Filipino men are not lacking in manly qualities.  They have the stronger courage, the relatively stronger will and passions which distinguish the men of our own race.  But they are harder to get along with than are Filipino women, because their sense of sex importance is so much exaggerated, and because, as Mr. Kipling would put it, they “have too much ego in their cosmos.”  The secret consciousness of power is not enough for them.  They must flash it every minute in your eyes, that you may not forget to yield the adulation due to power.  Like women, they get heady on a small allowance of power; and indeed in both sexes there are emphasized certain characteristics which we are accustomed to look upon as feminine.  Their pride is feminine as I have analyzed it.  They rely upon intuition to guide them more than upon analysis.  In enlisting cooeperation, even in public matters, they are likely to appeal to a sentiment of friendship for themselves instead of demonstrating the abstract superiority of their cause.  They will make a haughty public demand, but will not scruple to support it with secret petition and appeal.  They are adepts at playing upon the weakness and petty vanity of others; and they deal gently with the strong, but boldly with the weak.  Both men and women possess an abundance of sexual jealousy, and have, in addition, the quick sensitiveness about rank, worldly possessions, and precedence which with us has become the reproach of the feminine.  Lastly, they have, in its highest development, the capacity to make a volte-face with grace and equanimity.  They are cunning, but not shrewd; their reasoning is wholly deductive, they are inclined to an enthusiastic assent to large statements, especially when these take the form of moral or political truisms; but they do not submit their convictions to practical working tests.  They seem often inconsistent, but observation will show that, however inconsistent their practice is with their professions, it is always consistent with their pride, as I have analyzed it in these pages.

CHAPTER IX

My Early Experiences in Housekeeping

I Set Up Housekeeping—­Romoldo’s Ideas of Arranging Furniture—­My Cheerful Environment—­Romoldo’s Success in Making “Hankeys”—­He Introduces the Orphan Tikkia as His Assistant—­The Romance of Romoldo and Tikkia.

At the period of my advent in Capiz there were but two other American women there, wives of military men.  Later our numbers were increased by the wives of several civilian employees and two more women teachers.  In those first days the hospitality of the military women made no small break in the routine of my daily life.  At the time of our appointment we teachers had been assured by a circular from the War Department that we should enjoy the privileges of the military commissary; but this ruling had been changed in the several months that had elapsed, and I found myself stranded with practically no access