Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

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 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 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.