Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition

by Marietta Holley

But what took Josiah most of all wuz the tree dwellers, their houses are built up in the highest trees they can find, and they git to 'em by ladders they pull up after 'em; as he looked on 'em I see in Josiah's reminescent eye dreams of summer housen in our ellums and maples, and I hurried him on. Blandina said she could be perfectly happy up there with a congenial companion, and I knowed she wuz thinkin' of Aspire Todd; but she never could git him up there, for his tongue is the strongest part on him.

We all admired the Native Scouts; they live in a little village of tents in a beautiful piece of woodland. There are four companies, Visayan, Tagalog, Maccabebe and Ilicano. Their band of music, and the band of eighty pieces of the native constabulary are called the finest at the Exposition. When they march they all seem to be one body; so smooth and even are their movements, they are called the most perfectly drilled soldiers in the country.

Jest think on't, if they show off so now what will they do at the next Exposition. There are ten large buildings containing their enormous display of art and science, education, agriculture, horticulture, manufactures, commerce, etc. Some of the statutes and pictures are beautiful; you couldn't tell some of 'em from them brought from abroad. But folks don't seem to realize that some of the Filippinos are as refined and cultured as if they come from the middle of Boston.

Their forestry exhibit is the finest ever brought to any Exposition and contains everything relating to the fifty million acres of Philippine forests, splendid timber, over fifteen hundred different kinds of wood, rattans, gutta percha, dye stuffs, trees yielding oil, gums, rosin, etc. The mineral exhibit shows how rich these islands are in gold, copper, coal and other minerals. In agriculture you see the great display of fibres, Manila hemp which brought 'em over twenty-two millions last year, ropes made from bamboo, cocoa-nut, rattan. Sugar, tobacco, coffee, hats, baskets and other articles made from palm leaves, bamboo, rattan and nito, colored by their own native dyes. In the flower display are the most rare and exquisite orchids growing jest as common there as weeds along the Jonesville road. One interestin' display wuz a map built out doors showin' more than 2,000 islands, their shape and comparitive size.

But most of all I wuz interested in the educational exhibit. So anxious have they been to learn night schools have had to be established. The big normal school building in Manila is handsome enough for any American city, and the smaller district and industrial schools are doing jest as good work. Our Government sent five hundred and forty teachers there in 1901, and now we have about seven hundred there. I took comfort in seein' the great work they have done, as well as the church and private schools, and how well they're learning and getting along.

Anyone could spend five weeks at least jest at the Philippine display, and find abundance to interest 'em all the time in the educational, art, manufacturing, horticultural, agricultural and other displays, but we hadn't no five weeks to spend, so we had to move on, but I felt proud enough to see what my revered Uncle Sam had done and wuz doing.

Truly he took a big job on his hands to take care of such an immense family, and differin' so widely in cultivation, temperament and clothes, to lead the ignorant ones into civilization and keep peace in the family and among his own folks.

He'll have as hard work to do it as that widower I hearn on who had three or four children of his own, and married a widow who also had a number, and then they had several, and one day she came callin' to her husband, "Come quick! come quick! Your children and my children are fightin' with our children."

But Uncle Sam will be on hand, he'll wade right in with a birch gad or a spellin' book, jest which he thinks they need most at the time, and settle the differences all right, and I believe it will be a star in his crown in time to come: turning the savages and cannibals that inhabit part of these new possessions into good American citizens.

I don't spoze I shall see the day when this shall fully come to pass, and mebby the babies of to-day will be great-grandpas before it takes place, but it will be, I believe, and so duz Josiah.