What must it
be to the untravelled child of the soil?
When the Filipinos win a fight or an election, or fall heirs to
any particular luck, they do not express their enthusiasm as we do
in fire crackers, noise, and trades processions. They go sedately
to church and sing the Te Deum. And as we enjoy the theatre, not
merely for the play, but for the audience and its suggestions of a
people who have put care behind them and have met to exhibit their
material prosperity in silks and jewels, so do the Filipinos enjoy
the splendor of the congregation on feast days. The women are robed
as for balls in silken skirts of every hue--azure, rose, apple-green,
violet, and orange. Their filmy camisas and panuelos are painted in
sprays of blossoms or embroidered in silks and seed pearls. On their
gold-columned necks are diamond necklaces, and ropes of pearls half
as big as bird's eggs; while the black lace mantillas are fastened
to their dusky heads by jewelled birds, and butterflies of emeralds,
sapphires, and diamonds.
The first time I went to church in Capiz and looked down from the choir
loft on the congregation, I could think of nothing but a kaleidoscope,
and the colored motes that fall continually into new forms and
shapes. When the results of the war had made themselves felt, and
the cholera had ravaged the province, this variety of color was lost,
and the congregation appeared a veritable house of mourning.
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