Typical Native House. Costs About One Dollar.
There may have been books here, once, but nothing was left when our troops occupied it except a few pictures on the walls, a few tables and desks, a few chairs and sleeping mats.
Carabao Cart.
There was a little story in connection with the bell tower on one side of the plaza in Jaro; this tower was about eighty feet high, had a roof and niches for seven or eight good sounding bells. From the top of this tower one could see many miles in every direction; when the Philippine army fled from the town they immediately thought our soldiers might ascend the tower and watch their course, so they burned the staircases. Alas for the little children who had taken refuge in the tower! As the flames swept up the stairways, they fled before them; two of them actually clung to the clapper of one great bell, and there they hung until its frame was burned away and the poor little things fell with the falling bell. Their remains were found later by our soldiers, the small hands still faithful to their hold. The bells were in time replaced and doubtless still chime out the hours of the day. It is the duty of one man to attend to the bells; the greater the festival day the oftener and longer they ring. When they rang a special peal for some special service, I tried to attend. One day there was an unusual amount of commotion and clanging, so I determined to go over to the service. Hundreds of natives had gathered together. To my surprise, six natives came in bearing on their shoulders a bamboo pole; from this pole a hammock was suspended, in which some one was reclining; but over the entire person, hammock, and pole, was thrown a thick bamboo net, entirely concealing all within; it was taken up to the chancel and whoever was in that hammock was given the sacrament. He was, no doubt, some eminent civilian or officer, for the vast congregation rose to their feet when the procession came in and when it passed out. I asked two or three of the Filipino women, whom I knew well, who it was, but they professed not to know. They always treated me with respect when I attended any of their services and placed a chair for me. I noticed how few carried books to church. I do not believe I ever saw a dozen books in the hands of worshipers in any of the cathedrals, and I visited a great many, five on Palm Sunday, 1900. I know from the children themselves, and from their teachers, that there are complaints about the size of the books and about the number which they have to get their lessons from in the new schools.
There are three American newspapers in Manila, and one American library. The grand success of the library more than repays all the cost and trouble of establishing it. One must experience it to know the joy of getting letters, magazines, papers, and books that come once or twice a month, only. It really seemed when the precious mail bags were opened that their treasures were too sacred to be even handled. We were so hungry and thirsty for news from home, for reading matter in this bookless country, where even a primer would have been a prize.
I alternated between passive submission to island laziness, shiftlessness, slovenliness, dirt, and active assertion of Ohio vim. Sick of vermin and slime, I would take pail, scrubbing brush and lye, and fall to; sick of it all, I would get a Summit county breakfast, old fashioned pan cakes for old times’ sake; sick of the native laundress who cleansed nothing, I would give an Akron rub myself to my own clothes and have something fit to wear. These attacks of energy depended somewhat on the temperature, somewhat on exhausted patience, somewhat on homesickness, but most on dread of revolt and attack; or of sickening news—not of battle, but of assassination and mutilation. Whether I worked or rested, I was careful to sit or stand close to a wall—to guard against a stab in the back. I smile now, not gaily, at the picture of myself over a washtub, a small dagger in my belt, a revolver on a stool within easy reach of my steady, right hand, rubbing briskly while the tears of homesickness rolled down in uncontrollable floods, but singing, nevertheless, with might and main:—
“Am I a soldier of the Cross,
A follower of the Lamb?
And shall I fear to own His cause,