RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
out giving the matter a moment's unhappy consideration. But I was to receive a few shocks in this connection later on. One of these came when I learned that some members of the party had left their children at home for fear of the Philippine climate. Then one day, at the old Palace Hotel in San Francisco, I was sitting on guard over Charlie as he played up and down a wide corridor, and reading a book at intervals, when along came an odd-looking elderly gentleman. who stopped to regard the boy with a smile of the kindliest amusement. Charlie was an attractive child. Even I couldn't help but see that, and I was used to having people stop to watch him. He had big, dark eyes, soft, brown curls, very deep dimples, and a charming smile that was always in evidence. The elderly gentleman stood watching him for some little time, his face growing gradually very grave, and I wondered what he was thinking about. He didn't keep me wondering long. After a few moments he stepped deliberately up to me and said:
"Madam, I understand you are going to the Philippine Islands. Now I want to know if you are going to take that great, big, beautiful boy out to that pest-ridden hole and expose him to certain destruction."
I grabbed my great, big, beautiful boy and rushed off to my room, and it was a relief eventually to learn that the awful Philippine climate, at least so far as children were concerned, existed, largely, in people's minds.
We found intense interest in our mission in California and San Francisco. If there were any anti-imperialists there, they successfully concealed themselves. The East was uncomfortably crowded with them in those days, but the evident interest and profit that the West coast would derive from a large Philippine trade may have been responsible for the favourable attitude of the Californians. However, we must not impeach their patriotism, and we ought to attribute some of their enthusiasm in reference to the Philip-
37
