there are few lovelier spots than the Luneta. The wind comes soft as velvet; the surf croons a lullaby, and the little toy horses and toy victorias spin up and down between the palms, settling at last around the turf oval which surrounds the bandstand.
The Luneta, Manila
Here are soldiers in clean khaki on the benches; officers of the army and navy in snow-white uniforms; Chinamen in robes of purple or blue silk, smoking in their victorias; Japanese and Chinese nursemaids in their native costumes watching their charges at play on the grass; bareheaded American women; black-haired Spanish beauties; and native women with their long, graceful necks rising from the stiff folds of azure or rose-colored kerchiefs. American officers tower by on their big horses, or American women in white drill habits. There are droves of American children on native ponies, the girls riding astride, their fat little legs in pink or blue stockings bobbing against the ponies’ sides. There are boys’ schools out for a walk in charge of shovel-hatted priests. There are demure processions of maidens from the colegios, sedately promenading two and two, with black-robed madres vainly endeavoring to intercept surreptitious glances and remarks. There are groups of Hindoos in turbans. There are Englishmen with the inevitable walking-sticks. There are friars apparently of all created orders, and there is the Manila policeman.
As I recall those early impressions, I think the awe and respect for the Manila police was quite the strongest of all. They were the picked men of the army of invasion, non-commissioned officers who could show an honorable discharge. Size must have been taken into consideration in selecting them, for I do not remember seeing one who was of less than admirable proportions. Soldierly training was in every movement.
There was none of the loafing stride characteristic of the professional roundsman. They wore gray-green khaki, tan shoes, tan leather leggings, and the military cap; and a better set up, smarter, abler body of law preservers it would be difficult to find. The “machinery of politics” had not affected them, the instinct of the soldier to do his duty was strong in them, and they would have arrested Governor William H. Taft himself as gleefully as they would have arrested a common Chinaman, had the Governor offered sufficient provocation.
We enjoyed that first night’s entertainment on the Luneta as do all who come to Manila, and I must confess that time has not staled it for me. It is cosmopolitan and yet typically Philippine. Since that day the fine Constabulary Band has come into existence, and the music has grown to be more than a mere feature of the whole scene. The concert would be well worth an admission fee and an hour’s confinement in a stuffy hall. Enjoyed in delightful pure air with a background of wonderful beauty, it is a veritable treat.
On the following day we had our interview with the Superintendent of Public Instruction. He informed us that in the course of a week the transport Thomas would arrive, carrying some five hundred or more pedagogues. He suggested that, as we were then drawing full pay, we might reimburse the Government by making ourselves useful at the Exposition Building, which was being put in order to receive them.
So to the Exposition Building we betook ourselves, and for several days made herculean efforts to induce the native boys and Chinese who were supposed to clean it up to do so properly. We also helped to put up cots and to hang mosquito nettings, and at night we lay and listened to the most vociferous concert of bull frogs, debutante frogs, tree toads, katydids, locusts, and iku lizards that ever murdered the sleep of the just. We also left an open box of candy on the table of the dormitory which we had preëmpted, starting therewith another such frantic migration in the ant world as in the human world once poured into the Klondike. They came on all trails from far and near. They invaded our beds, and when the sweets gave out, took bites out of us as the next best delicacy.
Manila seemed to be more or less excited over the new army of invasion, the local papers teeming with jokes about pretty schoolma’ams and susceptible exiles. The teachers were to land at the Anda Monument at the Pasig end of the Malecon Drive, and thence were to be conveyed to the Exposition Building in army ambulances and Doherty wagons which the military had put at the disposal of the Civil Government.
Owing to the fact that I was appointed a sort of matron to the women’s dormitory, and had to be on hand to assign the ladies to their cots and to register them, I did not go down to the Anda Monument to see the disembarkation. Plenty of people who might have pleaded less legitimate interest in the pedagogues than I had, were there, however. By half-past ten the first wagon-load had arrived at the Exposition Building in a heavy shower, and from then till early noon they continued to pour in. On the whole, they were up to a high standard—a considerably higher standard than has since been maintained in the Educational Department. The women were a shade in advance of the men.
Both men and women accepted their rough quarters with few complaints. Nearly all were obliging and ready to do their best to make up for the deficiencies in bell boys and other hotel accommodations. We arranged a plan whereby twelve women teachers were to be on duty each day—a division of four for morning, afternoon, and evening, respectively. The number of each woman’s cot and room was placed after her name, and one teacher acted as clerk while the others played bell boy and hunted for those in demand.
And they were overworked! By five o’clock in the afternoon the parlor of the Exposition Building looked like a hotel lobby in a town where a presidential nominating convention is in session. To begin with, there were the one hundred and sixty schoolma’ams. Then the men teachers, who had been assigned to the old nipa artillery barracks, found the women’s parlors a pleasant place in which to spend an odd half-hour, and made themselves at home there. In addition, each woman seemed to have some acquaintance among the military or civil people of Manila; and officers in white and gold, and women in the creams, blues, and pinks of Filipino jusi thronged the rooms till one could hardly get through the press. Victorias and carromatas outside were crowded as carriages are about the theatres on grand opera nights at home.
It would have been difficult in all that crowd to say who was there with good and sufficient reason. Many a man drifted in and out with the hope of picking up acquaintance, and doubtless some were successful.
I was at the desk one day, doing duty for a teacher who was sick, when two forlorn but kind-looking young men approached and asked if I could tell them the names of any of the teachers from Michigan. We had a list of names arranged by States, and I at once handed this over. They pored over this long and sorrowfully. Then one heaved a sigh, and one took me into his confidence. They were from Michigan, and they had hoped to find, one or the other, an acquaintance on the list. The eagerness of this hope had even led them to bring a carriage with the ulterior motive of doing the honors of Manila if their search proved successful. Their disappointment was so heavy, and they were so naively unconscious of anything strained in the situation, that my sympathy was honest and open. But when they suggested that I introduce them to some of the women teachers from Michigan, and I declined the responsibility as gently as I could, the frigidity of their injured pride made me momentarily abject. They drifted away and hung about with expectancy printed on their faces—that and a mingled hate and defiance of the glittering uniforms which quite absorbed all feminine attention and left their civilian dulness completely overshadowed.
One of the Radcliffe maidens had an experience which goes far to show that higher culture does not eradicate the talent for duplicity for which the female sex has long been noted, and which illustrates a happy faculty of getting out of a disagreeable situation. It also illustrates a singular mingling of unsophistication and astuteness, which may be a result of collegiate training.
One of the chief difficulties which beset us was the matter of transportation. In those days there was no street-car system—or at least the apology for one which they had was not patronized by Europeans. The heat and the frequent showers made a conveyance an absolute necessity. The livery stables were not fully equal to the demand upon them, and,
