What he is coming for, besides the personal conducting of the anti-Filipino Senators, is a staple subject of conversation, many thinking he will be allowed to announce a great reduction in taxation as a sort of halo to his visit. Whatever it is, I am so anxious not to miss his visit, and I do hope our return journey will not have to begin before he and his party arrive.
Besides the Taft excitement, Manila has been convulsed for months by efforts to get fireworks from America for “the 4th.” Already in the month of April there were huge “scare-heads,” as they call them, in the papers, with letters big enough for a poster, beginning
FIREWORKS NOT GONE OFF YET,
and then another headline to the effect that
THEY WILL NOT REACH MANILA TILL JUNE.
Sometimes these headlines are very comical, whether intentionally or not I don’t know—for instance, when the transport Sherman left, there was a headline in enormous letters,
Sherman’s LIVING FREIGHT,
which I at first took to mean cows or horses, but found to my surprise it was only a list of officers’ names.
I am sure you will be sorry to hear that one of our dear little mongeese is dead, the little man of the party. He was very sick for a day or two, lying on the floor on his stomach as if in pain, and when the others came running into my room in the morning, he could only crawl very slowly after them. At last, at about ten in the morning, he died, poor, gentle little beast, and I made Domingo take him out and bury him in the garden. We don’t know what he died of, but we think it was tough cockroach, as his poor little throat was full of hard brown wings, which we hauled out, but it did him no good to get rid of them. What I fear is he may have picked up a cockroach which had died of rat-poison. I gave him weak sherry and water to revive him, but he brought it all up again with pitiful little groans and squeaks, and soon afterwards he died.
The little widows did not seem to mind much, they hopped about as usual; but now one of them has injured an eye in some way, and has gone blind in it, and is very sick and sorry, and I am afraid she won’t live long either. I bathed the poor eye with cold tea, which gave the little creature some relief, for she lifted the lid slowly, and then I saw that the eye had a cut right across, as if some animal had scratched it. She can only move very slowly, with her head on one side—a very sad sight—just able to crawl as far as wherever I am, and then sit in a heap waiting to be lifted up, when she goes to sleep on my lap, and lies still for hours.