Funerals in a country where there are no preservatives take place very soon.  The lavandero died at dawn, his widow made her levy on me before seven o’clock, and, coming home that afternoon, I met the funeral in a thickly shaded lane.

Local tradition disapproves of the appearance of near female relations at a funeral, so the dead man’s escort consisted only of the four bearers, and three small boys, all under eleven years of age.  The coffin was one in general use—­rented for the trip to the cemetery!  Once there, the body, wrapped in its petate, or sleeping mat, would be rolled into a shallow grave.

The four bearers were dirty and were chewing betel-nut as they trudged along under their burden.  Behind them came the dead man’s son, apparelled in a pair of blue denim trousers.  His body, naked to the waist, was glistening brown after a bath, and he carried under one arm a fresh laundered camisa, or Chino shirt, of white muslin, to be put on when he reached the church.

His two supporters were the brothers of my muchacha, who lived in the same yard and who evidently had convictions about standing by a comrade in misfortune.  The elder, a boy of seven, was fairly clean; but the younger, somewhere between three and five, was clad in a single low-necked slip of filthy pink cotton, which draped itself at a coquettish angle across his shoulders, and hung down two or three inches below his left knee.  His smile, which was of a most engaging nature, occupied so much of his countenance that it was difficult to find traces of the pride which actually radiated from the other two.

My curiosity was enough to make me turn and follow them to the church.  There the body was deposited on the floor at the rear, just below a door in the gallery which led to the priest’s house, or convento.  The bearers squatted on their heels and fell to wrapping up pieces of betel-nut in lime paste and buya leaf, while a sacristan went to call the priest.  The dead man’s son reverently put on his clean shirt, and the youngest urchin sucked his thumb and continued to grin at me.

Presently a priest came through the door and leaned over the gallery, followed by two sacristans, one bearing a censer and the other a bell.  The censer-bearer swung his implement vindictively in the direction of the corpse, while the other rang a melodious chime on the bell.  At this all the babies fell on their knees.  The priest muttered a few lines of Latin, made the sign of the cross, and disappeared to another chime of the bells and a last toss of the censer.  The bearers picked up the coffin, and the little procession went on its way to the cemetery.  The ceremony lasted about one minute and a half, and consumed three out of my five pesos.

This incident illustrates neatly the friendless condition in which most Filipino poor live.  Filipino lower-class people are gregarious, but not sociable.  They are averse to solitary rural life and tend everywhere to live in villages, but they visit little with each other, and seem very indifferent to the cordial relations which bind our own laboring classes together.