The market day is the great day of every town. A certain part of every village is prepared with booths and stalls to display wares of endless variety. We all looked forward to market day. There were mats of various sizes,—mats are used for everything. There are some so skillfully woven that they are handsome ornaments, worth as much as a good rug. There were hats woven out of the most delicately shredded fibers, the best costing from twelve to twenty dollars in gold, very durable and very beautiful. The best ones can be woven only in a damp place, as the fiber must be kept moist while being handled. There were fish nets of abaka differing in mesh to suit the various kinds of fish. The cloths were hung on lines to show their texture. We had to pick our way amongst the stalls and through or over the natives seated on the ground. I have seen a space of two acres covered with hundreds of natives, carabao, trotting bulls, chickens, turkeys, ducks, fine goods, vegetables, and fruits all in one mass; and I had to keep a good lookout where I stepped and what I ran into. It was not necessary to go often for they were more than willing to bring all their wares to the house if they had any prospects of a sale. I have had as many as thirty natives troop into the house at one time. They finally became so obnoxious that I forbade them coming at all.

The silence of these crowds was noticeable. They were keenly alive to business and did not laugh and joke or even talk in reasonable measure. As a race they are solemn even in their looks, and no wonder, such is their degradation, misery, and despair. They have so little sympathy and care for each other, so little comfort, and so neglected and hopeless, so sunken beneath the so-called better class that when a little mission gospel was started one could hardly refrain from tears to see the joy that they had in accepting the free gospel. It was no trouble for them to walk thirty or forty miles to get what they called cheap religion. They were outcasts from society and too poor to pay the tithes that were imposed upon them by the priests in their various parishes, for no matter how small a village was there was the very elegant cathedral in the center of the town which only the rich and those who were able to pay were entitled to enter.

The poor blind people wandered from village to village in groups of two to twenty. Quite a number of the moderately insane would go about begging, too, but the worst were chained to trees or put in stocks and their food thrown at them. Even the dumb brutes were not so poorly cared for.

The houses of the rich, while not cleanly and not well furnished, always have one large room in which stands a ring of chairs with a rug in the center of the floor and a cuspidor by each seat. You are ushered in and seated in one of these low square chairs, usually cane seated. After the courtesies of the day and the hostess’s comments on the fineness of your clothing, refreshments are brought in,—cigars, cigarettes, wine, cake, and preserved cocoanut. Sometimes American beer is added as possibly more acceptable than the wine.

The citizens of Jaro seemed to be friendly, they often invited me to their festivities; committees would wait upon me, presenting me sometimes invitations engraved upon silver with every appearance of cordiality in expression and manner. They could not understand why I would not accept; I would explain, that first, I had no desire; second, I thought it poor policy to do so when our soldiers were obliged to fight their soldiers, and they were furnishing the money to carry on the warfare; then too, most of their balls were given on Sunday night. True, a Filipino Sunday never seemed Sunday to me. I could only say, foolishly enough, “But it is not Sunday at home.” I could not attend their parties and I had little heart to dance. I had only to go to the window to see their various functions; it could hardly be called merry as they went at it in such a listless, lazy way, with apparently little enjoyment, the air that they carry into all their pleasures.