June 15, 1905.

You must forgive the writing of this letter being rather bad, as I am ill in bed again, and likely to remain there for some time, for I have developed a tiresome complaint, which takes, so people tell me, a long time to heal. It sounds very simple, for what has happened is that the mosquito bites, with which my feet are covered, have become poisoned with something in the water, or the touch of a fly, and I hobbled about for a long time in great pain, being doctored and told to lie up, but I would not consent to, as it is so dull, and the warmth of lying even on a mat makes one’s prickly heat unendurable. Now, however, I am forced to give in, for I can’t walk across a room. An American friend tells me she has had this malady, and it extended all the way up her limbs, and she suffered great pain, and was ill for months. I am afraid this does not console me much, for I am a bad patient, as I have never had anything the matter with me before I came out here. The climate is certainly trying, but some people seem to be able to weather through it pretty well, though I have never met anyone who is really what one would call robust. Some become wrecks, as I apparently should do if I stayed much longer. I can’t tell you how thankful I am to think that there is a chance of going home!

Our dear little mongeese are flourishing. We let them out of the cage nearly all day now, and they go running and smelling about the house; squeaking when they think they are lost, and then I have to go and find them, when they crawl up me as up a large tree, and go to sleep on the branches, quite safe and happy. I think you would love them. They have the sweetest little innocent faces I ever saw, and such pluck and individuality, each with its own little fads and manners. In India, I believe, people keep mongeese to kill snakes; but here they seem to be ready to pursue any and everything, and the house evidently affords good hunting, especially the space under the roof. I saw one of the mongeese under my wardrobe the other day, struggling with what looked like some dreadful grey insides of a little animal, and I hauled her out, thinking she had got hold of something that might poison her. It was the mangled body of a house-lizard—horrible sight! Then another of the little creatures caught an immense spider yesterday, and sat under the sala table tearing off the long hairy legs, and then choking the body down in great gulps—ugh!

One night last week I was awakened by a police-whistle in the street, sounding an alarm, which is one long note and two short ones. We found this alarm note out in a rather curious fashion, as one evening we whistled for one of the servants like that—we were sitting on the balcony at the time—and a few moments later a policeman knocked at the door and wanted to know what murder or other trouble we were in! And when C—— enquired about it at the police station, they asked him not to blow a whistle in that way in the street again unless we were in danger. It was a comfort to know that the signal would work so well.

So when we heard the long note and two short ones in the night, we turned out on to the balcony, whence we saw the glow of a big fire at the end of the street towards the point, and Filipino policemen were running along below with clanking buckets.

The building that was on fire was the Military Corral (stables), which made a fine blaze, and there was a stirring scene when the poor frightened horses came tearing down the quiet, dark street in a maddened rout. They were the American horses, which look so big and powerful and quite alarming to eyes accustomed to the little Filipino ponies. They clattered down the street in batches, tossing their heads and trying to pass one another, with the glow of the fire in the sky behind them, and we heard the sound of their hoofs dying away and away through the empty town. After a while the light in the sky faded out, the policemen with their buckets returned slowly, and we went back to bed; but no one else in the street had so much as looked out of a window!

We learned afterwards that many of the horses were found wandering far out in the country, but I believe some of them have not been caught even yet. The Corral was burnt to the ground, as they had to wait till the police arrived to put it out, because there were only two soldiers sleeping there, all the rest living in houses in the town and suburbs with their queridas (native mistresses). This seems a very strange state of affairs, but it is a well-known fact, and on this particular occasion was referred to quite casually by the soldier on duty (of whom C—— was asking information), and who apparently thought it was the most natural arrangement for troops in a disaffected country.

I have been reading a great deal since I have taken to bed, and besides all the home papers you send me, I have the Manila papers and El Tiempo (Iloilo), which I find I can read quite easily now. The Manila Times of June 10 had a long article about the eternal education question, headed “Arbitrary Race Distinctions,” in which, as you may gather from the title, some American works out his nation’s theory that there is no real difference between East and West. The writer very amiably wishes to point out that Filipino children are just as intelligent at school as are American children, and I think this is about the hundredth article I have read to that effect; but I have still to read or hear any observation to the effect that precocity is the natural heritage of every Oriental child. Americans always appear to judge the Philippines by no standard, precedent, or parallel; which I suppose is very natural for anyone coming straight from such an absolutely different country as the U.S.A. In this article, of which I am speaking at present, there are many long and fine words recklessly thrown about, such as “introspection,” “collective individuality,” and so forth, which I think are meant to prove that if a Filipino child is precocious, he will grow up a clever, cultured, and enlightened man or woman; whereas every unprejudiced person knows that the Filipino people learn with intelligence (an intelligence which is, after all, only remarkable when compared to a very ordinary white child) till they reach manhood or womanhood, and then it is as though a veil were drawn over the brightness of their minds, and they not only progress no further, but even go backwards!

This optimist also pictures a future “in three generations,” when “the iron horse will spin merrily up and down the passes,” by which I take it he implies that means of communication will at last (instead of at first) be established; and after a lot of hyperbolical descriptions of machinery, he winds up with this, “a sleek, well-nourished Filipino will garner the grain and check the tree boles”—which is very fine talk, but, to begin with, no one ever saw a Filipino who was not sleek and well-nourished, and what one wants to know is, what labourers will toil at the “iron horse” and the machinery with sufficient thrift and honesty to make those concerns worth the attention of the American or even Filipino capitalist? It is easy to imagine that some day the natives of the Philippines may be allowed to administer their own government and deal out laws of life and death to each other, but where is capital to come from? For the notion of Wall Street putting money into a business run by a Filipino, would be beyond the wildest dreams of the most uninstructed voter in the remotest State.

Now, what I can’t make out is this, are all these essays and writings and leaders about the absolute equality of the Filipino mind with the best white intellect really genuinely what the Americans think of these people, or are they just so much dust in the eyes of the native as well as the foreign critic to excuse and justify the position the U.S.A. has chosen to assume towards these Islands?