THE DOCILE WATER BUFFALO IS USED TO WALKING IN MUD
A long, narrow street stretched across the city. Spanish buildings tinted pink and delicately ornamented, lined the sides. White stone buildings, chipped and seamed with use and age, lined the way. Broad entrances permitted glimpses of sumptuous patios, refreshed by tropical plants; low stone steps leading up to dark vault-like chambers; windows barred but without glass,—spacious retreats built by caballeros who thought they knew the value of life. Indeed, they knew how to build against invasion of the sun and the Oriental pirate, but not against the invasion of time. Perhaps they live better as Spaniards to-day than they lived as conquerors yesterday.
Here, within the walled city, everything looks as though change were not the order of eternity. Everything is as it was, yet nothing is so. Trolley-cars clank, motor-cars of the latest models throb quietly, pony-traps and bullock-carts stir the ancient quiet. One wonders how so much new life can find room to move about in such narrow streets with their still narrower sidewalks that permit men to pass in single file only, and angular corners and low buildings. But there they are, and there they bid fair to remain. Even the unused cathedrals, whose doors are here and there nailed shut, stand their ground. Some of them even close the street with their imposing fronts, the courage of fervent human passion in their crumbling façades.
ONE CAN THROW A BRICK AND HIT SEVEN CATHEDRALS IN MANILA
COOL AND SILENT ARE THE MOSSY STREETS OF THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA
At that early hour there was little sign of human life. Into some of the cathedrals native women crept for prayer. Here and there a confined human being passed across the glassless windows; here and there a tourist flitted by in search of sights. And I soon realized that within the walls, intramuros, there was nothing. Across the park, across the Pasig River, there one finds life.
Yet within that ancient crust there is new life. Some old buildings have been turned into government offices, high schools, a public library fully equipped, an agricultural institute, everything standing as in days of old, but new flowers and plants growing in those crude pots,—old surroundings with a new spirit. Something mechanical in that spirit,—typewriters clicking everywhere under native fingers; still, typewriters don't click without thoughts.