With regard to their women the Filipinos are an Occidental people rather than an Oriental one.  Marriage is frequently entered upon at the will of the parent, but few parents will insist upon a marriage where the girl objects.  While the social liberty accorded a young girl is much less than what is permitted in our own country, there is no Oriental seclusion of women.  Children accompany their parents to balls and fiestas, and maidens are permitted to mingle freely in society from their baby-hood.  At fourteen or fifteen they enter formally into society and begin to receive attentions from men.  In the upper classes seventeen or eighteen is the usual time for marriage.  By the time a girl is twenty-two or twenty-three she is counted passee, and, if unmarried, must retire into the background in favor of her younger sisters.

The young girls are exceedingly attractive.  They are slender, and their heads sit beautifully above long swan-like necks.  They dress their hair in a rather tightly drawn pompadour, and ornament it with filigree combs set with seed pearls, or, if they are able, with jewelled butterflies and tiaras.  Jewellery is not only a fashion here, but an investment.  Outside of Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, banks are practically unknown.  The provincial man who is well to do puts his money into houses and lands or into jewellery for his womankind.  The poor emulate the rich, and wear in imitation what their wealthy neighbors can afford in the real.

Filipino women never affect the dominating attitude assumed by young American coquettes.  They have an infinite capacity for what we call small talk and repartee; and, as they never aim for brilliancy and are quite natural and unaffected, their pretty ways have all the charm that an unconscious child’s have.  They love dress, and in one lightning flash will take you in from head to foot, note every detail of your costume, and, the next day, imitate whatever parts of it please their fancy and fall in with their national customs.  They are adepts at mimicry and among themselves will lash us mercilessly.  They straighten up their shoulders, pull in the abdomen, and strut about with a stiff-backed walk and with their hands hanging stiffly at their sides.  They themselves are full of magnetism and can advance with outstretched hand and greet you in such a way as to make you believe that your coming has put sunshine in their lives.  Their chief talk is of lovers in the two stages of pretendiente and novio, and they are full of hints and imputations to one another of love affairs.  Among young people, in spite of the restrictions put about them to keep the opposite sexes from meeting tete-a-tete or the remotest chances of “spooning,” the air is surcharged with romance.  Apparently the Filipino boy has no period in his development in which he hates girls.  At twelve or fourteen he waxes sentimental, and his love notes are the most reeking examples of puppy love