There is something intensely human, in our city, expressed by the Spanish word “simpatica”! All the personalities are so well known, so intimately and injudiciously discussed and so ineptly criticised and then in a moment of abandonment, the praise is so real, the encomiums worthy of an Attic sage!
The heroes and favorites are after all well chosen in our city and her gratitude outlasts many a more ambitious burg! There is heart in what Manila does, often almost incoherent heart, but what is the rarest science, the most ambitious churchism, to one drop of that pure wine of goodness and enthusiasm, “pure and undefiled” like Him who went about doing good?
Slowly we are evolving a city from the middle ages to the present type of town, full of modern action and our institutions are rising from a substructure long prepared by the past.
Work along the humanities at the Catholic university of St. Tomas and by the Jesuit Fathers, at their famous school, the “Ateneo,” has prepared the way for a national university whose buildings are rising and whose instruction has already commenced.
The work of the nuns, Spanish and French and German, has been an excellent training for Filipina mothers and their family life.
They have formed whole generations of good women, whose grace and true womanhood put to the blush most of the American, or European importations, with their petty jealousies, their slanders and their utter frivolity.
Today the Filipina girl, like her sisters in every land, aspires to greater learning and the way is being opened also for them.
Still in bastion like walls within the walled city, whose ancient moat and ramparts are the pride of our town, you can see as in a vision of other more refined days, under cape of black, white and of soft outline, faces glowing with a devotion to the highest ideals, not of our time. They are like a rare vintage in crystal from the sunny slopes of Spain, or France, uplifting all women at the sight and shaming the ignoble types of today!
Spain taught her children scanty science, if you will, but if we teach these people one half the goodness she left in their souls, we may congratulate ourselves, congratulation we are not likely to be worthy of, unless there is a speedy change for the better.
Our hospitals are several of them, of the latest equipment and directed by the devotion of well instructed nurses. St. Paul’s, under the supervision of the catholics, though free to all in its beautiful catholic spirit, is perhaps the most popular institution in the city. French devotion has made it the delight of the sick and weary.