When Mr. Taft reached Manila he found the city en fete and in a state of intense excitement which had prevailed for two days during which the people had expected every hour to hear the great siren on the cold storage plant announce that the little Alava, the government coastguard boat which had been sent to Singapore to get him, had been sighted off Corregidor.
When the announcement finally came, everything in the harbour that could manage to do so steamed down the Bay to meet him, and when the launch to which he had transferred from the Alava came up to the mouth of the Pásig River and under the walls of old Fort Santiago, seventeen guns boomed out a Governor's salute, while whistles and bells and sirens all over the bay and river and city filled the air with a deafening din.
Wherever his eyes rested he saw people,—crowding windows, roofs, river banks and city walls, all of them cheering wildly and waving hats or handkerchiefs. And the thing which moved him most was the fact that the welcoming throng was not just representative of the wealthy and educated class, but included thousands of the people, barefooted and in calicoes, who had come in from the neighbouring and even the far provinces to greet him.
Mrs. Moses asked Mr. Benito Legarda, one of the Filipino members of the Commission, whether or not there had ever been a like demonstration in honour of the arrival of a Spanish Governor, and his answer was:
"Yes, there were demonstrations always, but the government paid the expenses."
In this case the very opposite was true. The government had no money to waste on celebrations and all government
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