There was none of the loafing stride characteristic of the professional roundsman.  They wore gray-green khaki, tan shoes, tan leather leggings, and the military cap; and a better set up, smarter, abler body of law preservers it would be difficult to find.  The “machinery of politics” had not affected them, the instinct of the soldier to do his duty was strong in them, and they would have arrested Governor William H. Taft himself as gleefully as they would have arrested a common Chinaman, had the Governor offered sufficient provocation.

We enjoyed that first night’s entertainment on the Luneta as do all who come to Manila, and I must confess that time has not staled it for me.  It is cosmopolitan and yet typically Philippine.  Since that day the fine Constabulary Band has come into existence, and the music has grown to be more than a mere feature of the whole scene.  The concert would be well worth an admission fee and an hour’s confinement in a stuffy hall.  Enjoyed in delightful pure air with a background of wonderful beauty, it is a veritable treat.

On the following day we had our interview with the Superintendent of Public Instruction.  He informed us that in the course of a week the transport Thomas would arrive, carrying some five hundred or more pedagogues.  He suggested that, as we were then drawing full pay, we might reimburse the Government by making ourselves useful at the Exposition Building, which was being put in order to receive them.

So to the Exposition Building we betook ourselves, and for several days made herculean efforts to induce the native boys and Chinese who were supposed to clean it up to do so properly.  We also helped to put up cots and to hang mosquito nettings, and at night we lay and listened to the most vociferous concert of bull frogs, debutante frogs, tree toads, katydids, locusts, and iku lizards that ever murdered the sleep of the just.  We also left an open box of candy on the table of the dormitory which we had preempted, starting therewith another such frantic migration in the ant world as in the human world once poured into the Klondike.  They came on all trails from far and near.  They invaded our beds, and when the sweets gave out, took bites out of us as the next best delicacy.

Manila seemed to be more or less excited over the new army of invasion, the local papers teeming with jokes about pretty schoolma’ams and susceptible exiles.  The teachers were to land at the Anda Monument at the Pasig end of the Malecon Drive, and thence were to be conveyed to the Exposition Building in army ambulances and Doherty wagons which the military had put at the disposal of the Civil Government.

Owing to the fact that I was appointed a sort of matron to the women’s dormitory, and had to be on hand to assign the ladies to their cots and to register them, I did not go down to the Anda Monument to see the disembarkation.  Plenty of people who might have pleaded less legitimate interest in the pedagogues than I had, were there, however.  By half-past ten the first wagon-load had arrived at the Exposition Building in a heavy shower, and from then till early noon they continued to pour in.  On the whole, they were up to a high standard—­a considerably higher standard than has since been maintained in the Educational Department.  The women were a shade in advance of the men.