Club-house Chaff—Christmas Customs and Ceremonies—New Year’s Calls—A Dance at the English Club—The Royal Exposition of the Philippines—Fireworks on the King’s Fête Day—Electric Lights and the Natives—The Manila Observatory—A Hospitable Governor—The Convent at Antipolo.  
December 26th.
 
“?‘A young Bostonian, in business in the Philippines,’ that is you, isn’t it?”
 
“?‘Trembling like a blushing bride before the altar.’?” “Well, blushing bride, how are you?”
 
“?‘The bells in the old church rang out a wild, warning plea.’ They did, did they? And did, ‘The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea?’?”
 
“?‘The fishermen’s wives were sitting on their saucepans, furniture, and babies, to keep them from sailing off skyward.’ Poor things! Quite witty, weren’t they?”
 
These were some of the expressions that greeted me as I entered the Club the other evening, about two hours after the last mail arrived.
 
My attention was called to the bulletin-board where the official notices were posted, and there, tacked up in all its glory was a printed copy of my letter on the [174]typhoon, while on all sides were various members of the English colony, laughing boisterously, and poking me in the ribs with canes and billiard-cues. Some of the brokers had apparently learned the contents of that fatal letter by heart, and stood on chairs reciting those touching lines in dialogue with unharnessed levity.
 
To say that I was mildly flummuxed at hearing my familiar verbiage proceeding from the mouths of others would be mild, but it was impossible not to join in the general laugh, and digest, in an offhand way, the jibes and jokes which were epidemic. It seems my cautions have been of no avail, and the letter which you so kindly gave the Boston editor to read and print was sent out here to my facetious friend the American broker, whose whole life seems to be spent in trying to find the laugh on the other man. Somebody else also sent him a spare copy to give to his friends, and down town at the tiffin club next noon, my late entrance to the breakfast-room was a signal for the whole colony to suspend mastication and with clattering knives and clapping hands to vent their mirth in breezy epithets. But jokes are few and far between in this far Eastern land, and somebody or other might as well be the butt of them.
 
Just as surely as the 24th of December comes around, all the office-boys of your friends, who have [175]perhaps brought letters from their counting-room to yours, all the chief cooks and bottle-washers of your establishment, all of the policemen on the various beats between your house and the club, and all the bill collectors who come in every month to wheedle you out of sundry dollars, have the cheek to ask for pourboires. Imagine a man coming around to collect a bill, and asking you to fee him for being good enough to bring that document to hand. But that is just what the Manila bill-collector does at Christmas-tide. Then all of the native fruit-girls, who each day climb the stairs with baskets of oranges on their heads, come in with little printed blessings and hold out their hands for fifty cents.
 
Once out of the office, you go home to find the ice-man, the ashman, the coachman, and the cook all looking for tips, and you are compelled to feel most religiously holy, as you remember that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
 
Christmas-eve, somehow, did not seem natural, though the town was very lively. Some of the shops had brought over evergreen branches from Shanghai to carry out the spirit of the occasion. The streets were crowded with shoppers, everybody was carrying parcels, and if it had been cold, we might have looked for Santa Claus.
 
There are but half a dozen English ladies in our [176]little Anglo-Saxon colony, and each of them takes a turn in giving dinners, asking as her guests, besides a few outsiders, the other five. On Christmas-eve took place one of these rather stereotyped feasts, and afterward the guests went down in carriages to the big cathedral, that cost a million dollars, inside the old walled town, to hear the midnight mass. Accompanied by a large orchestra and a good organ, the mass was more jolly than impressive. The music consisted of polkas, jigs, and minuets, and everybody walked around the great building, talking and smiling most gracefully. A few of the really devout sat in a small enclosed space in the centre of the church, but they found it hard to keep awake, and their eyes were red with weeping, not for the sins of an evil world, but from opening and shutting their jaws in a series of yawns.
 
How to Sit without Chairs, or Manila Fruit-girls in a Street-Corner Attitude.
How to Sit without Chairs, or Manila Fruit-girls in a Street-Corner Attitude.
 
See page 175.
 
Just before the hour of midnight, comparative quiet ensued with the reading of a solemn prayer or two, but just as the most reverend father who was conducting the ceremonies finished bowing behind the high gold and velvet collar to his glittering gown, thirteen bells wagged their tongues that broke up the stillness of the midnight, and everybody wished everybody else “Felices Pascuas!” (Merry Christmas!) The organ tuned up, the boy-choir sang itself red, white, and blue, the priestly assistants swung [177]the censors until the church was heavy with fragrance, and all those who had nothing else to do yawned and wished they were in bed.
 
After staying a little longer, our party left, and went over to the Jesuit Church near by, where a very good orchestra seemed to be playing a Virginia reel. Here were similar ceremonies modified somewhat to suit the rather different requirements of the Order, and after staying long enough not to appear as intruding spectators, we made our exit.
 
And now that Christmas is all over, everybody seems to be wearing a new hat, the most appropriate present that can be given in this land of sun-strokes and fevered brows.
 
January 5th.
 
The new year has come and gone, though out this way no one believes in turning over a new leaf.
 
It seems to be a custom to start the year by calling on all the married ladies of the colony, who make their guests loquacious with sundry little cocktails that stand ready prepared on the front verandas. Everybody makes calls, till he forgets where anything but his head is situated, and then brings up at the club out by the river-bank more or less the worse for wear. In honor of the day, the menu was most attractive, but many of the party were in no condition to partake, and spent the first day of the new calendar [178]in suffering from the effects of their morning visits.
 
With the new year came the dance, which we bachelor members of the club gave to the English ladies in particular and to Manila society in general, as a small return for hospitality received, and it was declared a huge success. The club-house was decorated from top to toe. Two or three hundred invitations were sent out, and the crême de la crême of the European population were on hand, including General Blanco, the governor of the islands.
 
