arranged all the chairs in two rows leading from the two tables, beginning with the most patriarchal armchair and ending with the dining-room chair, the leg of which was tied on with a string.  The effect was rigidly mathematical; and when my landlady came in and adorned each table with a potted rose geranium, stuck all over with the halves of empty egg-shells to give it the appearance of flowering, I felt that it was time to assert myself.  The egg-shells went promptly into the garbage box, and the chairs and tables were pulled about to achieve the unpremeditated effect of our own rooms.  Then I went out for a walk, and returning found that Romoldo had restored things to his own taste.  Again I broke up his formation, so the next time he tried a new device.  He put one table at the top of the room and one at the bottom, with the chairs arranged in a circle around each one.  This gave the pleasing impression to one entering the room that a card game was ready to begin.  Again Romoldo’s efforts were treated with contempt.

For at least two weeks a deadly combat went on between Romoldo and me, in which I finally came off victor.  At the end of that time he seemed to have accustomed himself to our ideas of decoration.  He had, in our week’s deluging, cleaned up the lamps of the chandeliers, brushed down the cobwebs, and removed some half-dozen baskets of faded and dust-laden paper flowers.  He administered the ironical consolation meanwhile that their destruction did not matter, since my admiring pupils would see that the supply was renewed.  To my eternal sorrow he was a true prophet, and I had to contemplate green chrysanthemums and blue roses, and a particularly offensive hand-painted basket made of plates of split shell.  However, the potted palms and ferns with which I ornamented the eleven pedestals made atonement; and when I came in after a hard day’s work and saw the unreal, golden-tinted light of afternoon filling the dignified old room, I found it home-like and lovely in spite of the paper flowers and the shell basket.

My bedroom was half as large as the sala, with a small room adjoining it which I used for a dining-room, and at the back there were a kitchen, a bathroom, closets, and a bamboo porch.  For this shelter, furnished as it was, I paid the munificent sum of twenty-five pesos Mexican currency, or twelve and one-half dollars gold per month.

As my house was located over the second saloon in town—­one of the regular, innocent, grocery-looking Filipino breed—­and as it commanded a fine view of the plaza, guard mount, retreat, and Sunday morning church procession, I had at least all the excitement that was going in Capiz.  The American soldiers swore picturesquely over their domino and billiard games down stairs; the “ruffle of drums” (though why so called I know not, for it consists of a blare of trumpets) woke up the sultry stillness at nine A.M.; the great church-bells struck the hours and threw in a frenzy of noise on their own account