RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
ered, the "party" was made up entirely of our stablemen's parientes.
I had a pair of ponies and a Victoria; Mr. Taft had his two little brown horses and a Victoria; besides which there was an extra horse to be used in case of accident to one of the others, as well as a pony and calesa for the children. This rather formidable array was necessary because we found it impossible to take a horse out more than twice a day, and usually not more than once, on account of the sun. My ponies were taken out only in the early morning or the late evening, and those of Mr. Taft had all they could do to take him to the office and bring him home twice a day. Distances were long and there were no street-cars which ran where anybody wanted to go.
This number of conveyances made a good many stablemen necessary and all of them, with their families, lived in quarters attached to the stables. These families consisted of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins near and far removed, wives, children, grandchildren, and a few intimate and needy friends with their family ramifications. Besides our three cocheros and the stable boys, there was a gardener with his parientes, so it is no wonder that on my first inspection of the lower premises I should have thought that some sort of festivity was in progress. I might have lived in Manila twenty years without being able to straighten out the relationships in this servant colony; it was not possible to learn who had and who had not a right to live on the place; and my protest was met with the simple statement that it was el costumbre del pais, so I, perforce, accepted the situation.
Filipino servants never live in the master's residence; they never want to; they want the freedom of a house of their own, and these houses are, as a rule, built on the outer edges of the garden, or compound. I believe Americans now are learning to meet the pariente habit by having room for just
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