How would you like it, not to have a Fourth of July celebration, or a Christmas stocking, or a turkey on Thanksgiving-day? The little children of the Philippines would be afraid of one of our firecrackers—they would think it was another kind of “boom-boom” that killed men. A life-sized turkey in the Philippines would be a curiosity, the chickens and the horses and the people are so small. The little boys and girls do not wear stockings, even around Christmas-time, and Santa Claus would look in vain for any chimneys over there. The candy, if the ants did not get at it first, would melt and run down to the toes and heels of Christmas stockings long before the little claimants were awake. Of course, they do not have plum-puddings, pumpkin-pies, and apples. All the season round, bananas take the place of apples, cherries, strawberries, and peaches; and boiled rice is the only kind of pumpkin-pie they have. [143]

The fathers and mothers of the little Brownie boys and girls are very ignorant. Most of them can not even write their names, and if you asked them when the family birthdays came they would have to go and ask the padre. Once, when I was living at the convent, a girl-mother, who had walked in from a town ten miles away, came up to register the birth of a new baby in the padre’s book. She stood before the priest embarrassed, digging her brown toes into a big crack in the floor. “At what time was the baby born?” was asked. “I do not know,” she answered, “but it was about the time the chickens were awake.”

It is a lucky baby that can get goat’s milk to drink. Their mothers, living for the most part on dried fish and rice, are never strong enough to give them a good start in life. It is a common sight to see the tiny litter decorated with bright bits of paper and a half-dozen lighted candles, with its little, waxen image of a child, waiting without the church door till the padre comes to say the funeral services.

In that far-distant country but a small number of children ever have worn pretty clothes—only [144]a tiny shirt; and they are perfectly contented, as the weather never gets uncomfortably cold. Their mothers or their older sisters carry them by placing them astride the hip, where they must cling tight with their little, fat, bare legs. They are soon old enough to run around and play; not on the grass among the trees, but in the dust out in the street. Their houses, built of nipa and bamboo, do not set back on a green lawn, but stand as near to the hot, dusty street as possible. To get inside the houses, which are built on posts, the babies have to scramble up a bamboo ladder, where they might fall off and break their necks. At this age they have learned to stuff themselves with rice until their little bodies look as though they were about to burst. A stick of sugar-cane will taste as good to them as our best peppermint or lemon candy. All the boys learn to ride as soon as they learn how to walk. Saddles and bridles are unnecessary, as they ride bareback, and guide the wiry Filipino ponies with a halter made of rope. The carabao is a great friend of Filipino boys and girls. He lets them pull themselves up by his tail, and ride him into town—as many as [145]can make room on his back, allowing them to guide him by a rope run through his nose.

A Carabao

A Carabao

I do not think that many of the children can remember ever having learned to swim. The mothers, when they take their washing to the river, do not leave the little ones behind; and you can see their glistening brown bodies almost any morning at the riverside among the nipa, the young mothers beating clothes upon a rock, the carabaos up to their noses in the water, chewing their cuds and dreaming happy dreams. The boys can swim and dive like water-rats, and often remain in the river all day long.

The girls, when about five years old look very bright. Their hair is trimmed only in front (a good deal like a pony’s), and their laughing eyes are very brown and mischievous. Most of them only wear a single ornament for a dress—a “Mother Hubbard” of cheap cotton print which they can buy for two pesetas at the Chino store. The boys all wear long trousers, and, at church or school, white linen coats, with military collars, which they call “Americanas,”............