Well, it wuz a strange, strange seen that wuz spread out before us; the place looked more’n half asleep, and as if it had been nappin’ for some time; the low odd lookin’ houses looked too as if they wuz in a sort of a dream or stupor. The American flag waved out here and there with a kind of a lazy bewildered floppin’, as if it wuz wonderin’ how under the sun it come to be there ten thousand milds from 143 Washington, D. C., and it wuz wonderin’ what on earth it floated out there in the first place for. But come to look at it clost you could see a kind of a determined and sot look in the Stars and Stripes that seemed to say, “Well, now I am here I hain’t goin’ to be driv out by no yeller grounded flags whatsumever.”
Some of the carriages that we met wuz queer lookin’, rough wooden two-wheeled carts, that looked as if they’d been made by hand that mornin’. Josiah said that he could go out into the woods with Ury and cut down a tree and make a better lookin’ wagon in half an hour, but I don’t spoze he could. Some on ’em wuz drawed by a buffalo, which filled Josiah with new idees about drivin’ one of our cows in the democrat.
Sez he: “Samantha, it would be real uneek to take you to meetin’ with old Line back or Brindle, and if the minister got dry in meetin’, and you know ministers do git awful dry sometimes, I could just go out and milk a tumbler full and pass it round to him.”
But I drawed his attention off; I couldn’t brook the idee of ridin’ after a cow and havin’ it bellerin’ round the meetin’ house. The native wimmen we met wuz some on ’em dressed American style, and some on ’em dressed in their own picturesque native costoom. It wuz sometimes quite pretty, and one not calculated to pinch the waist in. A thin waist, with immense flowing sleeves and embroidered chemise showing through the waist, a large handkerchief folded about the neck with ends crossed, a gay skirt with a train and a square of black cloth drawn tight around the body from waist to knees. Stockings are not worn very much, and the slippers are not much more than soles with little strips of leather going over the foot, and no heels. Anon we would meet some Chinamen, with eyes set in on a bias, and their hair hanging in two long tails down their backs; lots of them we see, then a priest would move slowly along, then a Spanish señora, then a sailor, then perhaps a native 144 dressed partly in European costoom lookin’ like a fright. The street cars are little things drawed by one horse, and the streets are badly paved when they’re paved at all.
There wuz some handsome houses in the residence portion of the city, but aside from the Cathedral there are few public buildings worth seeing. But one thing they have here always beautiful, and that is the luxuriant tropical vegetation, beautiful blossoming trees and shrubs, and the multitude of flowers, tall palms, bamboo, ebony, log-wood, mangoes, oranges, lemons, bread fruit, custard apples, and forty or fifty varieties of bananas, from little ones, not much more than a mouthful, to them eighteen or twenty inches long. Josiah enjoyed his walk, finding many things to emulate when he got back to Jonesville. Among ’em wuz the Chinamen’s hair; he thought it wuz a dressy way to comb a man’s hair, and he wondered dreamily how his would look if he let it grow out and braid it. But he said if he did, he should wear red ribbons on it, or baby blue. But I knew there wuz no danger of his hair ever stringin’ down his back, for I could, if danger pressed too near, cut it off durin’ his sleep, and would, too, even if it led to words.
Wall, Arvilly’s first work, after she had canvassed the hotel-keeper for the “Twin Crimes,” and as many of the guests as she could, wuz to find out if Waitstill wuz there. And sure enough she found her. She wuz in one of the hospitals and doin’ a good work, jest as she would anywhere she wuz put. She come to the hotel to see us as soon as she could, and Arvilly seemed to renew her age, having Waitstill with her agin. We writ to once to Cousin John Richard.
Robert Strong and Dorothy wuz dretful interested in Waitstill, I could see, and they asked a great many questions about her work in the hospital. And I see that Robert wuz only grounded in his convictions when Waitstill told him of the sickness the doctors and nurses had to contend with, and how largely it wuz caused by liquor drinking. 145 Hundreds of American saloons in Manila, so she said, and sez she, “How can the hospitals hope to undo the evils that these do to men’s souls and bodies?” Sez she, “You know what a fearful disease and crime breeder it is in a temperate climate, but it is tenfold worse here in this tropical land.”
She wuz anxious to hear all the news from Jonesville, and I willin’ly told her what Phila Ann had told me about Elder White, and the noble work he was doin’ in East Loontown, and I sez, “Missionary work is jest as necessary and jest as important and pleasin’ to God if done in Loontown as in the Antipithies.”
And she said she knew it. And I sez: “Elder White is working himself to death, and don’t have the comforts of life, to say nothin’ of the happiness he ort to.”
Waitstill didn’t say nothin’, but I fancied a faint pink flush stole up into her white cheeks, some like the color that flashes up onto a snowbank at sunset. Life wuz all snow and sunset to her, I could see, but I knowed that she wuz the one woman in the world for Ernest White, the ideal woman his soul had always worshipped, and found realized in Waitstill––poor little creeter!