March 16th.
The pony races came off with great éclat on the first four days of this month, and were decidedly interesting. All Manila turned out, and such a collection of carriages I have never seen. All the Spanish ladies put an extra coat of paint on their complexions, and, dressed in their best bibs and tuckers, made somewhat of a ghastly show in the searching light of early afternoon. The high, thatched-roofed grand stand presented a duly gay appearance as the bell rang for the first event, and the dried-up paddy-fields, far and near, crackled with natives directing their steps toward the centre of attraction.
In front of the grand stand groups of Spaniards, Englishmen, and sea-captains formed centres for betting, and off at the sides were refreshment-booths to which everyone made pilgrimage as often as the articulatory muscles were in need of lubrication.
Some of the ponies were splendid-looking little “critters” and made almost as fast time as their larger brethren, the horses. During race-afternoons, business in the city was entirely suspended, and everyone who had a dollar took it to the race-course to gain other dollars. As the currency system is all metal, bets were paid in hard coin, and if you happened to buy a lucky ticket in that gambling machine, the “totalizator,” you would perhaps have a whole hatful of heavy silver cart-wheels shoved at you on presenting the winning pasteboard. And it was no uncommon sight at the close of the races to see some of the thinly clad natives whom fortune had favored go trudging home across the rice-fields, carrying a load of dollars in a straw hat or a bright bandana.
One by one the vessels are dropping away from their anchorage in the bay, and by Saturday our Vigilant will heave up anchor and start on her twenty-thousand-mile journey to Boston via the Cape, with her big cargo of hemp. Thanks to our attentions to the captains, they have seemed willing to take home for us any amount of souvenirs and curios, and I have sent along quite an assortment of stuffed bats, lizards, and snake-skin canes, which I feel sure will cause somebody to creep on their arrival.
Manila’s best cigar, made of a special, selected tobacco, wrapped in the neatest of silverfoil and packed in rosewood boxes tied with Spanish ribbon, costs about five cents and is considered a rare delicacy. One scarcely ever sees these cigars, the “Incomparables,” outside of the city itself, and the brand is so choice that but few smokers are acquainted with it. The foreigner in Manila thinks he is paying dear for his weed at $20 per thousand, and some of our professional smokers limit themselves to those favorite “Bouquets” which correspond to our “two-for-a-quarter” variety but sell here for $1.80 a hundred. Below these upper grades come a various assortment of cheaper varieties, including the cheroots, big at one end and small at the other, and the $3-a-thousand cigars which are made of the first thing that comes handy, to be sold to the crews of deep-water merchantmen. A native of the Philippines wants his cigarette, and gets it. Packages of thirty are sold on almost every corner for a couple of coppers, and to my mind the Manila cigarette is far superior to the variety found in Cuba. Smoking is, of course, encouraged by prices such as these, and one finds it perfectly good form to borrow a cigarette, as well as a light, from his neighbor in the tram-car or on the plaza. Even on the toll-bridge which spans the Pasig you pay your copper for crossing, and get in change a box of matches; and if you are queer enough not to want the matches, the man will give you instead a ticket that avails for the return trip.
Suburb of Santa Mesa. From the Veranda of our Bungalow We Looked down on the Rice-fields and Race-Course.
See page [48].
Sunday I left my room at the club and moved into our new house out in the suburb of Santa Mesa. It is just a week now since the Chinese cook came and began to christen the pots and saucepans, whose Spanish names I shall never get to remember. He began by rendering me a small account of the “extras” provided for our table, and I was floored the first thing on an item of five cents put down as “Hongos.” I asked him what that was. He spluttered around in Spanish and looked about the room to see if he couldn’t find a few growing in one of our pictures of still life on the walls. At length, being struck with an inspiration, he seized a small fan, excitedly stuck it into one of our flower-pots, balanced on top of it an inverted ash-tray, and danced around, pointing first to the item on the bill and then to the peculiar growth in the flower-pot. I confess I didn’t follow his reasoning, till suddenly it struck me that for our first dinner in the new house we had partaken of mushrooms. Not far off from an ash-tray balanced on a Japanese fan growing out of a flower-pot—are they? The style of decoration in our house is especially Japanese, and, needless to say, artistic, since there are large Japanese and Indian shops in Manila, where one can get all sorts of gimcracks at low prices. Our servants number seven, a small quota for two of us. Although their wages are small, amounting, as a rule, to $4 apiece per month, yet it is necessary to have plenty of them, in order that a certain few shall be awake when wanted.