and high tragedy ever confiscated by an outraged teacher.  When written in the vernacular they are not infrequently obscene, for one of the saddest phases of early sentiment here is that it is never innocent; but in English they run to pathos.  One ludicrous phase of love-making is the amount of third-person intervention—­an outsider thrusting himself into the matter to plead for his lovelorn chum.  For some years I made a collection of confiscated billet-doux, but they were destroyed in one of the frequent fires which visit Manila.  I can, however, produce a fair imitation of one of these kindly first aids to the wounded.  This is the prevailing style: 

Miss——­,

Lovely and Most Respectable Lady: 

I am do me the honor to write to you these few unworthy lines to tell you why you are breaking the heart and destroying a good health of my friend Pedro.  Always I am going to his house every night, and I am find him weeping for you.  He is not eating for love of you.  He cannot sleep because he is think about your eyes which are like the stars, and your hairs which are the most beautiful of all the girls in this town.  Alas! my friend must die if you do not give him a hope.  Every day he is walking in front of your house, but you do not give to him one little word of love.  Even you do not love him, you can stop his weep if you like to send him one letter, telling to him that you are not angry to him or to me, his friend.

I have been informed by several persons that there is an official etiquette about this sort of correspondence.  When a boy decides that he has fallen in love with a schoolmate or with any other young girl, no matter whether he knows her or not, he writes her a letter in the first person similar to the above.  If she ignores the letter utterly, he understands that he does not please her—­in brief, that “No Irish need apply.”  But if she answers in a highly moral strain, professing to be deeply shocked at his presumption, and informing him that she sees no way to continue the acquaintance, he knows that all is well.  He sends her another letter, breathing undying love, and takes steps to be introduced at her home.  Once having obtained a calling acquaintance, he calls at intervals, accompanied by seven or eight other young men, and, in the general hilarity of a large gathering, endeavors to snatch a moment in which to gaze into the star-like eyes of his innamorata, or to gloat over her “hairs which are the most beautiful.”

The lover’s habit of fortifying himself with the society of his fellow men would be the last which an American boy could understand.  But a Filipino swain rarely presents himself alone at a house to call.  He feels, perhaps, that it makes him conspicuous.  The whole race, for that matter, is given to the habit of calling in droves.  If a Filipino girl goes to an office on business, her mother and father do not constitute a sufficient escort.  Her brothers,