RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
of the moat. Manila in those days was not the beautiful, park-like, well-kept city that it has since become. There were soldiers everywhere, and it seemed to me we were being constantly saluted.
"And now we come to the far-famed Luneta," said Mr. Taft, quite proudly.
"Where?" I asked. I had heard much of the Luneta and expected it to be a beautiful spot.
"Why, here. You're on it now," he replied.
An oval drive, with a bandstand inside at either end,—not unlike a half-mile race track,—in an open space on the bay shore; glaringly open. Not a tree; not a sprig of anything except a few patches of unhappy looking grass. There were a few dusty benches around the bandstands, nothing else; and all burning in the white glare of the noonday sun.
"Why far-famed?" I asked.
Then he explained in a way which made me understand that the Luneta is not what it is, but rather what it stands for in the life of the community. He said that in the cool of the evening there were bands in the bandstands and that everybody in the world came and drove around and around the oval, exchanging greetings and gossip, while the children with their nurses played in the sand on the narrow beach. It didn't sound exciting to me, but I was afterward to learn that the Luneta is a unique and very delightful institution.
We tore on at a terrific rate and came, at last, into a narrow residence street where the rapid clatter of our ponies' feet awoke echoes from closely set houses which looked as if all their inhabitants were asleep. And they were, of course, it being the siesta hour.
The houses were nearly all built in the Spanish style with high stone basements—covered with mouldy whitewash—and frame superstructures overhanging the street, and
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