Miss
C---- said they were worried and tried to get away, but I declined to
believe her. Ice-cream, I insisted, might excuse four times the delay,
and I flatly refused to be convinced that they had intended to turn
their backs on it after a compulsory fast of seven months.
The troops bundled themselves back to quarters, and it all ended
in a laugh. Only the commanding officer leaned out of his window to
chuckle at me.
"Well, did you get your chicken?" and I went home and vowed that
Miss C---- should perish four times over before I would stir up an
excitement about her again.
If we lived in a slightly hysterical state as concerns the
possibilities of war and bloodshed, we soon learned to be phlegmatic
enough about disease and pestilence. Nearly five hundred starving
people had gathered in Capiz, and their emaciated bodies and cavernous
eyes mocked all talk of the brotherhood of man. This condition did
not represent the normal one of the whole province,--but rather these
people represented the aggregate of starvation. Of course, following
the war, there was a short crop and no little distress. But a certain
Capiz politician with his eyes on the future caused word to be sent
out through the province that if the needy would come into Capiz he
would see that they were fed. Of course he did no such thing. They
came and starved to death; but meanwhile the report of his generosity
was spread abroad, and nobody took any pains to tell the story of how
the miserable wretches had been cheated.
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