THE FOUNDING OF GOVERNMENT musketry. Before the American occupa tion, it is said that these washerwomen used to strip to the waist like a pugilist when they began their daily attack on the sartorial belongings of the caballcros of the city, but since the new regime they have yielded to the artificial niceties of civiliza tion so far as to enter upon their labors in ordinary extreme de'collete', a la court de Louis Quinze. The agiiadoras shock our western civilization in a different way. They have to wade out into the stream to fill their "ollas," large porous earthernware jars, and when the ollas are filled they put them on their heads, and march out, and up through the streets of the pueblo, with their brown legs shining in the sun, all unaware that in the United States to which they belong, this might be considered carelessness in dress. But to return to the floating pavilion, which we left in midstream during this diversion. A band was waiting on the farther side shore, as usual on all such occa sions, and vehicles galore, but as the vehi cles were manufactured to hold only four of the people of this country — "quilez" is the name of them — it would be hardly possible for Judge Taft to get into one — so he walked on up to headquarters, and we all followed suit. They had all gotten soaked to the skin crossing the breakers, and so an hour was spent in drying off and getting into more white clothes. Thus, pursuant to the pro gram, on which the military commander at Laoag and myself had agreed, viz., that my court room should be used for the public meeting, the visitors were escorted thither. That court room was the "swellest" thing of the kind imaginable. I would not like to describe it to the American or to the Georgia Bar Association, for instance, with out a word in extenuation. It was a room perhaps as large as the United States Supreme Court chamber. The "Tri bunal" (rostrum) was not so high, but it was hung in red velvet with a thin rod of
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gilt moulding tacked at the top, a "docel" or dais of like velvet standing just back of the chair of the judge, and a bar railing upholstered in the same velvet, also bor dered with gilt moulding. I worked myself up to it gradually through the exhortation of the clerk of the court, who was my pred ecessor. He was a most excellent man, with a talent for ornamentation, and a belief that to get obedience from, you must "fill the eye of" the Orient. He was anxious to fix up my place of doing busi ness in Spanish style, he said, so I gave him a bit of leeway. As the work proceeded, I had to check him occasionally. For ex ample, I came in one morning during the progress of the painting and found the wainscoting of the walls swathed in a ribbon of vermilion and the cornice-work all around in as light a sky blue as ever graced a maiden's dress at a May-day picnic in "the land of the free and the home of the brave." I thought all that might do for an adobe "alcaldia" in Mexico or Cuba, but not for any sanctuary where I was to offi ciate as high priest of the law. So after a tour through the city among the stores of the "Chinos" — (every one in the Philip pines says "Chino," pronounced "Checno," instead of Chinamen) pigments enough were found to darken the wainscoting to a subdued garnet and the cornice to a blue black, and this, with the walls painted an ordinary white, at last reassured the judge of the court that the shades of Sir William Blackstone would not haunt him in the darkness of night, though he realized AngloSaxon jurisprudence had come into a remote country whose people love gorgeous decoration and are awed thereby. First, before entering the court room itself, the gubernatorial party were ushered into mv office, which adjoined the court room, and was connected with it by a door way and two steps, which you ascended as a sort of stage entrance, i.e., a way to get on the rostrum and come out from behind the dais, the rostrum being backed up
