But to a woman who loves
her home and is employed, provincial life here is a boon. Remember
that for an expenditure of forty or fifty dollars a month the single
woman can maintain an establishment of her own--a genuine home--where
after a day's toil she can find order and peace and idleness awaiting
her. Filipino servants are not ideal, but any woman with a capacity
for organization can soon train them into keeping her house in the
outward semblance at least of order and cleanliness. She had better
investigate it pretty closely on Saturdays and Sundays; if she does
so, she can leave it to run itself very well during the five days of
her labor. And what a joy it is--I speak in the bitter remembrance
of a long line of hotels and boarding-houses--to go back to one's
home after a day's labor instead of to a hall bedroom; to sit at
one's own well-ordered if simple table, and escape the chatter of
twenty or thirty people who have no reason for association except
their economic necessities!
In the six years I have lived in these Islands, I have never heard of
indignity or disrespect shown to American women. [1] They are perfectly
safe, and if they choose to exercise any common sense, need not be
nervous. Housebreaking outside of Manila is unknown. I myself lived
for four years in a provincial town, the greater part of the time quite
removed from the neighborhood of other Americans, with only two little
girls in the house with me.
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