I remember one evening having a couple of
civil engineers, who had been fellow passengers on the transport and
were temporarily in town, to dinner. When they were ready to leave,
at half-past ten, the little girls had both gone to sleep, so I went
downstairs to let them out and bar the door after them. One burst
out laughing and remarked that my bolting the door was a formality,
and that I must have confidence in the honesty of the natives. The
door was of bamboo, tied on with strips of rattan in place of hinges,
which any one could have cut with a knife. I admitted that the man was
right, but the closed door was the symbol that my house was my castle,
and I had no fear of Filipino thieves. The only time I was ever really
afraid was when there were two or three disreputable Americans in town.
The two girls from Radcliffe were in a town in Negros where there was
no other American, man or woman, and held their position for over a
year; nor were they once affrighted in all that time.
After five years of this peace and security in the "wilds," I went back
to the United States and met the pitying ejaculations of the community
on my exile. Well, there was a difference. I noted it first on the
dining-car of the Canadian-Pacific Railroad, where one's plate was
surrounded by a host of little dishes, where the clatter of service
was deafening (so different from the noiselessness of the Oriental),
and the gentleman who filled my water glass held it about three feet
from the water bottle, and manipulated both in sympathetic curves
which expressed his entire mastery of the art.
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