RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
screened from the heat and glare with finely woven, green bamboo curtains. Here and there the "nipa shack" of the low class native had elbowed its way into this fashionable neighbourhood, and through open spaces I caught glimpses of wide stretches of thatch roofs in the near distance, where hundreds of these inflammable huts were huddled together in "native quarters."
When the end of the street came in sight I began to wonder. It seemed to me we had driven many miles.
"Well, where do we live?" I asked. "Have you taken a house in the country?"
"Not quite," said Mr. Taft, "but nearly."
It was the last house in the street, surrounded by a very formidable looking, high stone wall. The first thing I knew we had whirled through a gateway and were driving past a row of soldiers who stood at attention, with their guns held stiffly in front of them. I knew our house had to be guarded, but it was something of a shock for a moment, just the same, to see the guardhouse and the trim soldiers with their business-like equipment.
If I had expected anything very fine or beautiful in the way of a tropical garden, I was disappointed. I don't know whether I did or not. The wonder to me now is how Americans ever did succeed in getting parks and gardens made. It only means that the Filipino has learned, or is learning how to work. He always was willing to work, a certain amount, but he didn't know how. My husband's description of how he got a bit of grading done is typical. The first conclusion he reached in Manila was that the people knew nothing about the value of time, and it must have been a strain on his temperate-zone nervous system to watch a squad of men at work in his garden.
They deposited the material–as usual–as far as they could from the spot where it was to be used; then, one after another, barelegged, bare bodied, incessantly smok-
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