RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
The baile was given in the Municipal Building where the meeting of the morning was held, and when we arrived we found the hall quite filled with guests. The Filipino women didn’t display so many jewels and fine garments in those days as new because, in certain quarters, the insurrectos were still levying tribute, but the girls and women, many of them quite pretty, were very gay in long, trailing calico skirts and jusi, sinamay or pina camisas, while the men were attired in all manner of garments from calico and white linen to black cloth.
The men are nearly all excellent dancers, but the women are hampered somewhat in the ordinary “round dances” by their foot gear. They don’t wear shoes,—nor stockings either. At least, they didn’t in those days. They thrust their bare toes into little slippers called chinelas and cuchos, which look for all the world like fancy bed-slippers. There are two kinds: cuchos being considered very “dressy” and having heels which clatter on the floor, while chinelas are heelless and make a scuffing, shuffling noise.
The first dance of the evening at any baile is the rigodon which is really the national dance of the Philippines. I am net going to try to describe it because I know I can’t, though I have danced it hundreds of times. It is the real ceremony on such an occasion. It can be likened to an old-fashioned quadrille, but the square is made up of as many couples opposite each other as there is space and there are couples. There are a number of graceful and somewhat intricate but stately figures. It is a dance unique and, as far as I know, confined to the Philippine Islands. I’m afraid we made but a poor display in our first attempts at the rigodon, but by dint of watching others night after night both my husband and I became most proficient at it. I always had for my partner the most conspicuous illustrado in any community, while Mr. Taft conferred the honour of his attend-
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