Fig.66 - The ladder will be strong and firm.
Cut two slender sticks about six and one-half inches long for the sides; then cut seven or eight short sticks for the crosspieces or rungs. The rungs should be one and three-quarter inches long. Bind and tie the ends of the rungs to the side sticks ([Fig. 66]), placing them about three-quarters of an inch apart. The ends of the rungs must cross the side sticks and extend out about one-quarter of an inch. If properly tied, your little ladder will be firm and strong.
Place the ladder one end resting on the ground, the other end on the front edge of the porch, then stand off and admire your work. It is certainly worth admiring, for the house will be a perfect miniature Filipino home, and you may imagine you can see tall cocoanut-palms and many other strange and beautiful trees and plants that grow in the hot Philippine Islands. You might copy some of these with grasses and small flowering wild plants.
If you have a Noah's ark it will be a good idea to select some of the animals that live in the Philippines and put them in the little rattan and bamboo jungles which you have made of grasses. A piece of looking-glass or plain window-glass can represent water not far from the house, and here you should have a crocodile sunning himself on the bank. Let a wild boar be plunging out of the jungle, and deep in the bamboo grove you might hide the tremendously large snake called a boa. I don't think there will be a boa in your Noah's ark, but you can make one of bread dough, or of clay. With all these dangerous creatures prowling round, do you think it strange that the Filipino people put their houses on stilts?
If this were a real house in the real Philippines you might see a number of natives, wearing little or no clothes, coming toward you bringing small snakes which they had caught to sell in the towns for rat-catchers. And near the house there would be most wonderful flowers, some of them orchids, the flowers that live on air; while all around would be strange and rare birds.
At one side of the house, some distance away, there would, perhaps, be a wet rice-field where the queer water-buffalo, called a carabao, would be drawing a strange-looking plough, the driver, a little brown man, wearing an immense umbrella-like hat woven of palm-leaves.
Listen! Do you hear that deep, booming sound? It comes from the peculiar tree which a native is striking with his big club in slow, heavy blows on one of its immense, wall-like roots. The sound goes rolling far over the land, telephoning to other natives that white people are coming.
A Doll Filipino Woman
To make the little house seem more real, dress a doll in genuine Philippine costume and stand her near the ladder with arms extended as if in welcome. The dress must be a white waist with flowing sleeves, a light-colored skirt, a large gay handkerchief, called a pañuelo, folded around the doll's neck, and an overskirt made of a square of dark cloth drawn tightly around her body from waist to knees. No stockings are needed, but you can give her heelless slippers with only a narrow strip over the toes to keep them on.