beef, ice, fresh butter, and milk wears hard on a dainty appetite.  The Philippines are no place for women or men who cannot thrive and be happy on plain food, plenty of work, and isolation.  Nor is there any sadder lot than that of the American married woman in the provinces who is unemployed.  Her housekeeping takes very little time, for the cheapness of native servants obviates the necessity of all labor but that of supervision.  There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to talk about.  She has nothing to do but to lie in a steamer chair and to think of home.  Most women break down under it very quickly; they lose appetite and flesh and grow fretful or melancholy.  But to a woman who loves her home and is employed, provincial life here is a boon.  Remember that for an expenditure of forty or fifty dollars a month the single woman can maintain an establishment of her own—­a genuine home—­where after a day’s toil she can find order and peace and idleness awaiting her.  Filipino servants are not ideal, but any woman with a capacity for organization can soon train them into keeping her house in the outward semblance at least of order and cleanliness.  She had better investigate it pretty closely on Saturdays and Sundays; if she does so, she can leave it to run itself very well during the five days of her labor.  And what a joy it is—­I speak in the bitter remembrance of a long line of hotels and boarding-houses—­to go back to one’s home after a day’s labor instead of to a hall bedroom; to sit at one’s own well-ordered if simple table, and escape the chatter of twenty or thirty people who have no reason for association except their economic necessities!

In the six years I have lived in these Islands, I have never heard of indignity or disrespect shown to American women. [1] They are perfectly safe, and if they choose to exercise any common sense, need not be nervous.  Housebreaking outside of Manila is unknown.  I myself lived for four years in a provincial town, the greater part of the time quite removed from the neighborhood of other Americans, with only two little girls in the house with me.  I remember one evening having a couple of civil engineers, who had been fellow passengers on the transport and were temporarily in town, to dinner.  When they were ready to leave, at half-past ten, the little girls had both gone to sleep, so I went downstairs to let them out and bar the door after them.  One burst out laughing and remarked that my bolting the door was a formality, and that I must have confidence in the honesty of the natives.  The door was of bamboo, tied on with strips of rattan in place of hinges, which any one could have cut with a knife.  I admitted that the man was right, but the closed door was the symbol that my house was my castle, and I had no fear of Filipino thieves.  The only time I was ever really afraid was when there were two or three disreputable Americans in town.