By the fortuitous circumstance of the charge against D——­, our Governor, who professed a smiling ignorance of all the circumstances of the case, had been relieved of his only formidable rival, and he prepared to do the honors of Capiz to the concejales.  He lived in the old palace of the Spanish governors, which had since come to serve as provincial capitol and gubernatorial residence.  There was plenty of room in the fine old place, and the concejales found everything to their satisfaction.  They had but to step out of their bedrooms to find themselves at the polls.  Our Governor was elected almost unanimously, to succeed himself for two years.

That was doing pretty well for a set of tyros at politics; but by the time the next election swung round, political feeling had awakened, there were wheels within wheels, and feeling was running explosively high.  Political parties had crystallized into two bodies, known as Progresistas and Federalistas.  The Progresistas were the anti-American party, pledged to every effort for immediate independence.  The Federalistas were those who stood by the Taft administration, and talked of compromise in the present, and of independence at some distant day.  Our Governor, who was again a candidate to succeed himself, was the Federalista head.  The Federalistas accused the Progresistas of being “Aglipianos”—­that is, schismatics from the Roman Church—­and they hinted that Aglipianoism was more a political movement than it was a religious one.

Each party professed itself sceptical of the good intentions of the other.  Each was certain that the other would come to the polls with firearms and bolos.  I began to worry about my desks, having promised to loan twenty-five nice new oak ones of the latest American pattern for the use of the concejales in making out their votes.

The officer commanding the constabulary at that time was a huge, black-browed, black-whiskered Irish-man, who, among the American men, went by the name of “Paddy” L——.  Both parties ran to Captain L——­, clamoring for a military guard at the election.  Captain L——­ pooh-poohed the notion that any serious trouble could grow out of the election, declined to consider a guard, except the two soldiers to guard the ballot box, who were more for function than for protection, and smilingly added that his trust in the Filipino sense of law and order was so great that he intended to go to the election and see it all himself.

By this time the Governor’s family had removed from the government building, and a suite of apartments at the rear which had served for kitchen, dining-room, store-rooms and servants’ quarters, had been cleaned up, painted, and handed over to the Provincial Intermediate School, of which I was principal.  One of our school-rooms was connected by an uncurtained glass door with the great central hall of the building, which was usually given over to the Court of the First