GATHERING COCOANUTS. Where the census-taker in Porto Rico had to wait for his figures until the head of the house climbed down. (Courtesy of the Department of War.)
"Not like our other accession from Spain," Hamilton commented. "I mean the Philippines; you certainly couldn't call the Filipinos peaceful, it seems to me that they come just about as wild as they make them."
"Wild? You do not know the half!" said the excitable little editor, who, despite the frequency of his gestures and the volubility of his explanations was busily working with diagrams the while. "You know there was a census in Porto Rico in 1899?"
"I didn't until this morning," the boy answered "but as I see that most of these tables are compared with that year it is evident that there must have been."
"There was a census," the editor went on, after a pause during which he had been working over a column of figures, "and my uncle was a supervisor. Mr. Gatten—you know him?"
"Only by name," Hamilton replied.
"He was in the Porto Rico census, too. Then in 1903 he went to assist in the census of the Philippines. It was done by the War Department, because the fighting was hardly over. You think the census difficult? You should hear my uncle! The Dattos were not all stopped fighting, because just as soon as the Philippine Commission thought it safe, the census began."
"Did any one get killed by hostile natives?" asked Hamilton, scenting a story.
"Several wounded, one badly, but no one killed. But"—and he waggled a finger warningly—"there were plenty of places where the census was only estimated! The blowpipe and the poison arrow are most dangerous. Even with the soldiers taking the census and going with other census men, it was very risky among the uncivilized tribes."
"They are really wild?" said Hamilton.