But if, as sometimes happens, a girl
is led astray by a married man, then disgrace and punishment are her
lot. I recall a circumstance where a young girl under a cloud left her
native town, never to appear there again. But less than three months
after her banishment, her seducer was an honored guest, sitting at
the right hand of her brother, in the brother's own house. Apparently
the best of feeling prevailed over a matter that with us could never
have been forgiven, though bloodshed might perhaps have been averted.
In my eight years in those Islands I have met among the upper classes
but one young girl whose conduct offered reason to men to take her
lightly. In a pretty, childish way, Filipino girls are coquettes,
but they are not flirts. Their conception of marriage and of their
duty to their own husbands and their children is a high and noble
one. Nevertheless, with innately good and pure instincts, they cannot
take half as good care of themselves as can the American girl who is
more indiscreet, who knows much less of the matters pertaining to love
and sex. The latter has an infinite advantage over her dusky sister in
the prudery of speech which is the outwork in a line of fortifications
in which a girl's tenacity to her own ideal of chastity must be the
final bulwark, A frankness of speech prevails in the Philippines
with regard to matters about which we are frank under necessity,
but which, as far as possible, we slide into the background.
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