To the mere observer, however, this cry of Altruism is not very convincing in face of the fact that the Philippines lie so conveniently on the west of the future Panama Canal. It was not brotherly love which prompted astute American politicians to wash off the Spaniards with rivers of blood and treasure, and I think the Filipino will find that he gets just as much of “Philippines for the Filipinos” as is contained in the other famous phrase of “little brown brother”—and no more. Gradually, too, he will find that to be a “little brown brother” out here will be the same sort of distinction as being a big black brother in the U.S.A.
In one of the last magazines we received from home is a description by some woman of a cruise in a tramp steamer in the Pacific. Lotus Islands, and all that sort of thing, and who-wants-to-return-to-fretful-Europe rhapsodies, which it struck me I should better have appreciated this time last year. But now all I think of is the utter, mental sterility of such a life, which appears to me, in the light of experience, still more like the impression made by a beautiful and stupid woman. She winds up with a fine peroration about the “spell of the Ancient World,” which “binds one to the Island home and the Island life for ever.”
I can’t think what there is of the “Ancient World” about a Pacific island; but the spell, if there is one, must be that of indolence; or the attraction, as in the case of Stevenson, simply a matter of health; for it seems to me that no other inducements could make one willingly lose touch of all that civilisation has to offer to distinguish one from a south sea islander. Of course, in the temperate climes there are the inconveniences of dress, frost, and drainage, but those are small when compared with art, books, good music, and intelligent fellow-creatures. Oh, you can’t imagine the deadliness of the lives the white people lead here—the indifference, the stagnation, the animal round of food and sleep! I think if it had been my fate to stay on in the “Island home and the Island life” for ever, if I had not become physically ill, I must have become mentally an invalid for the rest of my life.
LETTER XLI.
THE FESTIVITIES
Iloilo, August 17, 1905.
I must tell you all about this Comitiva Taft dissipation, of which we had the first taste on Monday, the 15th, when a printed notice was left at our house, saying that the “Congressional party” had arrived that evening instead of next morning, and another large, flowery, and handsome invitation, bidding us to a reception to be held at the house of the De la Ramos, very rich Filipinos, who have a fine house in a broad, shady street, where the Bank and some other big houses stand within gardens.
The reception was to be followed by the performance at the Filipino theatre, to which as I told you we had also been invited, but we thought that the reception, which was “scheduled” to come off at eight, would be quite enough for us for one evening.
We dined early, and sent Domingo out for a quilez “with a good horse.” He came back after a long while and said all the carriages in the town were already hired, but he had got what he could, and the caballo was poco bueno (little good). He was right. It was a horse to make one’s heart ache to look at; and when we stepped into the dirty old broken-down quilez, to which he was attached with odds and ends of old rope, the poor beast started going backwards all down the street. The driver roared profanities, and clicked his lips, and chucked the reins, but all to no effect; till at last he called one of our servants out of the house, and they each seized a wheel by the spokes and forced it round, so that the pony was shoved along, when it started off at a great pace; the driver sprang on the box, and we tore like the wind to the house of De la Ramos.