Not unnaturally, in consideration of the heat, there is comparatively little enthusiasm for rough sport.  The only very active play in which little boys and girls engage, is leap frog, which differs slightly from the game in our own country.

Two children sit upon the ground and clasp their right hands.  A leader starts out, clears this barrier, and all the rest of the players follow.  Then one of the sitting children clasps his unoccupied left hand upon the upraised thumb of his companion, thus raising the height of the barrier by the width of the palm.  The line starts again and all jump this.  Then the second sitter adds his palm and thumb to the barrier, and the line of players attack this.  It is more than likely that some one will fail to clear this last barrier, and the one who does so squats down, pressing close to the other two, and puts in his grimy little paw and thumb.  So they continue to raise the height of the barrier till, at last, nobody can jump it.

When they play drop the handkerchief, Filipino children squat upon their heels in a circle instead of standing.  They have also the familiar “King William was King James’s Son”; I do not know whether the words in the vernacular which they use are the equivalent of ours or not.  The air, at least, is the one with which we are all familiar.

They have one more game which seems to be something like our hop-scotch but more complicated.  The diagram, which is roughly scratched out on the ground, is quite an extensive one.  The player is blindfolded, and hops about, kicking at his bit of stone and placing it in accordance with some mysterious rule which I have vainly sought to acquire.  The children play this in the cool, long-shadowed afternoons, when they have returned from school, have doffed their white canvas shoes and short socks, and have reverted to the single slip of the country.

There is a local game of football which is played with a hollow ball or basket of twisted rattan fibres.  The players stand in a ring, and when the ball approaches one, he swings on one heel till his back is turned, and, glancing over his shoulder, gives it a queer backward kick with the heel of his unoccupied foot.  It requires some art to do this, yet the ball will be kept sometimes in motion for two or three minutes without once falling to the ground.

On moonlight nights the Filipinos make the best of their beautiful world.  The aristocrats stroll about in groups of twenty, or even thirty, the young people snatching at the opportunity to slip into private conversation and enjoy a little solitude a deux while their elders are engrossed in more serious topics.  The common people enjoy a wholesome romp in a game which seems to be a combination of “tag” and “prisoner’s base.”  Groups of serenaders stroll about with guitars and mandolins, and altogether a most sweet and wholesome domesticity pervades the village.