And through and through a grateful system I
felt the lifting of the tremendous pressure, the agonizing strain,
competition, and tumult of American life. Thank Heaven! there is still
a manana country--a fair, sunny land, where rapid transportation and
sky-scrapers do not exist.
CHAPTER XIX
Weddings in Town and Country
Filipino Brides, Their Weddings and Wedding Suppers--River Trip
to a Rural Wedding--Our Late Arrival Delays the Ceremony Until Next
Morning--The Ball--We Tramp Across the Fields to the Church--After
the Marriage, Feasting and Dancing.
The composure with which a Filipino girl enters matrimony
is astounding. There are no tears, no self-conscious blushes,
none of the charming shyness that encompasses an American girl as
a garment. It is a contradictory state of affairs, I must admit,
for this same American girl is a self-reliant creature, accustomed
to the widest range of action and liberty, while the matter-of-fact,
self-possessed Filipina has been reared to find it impossible to step
across the street without attendance. But the free, liberty-loving
American yields shyly to her captor, while the sedateness of the
prospective matron has already taken possession of the dusky sister.
Filipino marriages, among the upper class, are accompanied
by receptions and feasts like our own, but differ greatly in
the comparatively insignificant part played by the contracting
parties.
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