Manila, March 10, 1905.

I am still in Manila, you see, but am going home to-morrow, so I will write a line to go out by the next mail, which I should miss if I waited till I get to Iloilo.

I rambled off so in my last letter that I quite forgot to tell you about a party we went to at the house of some very rich Mestizos; a sort of reception, with desultory dancing, but in the afternoon, or rather, the evening hours before dinner.

When we arrived, at about six, the party was in full blast; rooms cleared for action, blaze of electric lights, string band, crowds of pretty frocks, and grounds all lighted up with arcades of paper lanterns. This climate lends itself particularly to such entertainments, with the warm evenings, and there is not much trouble in the way of preparation, with big, open houses and polished floors.

Our host was a small man, Filipino altogether, but his wife, a tall and very pretty Mestiza, “had fewer annas to the rupee,” and was exquisitely dressed.

I walked about the pretty rooms and met many friends, besides recognising many of those I had seen at the MalacaÑan fÊte, and saw again the pretty young woman who had charmed me so at the palace, when we were calling there. She looked prettier than ever amongst a crowd, though they were all very smart, and some of the American women really well dressed with nice hats.

This is such a small place, and so few travellers ever come here that everyone knows everyone else, which makes parties very pleasant, though I noticed, again, that the Americans are not really democratic a bit, and there is a great deal of social distinction made, and people do not recognise others whom they really know perfectly well.

The army is just as superior as the soldier set in any garrison in any kingdom; and if a man is a merchant, unless his business happens to bring in a large income, it would be absurd for him or his family to expect to be asked to the exclusive dinners and parties at which the administrative, military, and millionaire set congregate. I don’t think I am at all keen to be a democrat, even a theoretical one, for it must be very tiresome to have no real social position of your own, but to depend on some one else’s recognition of your claims to a certain income, an appointment, or who you are seen with, and what you wear—and then, when all is said and done, to be the social equal of your workmen and servants. Not that I suppose for a moment that anyone is really a democrat, for I have never yet read or heard of such a being, and certainly I have never seen one.

I have discussed this subject, in all good nature, and generally half in fun, with nearly all the Americans I have met, for it is one that interests me enormously; and the gist of all they tell me—or imply, which is better—is that all Americans are the equals of those above but not of those below them. If I suggest a social distinction between any citizen of the United States and the King of England, the mere idea of such a proposition makes these democrats go into fits of laughter; but when I ask them if they, personally, would consider it an indignity to be sent to dine in the King’s kitchen with his scullions, they generally get quite offended and can’t see that at all. I think, too, that these subtleties of democratic etiquette must be even more distracting to the simple Filipino brain than they are to persons like myself, for though the “little brown brother” is now being taught that all men are equal, he can see without doubt that a native or Mestizo with plenty of money can get the wives of the highest American officials to visit his house, whereas the poorer relative is not even recognised.

Emerson told his countrymen the truth once for all when he said that “humanity loves a lord,”—and it will have “lords,” and must make “lords,” and the best-intentioned Americans in the world will no more make these half-bred Malays equals of each other, or any one else, than they are of each other or negroes.

You will laugh at me for my vehemence, I expect! But you can’t think how aggravating it is to have a principle for ever forced down your throat by the good folk who blatantly and utterly disregard the practice. So the end of my reflections is that I am quite content to curtsey to a king—and to make my Filipino servants call me seÑora, and put on a clean camisa when they come into my presence.

I have wandered away from the Mestizo party, but not so very far in reality, for it is at such gatherings that such reflections occur to me, along with speculations about the floor, and the refreshments, and how much duty that woman paid for that frock. The refreshments, by-the-bye, were very well done; and indeed, so was the whole party, and the charming manners of the host and hostess did a great deal towards making everything go off well.

Yesterday I spent a harrowing morning trying to buy some vests for C——. Perfectly ordinary white cotton vests, such as the men wear here under their white linen coats, but more difficult to track and procure in Manila than so many birds of paradise. When I told my friends I was going to get vests, they were amazed and asked me why I did such an eccentric thing, instead of sending to Hong Kong for them like everyone else. But I was rather on my mettle about it, and said I would get them in Manila in one of the Chinese shops, for people in Iloilo had done this thing, and why not I?

At one shop, where I had been told to go, a weary-looking Chinaman was sitting in a chair at the shop door, and first I tried Spanish on him, but with no result, not even a flicker of intelligence on his face. I might have been talking in Pekin. So I said, “Do you sell cotton vests?”

“Wests? No. No have got wests.” And he spoke in a tired, helpless drawl, as if his soul had been deadened by a life of trying to get “wests.”

But I was not to be put off, as I had been to six other shops and was getting tired. So I said, “But I was told you sold vests. I don’t mean waistcoats,” which I know they often do, “I mean things to wear under a coat. Vests.”

“Oh, yes. Allitee wests. Mellikan-Filipino store on Escolta. Oh, yes; me savvy all about wests.” And he looked beyond me as if he had been marooned in mid-ocean. I think it was really opium, which one gets accustomed to in the Filipinos as well, for sometimes they are simply maddening when they speak as though in a dream, staring with dull eyes.

