On state occasions, however, they are inducted into raiment which their deluded mothers fancy is European and stylish; but there is always something wrong.  Either one little ruffled drawers leg sags down, or the petticoat is longer than the dress skirt, or the waistband is too tight, or mamma has failed to make allowance in the underclothing for the gauziness of the outer sheathing.  As for the sashes with which the victims are finally bound, they fret the little swelled stomachs, and the baby goes about tugging at his undesirable adornment, and wearing the frown of one harassed past endurance.  Sometimes it ends in flat mutiny, and baby is shorn of his grandeur, and prances innocently back into the heart of society, clad in a combination of waist and drawers which is associated in my memory with cotton flannel and winter nights.  Nobody is at all embarrassed by the negligee; and as for the baby himself, he would appear in the garments of Eve before the Fall without a qualm.

After everybody had been served with sweets, a young Filipina was led to the piano.  She played with remarkable technique and skill.  Another young lady sang very badly.  Filipinos have natural good taste in music, have quick musical ears, and a natural sense of time, but they have voices of small range and compass, and what voice they have they misuse shamefully.  They also undertake to sing music altogether too difficult for any but professionals.

When the music was over, I was rather anxiously anticipating a “recitation,” but was overjoyed to discover that that resource of rural entertainment has no foothold in the Philippines.  Dancing was next in order.  The first dance was the stately rigodon, which is almost the only square dance used here.  When it was finished and a waltz had begun, I insisted on going home, for I was tired out.  Somebody loaned us a victoria, and thus the trip was short.  A deep-mouthed bell in the church tower rang out ten slow strokes as I threw back the shutters after putting out my light.  The military bugles took up the sound with “taps,” and the figure of the sentry on the bridge was a moving patch of black in the moonlight.

The Division Superintendent started inland the next morning to place the men teachers in their stations, and as he required the services of the American teacher in interpreting, I was told to go over and take charge of the boys’ school, at that time the only one organized.

I went across the plaza and found two one-story buildings of stone with an American flag floating over one, and a noise which resembled the din of a boiler factory issuing from it.  The noise was the vociferous outcry of one hundred and eighty-nine Filipino youths engaged in study or at least in a high, throaty clamor, over and over again, of their assigned lessons.  When I went in, they rose electrically, and shrieked as by one impulse, “Good morning, modham.”  They were so delighted at my surprise at their facility with English that they gave it to me over and over again, and I saw that they had intuitions of three cheers and a tiger.