The English club rarely gives a dance more than once in five years, and when the engraved invitations first appeared there was much talk and hobnobbing among the Spaniards to see who had and who had not been invited. All the greedy Dons who had ever met any of the clubmen expected to be asked, and considered it an insult not to receive an invitation. One high official, who had himself been invited, wrote to the committee seeking an invitation for some friends. As, of course, only a limited number could be accommodated at the club-house, the invitations were strictly limited, and a reply was sent to the Spanish gentleman in question, stating that there were no more invitations to be had.
 
“Do you mean to insult me and my friends?” he wrote, “by saying that there are no more invitations [179]left for them? Do you mean to say that my friends are not gentlemen, and so you won’t ask them? I must insist on an explanation, or satisfaction.”
 
For several days before the party one might have heard young women and girls who walked up and down the Luneta talking nothing but dance, and the Spanish society seemed to be divided up into two distinct cliques, the chosen and the uninvited.
 
The chosen proceeded at once to starve themselves and use what superfluous dollars they could collect in buying new gowns at the large Parisian shops on the Escolta. Most of the Spanish women in Manila can well afford to be abstemious and devote the surplus thus obtained to the ornamentation of their persons, since they are so fairly stout that the fires of their appetite can be kept going some time after actual daily food-supplies have been cut off. The men, however, seem to be as slender as the women are robust, and they, poor creatures, cannot endure a long fast. Nevertheless, the cash-drawers of the Paris shops got fat as the husbands of the wives who bought new gowns there grew more slender; and just before the ball came off these merchant princes of the Philippines actually offered to contribute five hundred dollars if another dance should be given within a short time, so great had been the rush of patrons to their attractive counters. [180]
 
To make a long story short, after a lot of squabbles and wranglings among those who were invited and those who were not, the night of the party came, and only those who held the coveted cards were permitted by the giants at the door to enter Paradise.
 
Japanese lanterns lighted the road which led from the main highway to the club, and the old rambling structure was aglow with a thousand colored cup-lights that made it look like fairyland. Within and without were dozens of palms and all sorts of tropical shrubs, and the entrance-way was one huge bower-like fernery. Around the lower entrance-room colored flags grouped themselves artistically, and below a huge mass of bunting at the farther end rose the grand staircase that led above. Upstairs, the ladies’ dressing-room was most gorgeous, and the walls were hung with costly, golden-wove tapestries from Japan. The main parlor formed one of the dancing-rooms and opened into two huge adjoining bed-chambers which were thrown together in one suite. All around the walls and ceilings were garlands and long festoons and wreaths, and everywhere were bowers of plants, borrowed mirrors, and lights.
 
Out on the veranda, overhanging the river, were clusters of small tables, glowing under fairy lamps, and the railings were a mass of verdure.
 
The orchestra consisted of twenty-five natives, [181]dressed in white shirts whose tails were not tucked in, hidden behind a forest of plants, and as the clock struck ten they began to coax from their instruments a dreamy waltz. The guests began to pour in—Spanish dons with their corpulent wives, and strapping Englishmen with their leaner better halves. The Spaniards, sniffing the air, all looked longingly toward the supper-rooms, while the ladies who came with them ambled toward the powder and paint boxes in the boudoir. I suppose about two hundred people in all were on hand, and the sight was indeed gay. After every one had become duly hot from dancing or duly hungry from waiting, supper was served, and there was almost a panic as the Spanish element with one accord made for the large room at the extreme other end of the building, where dozens of small tables glistened below candelabra with red shades, and improvised benches groaned under the weight of a great variety of refreshments.
 
Soon the slender caballeros got to look fatter in the face, and the double chins of their ladies grew doubler every moment. Knives, forks, and spoons were all going at once, and talk was suspended. But the room presented a pretty sight, with its fourscore couples sitting around beneath the swaying punkahs, and the soft warm light made beauties out of many ordinary-looking persons. [182]
 
After everybody was satisfied, dancing was resumed in the big front rooms on the river, and the gayety went on; but the heavy supper made many of the foreign guests grow dull, and the cool hours of early morning saw everyone depart, carrying with them or in them food enough for many days.
 
Thus ended the great ball given to balance the debt of hospitality owed by the bachelors to their married friends, and now will come the committee’s collectors for money to pay the piper.
 
January 31st.
 
Manila has been quite outdoing herself lately, and the gayeties have been numerous. The opening of the Royal Exposition of the Philippines took place last week, and was quite as elaborate as the name itself.
 
The Exposition buildings were grouped along the raised ground filled in on the paddy-fields, by the side of the broad avenue that divides our suburb of Malate from that of Ermita, and runs straight back inland from the sea. The architecture is good, the buildings numerous, and with grounds tastefully decorated with plants and fountains, it is, in a way, like a pocket edition of the Chicago Exposition.
 
Everybody in town was invited to attend the opening ceremonies by a gorgeously gotten-up invitation, [183]and interesting catalogues of the purpose of the exhibition and its exhibits were issued in both Spanish and English. To be sure, the language in the catalogue translated from the Spanish was often ridiculous, and announcements were made of such exhibits as “Collections of living animals of laboring class,” and “tabulated prices of transport terrestrial and submarine.” But all of the élite of Manila were on hand at the ceremonies, from the Archbishop and Governor-General down to my coachman’s wife, and bands played, flags waved in the fresh breeze, tongues wagged, guns fired, and whistles blew. General Blanco opened the fair with a well-worded speech on the importance of the Philippines, of the debt that the inhabitants owed to the protection of the mother-country, and of the great future predestined for the Archipelago. And just as the speaker had finished and the closing hours of the day arrived, the new electric lights were turned on for the first time. Then all Manila, hitherto............