The end of the vest story was that at last I tracked what I wanted to a Chinese shop, where the display in the windows consisted of tin pans, sausages, bead curtains, picture postcards, and things like that. After a tour of the Escolta, I had arrived at this shop by the advice of the coachman, to whom I managed to explain my wishes by a lurid pantomime in the middle of the street. When the coachman at last understood that I wanted to buy vests, and not to make him take his off, we went, as I say, to this Chinese shop with the unpromising window-decorations. When I entered and asked for vests, everyone brightened up, and a very yellow old man took an opium pipe out of his mouth, and said something in guttural words to a fat youth in the comfortable nÉgligÉ of a pair of blue cotton trousers and a jade bangle.

This person evidently understood English, for he waived my Spanish aside and began to talk very fast in pidgin, which, when you hear the real thing, and not on the stage at home, is very difficult to understand. However, he seemed to bring the word “wests” in pretty often, so I began to feel hopeful, and made the old man draw a chair up to the counter for me, and sat down.

Presently, after a fearful lot of talk with several other fat, yellow youths, and a great deal of hauling down and putting away again of bales and boxes, and sharp rebukes from another old Chinaman with a bead counting-board, who was doing his accounts in a big book with Indian ink and a paint brush, the boy who was attending to me came back to where I sat, and threw down a pile of big, flat bundles with a triumphant air, exclaiming “Wests!”

No such luck, however, for the bundles contained coloured furniture cretonnes. So I set to work to explain again, but it was not so easy as it had been in the Spanish shops, for no one, as far as I could see, had on such a thing as a vest, an open coat being the most they wore above the waist line. I did not dare to go out and make a demonstration with the coachman, so I just struggled along with pantomime and bits of French and German, which really did just as well as English or Spanish; till at last a light dawned on a Celestial brain, and they all said some word in Chinese to each other, and nodded and grinned and replied: “Allitee, Mississy. Have got.”

And at last a box was opened, inside which were really and truly white cotton vests. But the size was unfortunately intended for very small and consumptive youths, so I had to begin another long and troublesome explanation that the person they were intended for was forty-two inches round the chest, which was conveyed by calculations and juggling with a metre tape.

“Ah,” said the two old men. “Can catchee flom Hong Kong. All same steamer. You waitee two tlee days.”

I said I knew that already, and explained that I was going to Iloilo to-morrow.

“Velly good,” said one old man. “Mollow can get. Catchee flom one piecee Chinaman in Manila.”

“Can’t I go to the other Chinaman myself?” I asked.

“Me catchee wests. Mollow can get number one size west.”

However, while this was going on, a bright idea had evidently occurred to one of the shop boys, who had been looking so hard at me that I thought he was ill; but he suddenly left the shop, going out of a doorway with big Chinese letters in gold on a red placard over it, and came back, just as I was leaving the shop, with the very things I wanted—a dozen of them in a big cardboard box.

Such, then, is shopping in Manila, and it is only the replica of how I tried to match embroidery cotton in the Spanish shop it had been bought in; and the other despairing adventure I had when I went in search of fruit dishes. So I now understand why everyone said it was absurd of me to think I could “go shopping” in Manila, and I wished I had done as everyone else does, and got the things direct from Hong Kong, and saved all the trouble, as well as the annoyance of paying double; for, duty and all, it is cheaper to get things in oneself.

I am glad to be going home to Iloilo, as the weather is beginning to get pretty hot, and Iloilo is much cooler than this. Of course in Manila one has the advantages of the Australian provisions from the Cold Storage, which means fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit, besides being able to get any amount of ice, all of which luxuries are a great aid towards bearing up in a hot season; but the air at Iloilo is so much lighter, and the fresh mornings and evenings down there are wonderful tonics.

As to the social attractions of Manila, they are no better than those at Iloilo. Bridge! How one gets to hate the very sound of the name of the game! And now when I see a group chained silently round a Bridge table, I can only think of the Souls tied to their Vices in the Frescoes of Hell in the Campo Santo at Pisa.

I met at dinner the other night the wife of a very “prominent citizen,” who was a source of infinite delight to me in an elaborate defence I drew out of her by pretending I knew nothing about the game. I find this is the only safe course, by-the-bye, as, if you admit any knowledge of Bridge, you are forced to play whether you like it or not—or whether you can afford it or not, which is more important!

This good lady told me that it was quite true that she and the other American ladies play cards all day, informing me that every morning she, herself, played Bridge from eight to twelve, either in her own house or in that of a friend. I said:

“But how about your housekeeping?”

“Why,” she answered, “if you have a good Chinese cook that don’t amount to anything.”

“But it must be an awful bore,” I said, “in this climate to put on a dress and a hat and go out in the hottest part of the day.”

To which she replied that if I would let her teach me Bridge I should understand why she did these things. She was very amusing, in her dry, American way, and made us all laugh very much at the comical things she said. However, she was really in earnest about her offer to teach me; but I said I was very grateful, only I thought I would rather remain ignorant as long as I could if it “took” so badly as she described.

I feel much better in health for the change; and everybody here, both my hosts and others, have been so kind to me that I am quite sorry to leave them all. There are several pleasant people down in Iloilo, but I think a change of society does one as much good as anything else, don’t you?

This will go out by the Hong Kong mail to-morrow, and I will catch the next one by writing as soon as I get home, and sending the letter by the Butuan when she returns.