Recollections of Full Years

in the wholesale district near the Custom House and came out into a wide plaza which my husband informed me was the end of the Escolta, the principal business street of the city. I was very glad we didn’t have to drive through that; it was just about wide enough for two carriages to pass, but it had a streetcar track right down the middle, and it was thronged. On the track was a jingling little horsecar which seemed to get very much tangled up with the rest of the traffic.

I got an impression of a great variety of colour in which red and yellow seemed to predominate. The soldiers were in khaki, the officers and civilians were in immaculate white linen, while the Filipino men and women of the ordinary class looked as if they had made a heavy draft on the world’s supply of red and yellow muslin, to say nothing of many calicoes of extravagant hues and patterns.

We hurried on around the corner and came again to the banks of the river and the Bridge of Spain. Mr. Taft wanted me to know all about everything right away, so he kept on busily explaining things to me, but using so many unfamiliar words that I got only a hazy impression after all.

But here was the Bridge of Spain, originally built in sixteen hundred and something, the oldest monument to Spanish enterprise in the Islands. And across on the other side we came abreast of the inner wall of the city and whirled along awhile beside a wide, stagnant moat. From the inner side I got a better idea of what the Walled City was like, and I promised myself an early inspection of its mysteries. I wanted to walk across the old drawbridges and through the beautiful gateways which looked so ancient and were so suggestive of piratical and warlike history.

“Those are the Botanical Gardens,” said Mr. Taft⁠—“the man from Cook’s”⁠—making a general sort of gesture toward the other side of the street. What I saw was a small gravelled park with some avenues of fine palms, some other kinds of trees, and a few clumps of shrubbery. We were driving under the low-hanging branches of some magnificent old acacias, but everything looked neglected and run down, and there didn’t seem to be a bit of grass anywhere; just scorching sand and clay. It was really a relief to rest one’s eyes on the awful green scum on the surface of the moat. Manila in those days was not the beautiful, park-like, well-kept city that it has since become. There were soldiers everywhere, and it seemed to me we were being constantly saluted.

“And now we come to the far-famed Luneta,” said Mr. Taft, quite proudly.

“Where?” I asked. I had heard much of the Luneta and expected it to be a beautiful spot.

“Why, here. You’re on it now,” he replied.

An oval drive, with a bandstand inside at either end⁠—not unlike a half-mile race track⁠—in an open space on the bay shore; glaringly open. Not a tree; not a sprig of anything except a few patches of unhappy looking grass. There were a few dusty benches around the bandstands, nothing else;⁠—and all burning in the white glare of the noonday sun.

“Why far-famed?” I asked.

Then he explained in a way which made me understand that the Luneta is not what it is, but rather what it stands for in the life of the community. He said that in the cool of the evening there were bands in the bandstands and that everybody in the world came and drove around and around the oval, exchanging greetings and gossip, while the children with their nurses played in the sand on the narrow beach. It didn’t sound exciting to me, but I was afterward to learn that the Luneta is a unique and very delightful institution.

We tore on at a terrific rate and came, at last, into a narrow residence street where the rapid clatter of our ponies’ feet awoke echoes from closely set houses which looked as if all their inhabitants were asleep. And they were, of course, it being the siesta hour.

A carved narra or Philippine mahogany bed now in Mr. Taft’s room at New Haven

The houses were nearly all built in the Spanish style with high stone basements⁠—covered with mouldy whitewash⁠—and frame superstructures overhanging the street, and 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 businesslike 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