At the end of my chair (I brought my own with me) sits my cabin mate, looking at a lot of illustrated English papers which I have with me; and I am afraid my letter must read very disjointedly, as I am constantly leaving off to answer some of her endless and very intelligent questions.
Near us are camped a Spanish Mestizo and his fat little wife, who wears a great deal of sham jewellery and a cotton dressing-gown—a very superior person, with no pretence at veiling her scorn of my Filipino friend, nor of me for talking to her.
The Filipina laughs very good-naturedly, and says the Mestizas think themselves very great señoras, but she herself does not find their snubs humiliating, “For,” she says, “I behave as I should, and we all come from el buen Dios.”
She is great on el buen Dios, and one of the first of her innumerable questions was to ask about my religion. When I said I was a Protestant, she hastened, politely, to assure me that she was very broad-minded on the subjects of heretics, and refused to believe that they were all devils.
I remarked that I thought we were not much worse than anyone else.
“Oh,” she said, “I quite think you are no worse. Once we had a young man to board in our house, who was in my husband’s business, and he was a Protestant. The padre used to come to me very often and tell me the young man was a devil, and that I must send him away. But I would not do so, for I am broad-minded, and I said he seemed as good as anyone else, and, though he was a good man, el buen Dios had made him a heretic for His own good reasons.”
I complimented her upon her breadth of view, and asked her if she were an Aglipayano, but at this she very indignantly declared she thought it very wicked to side against the Holy Father, and one would surely be punished for such heresy. “They are worse than the heretics,” she declared, “and besides that, they are all Insurrectos.”
“But,” I said, “if you don’t sympathise with the Insurrectos, then you like the Americans?”
“No,” she said, “I hate them,” and she made an ugly grimace.
I asked her why.