She’d get her little banjo and she’d sing the coola la lo.
With her arm upon my shoulder, and her cheek against my cheek
We used to watch the hathis, and the elephants pilen teak;
Elephants a pilen teak in the smudgy sludgy creek,
Where the silence hung so heavy, you was half afraid to speak.
On the road to Mandalay, where the flyin’ fishes play,
And the dawn comes up like thunder out a China ’cross the bay.
The last occasion on which I saw her was on the eve of my departure for the United States. In a “victoria” accompanied by two University classmates, she called at my quarters in Ft. William McKinley, where I joined them for a ride to the haunts of my old marine days, in the village of San Ruki, near Cavite. Among old friends and the ever-predominant harp and guitar, I enjoyed the fascinations of their quaint moonlight “fiesta.”
The drive homeward to Manila under the shades of night, through the “barrios” of Bacoor, Paranacque, and Pasay, with the wavelets of the sombre bay breaking on the sandy beach, was one of imposing grandeur that will ever remain vivid when my mind reverts to tropical sublimity.
At a dinner party on the roof-garden of the Hotel “Oriente” this night, I bade Señorita Lemaire farewell.