Recollections of Full Years

By Helen Herron Taft.

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Foreword

I wish to express my grateful acknowledgment to Eleanor Franklin Egan and my daughter for their valued assistance in the preparation for publication of these Recollections.

Recollections of Full Years

Cincinnati, the city of my birth and early memories, was, in the ’sixties, about as begrimed and noisy and altogether unattractive as any place well could be; yet it possessed certain attributes which really entitled it to the proud designation of “The Queen City of the West.”

It was prosperous; it had hardly yet been surpassed in prosperity by Chicago; Cleveland was not even spoken of as a rival; and in many ways it was the most important centre west of New York and east of the Mississippi.

It owed its early development principally to its advantageous location. It lay on the great central route from the East to the West, which runs from Baltimore and Washington to Cumberland and over the Alleghenies to Pittsburg, thence by the Ohio River to Cincinnati and on west to St. Louis and south to New Orleans. It had an important trade with New Orleans and drew commerce from a large territory to the north. But whatever else may be said of it, its most devoted citizen could not claim that Cincinnati was beautiful. Its buildings were unlovely; its streets were badly paved and as badly kept; and it lay under a pall of soft coal smoke which left its sooty mark upon everything⁠—inhabitants included.

Yet, ugly as it was, the city boasted an unusual society. During the first half of the nineteenth century many young men of good stock and great ability, drawn by the promise of rapid advancement, had moved to Cincinnati from all parts of the East and South; New Jersey, New England, Virginia and Kentucky contributing, perhaps, the greatest number. There were many families of wealth and culture which, without parade or display, maintained fine homes and dispensed a generous hospitality. The suburbs, East Walnut Hills, Mt. Auburn and Clifton, on the heights to the north and east, were famous for their beautiful country places.

Then there was a large population of the best class of Germans, many of whom were university men who left their own country after the Revolution of 1848 and came to Cincinnati to settle. Of these, Frederick Hassaurek, General Willich and Judge Stallo, who came to Cincinnati when Carl Schurz went to St. Louis, are perhaps the most prominent. The German influence upon the community was marked. It made for a more liberal Sunday; it brought the study of German into the public schools; and it developed a strong taste for good music. Indeed, the musical advantages of Cincinnati in my girlhood were better than those of any city in the United States, with the exception of New York or Boston. Theodore Thomas was president of the Conservatory of Music and he organised a symphony orchestra which he continued to direct until he went to Chicago along about 1890.

Cincinnati in those days, with her educated, wealthy and public-spirited society, was much in advance of any other city in the Mississippi Valley in culture and refinement. There was great interest in schools of all sorts and in every kind of intellectual activity. Away back in 1848 the Literary Club of Cincinnati was formed by a company of men among whom were both Mr. Taft’s father and mine, as well as Rutherford B. Hayes, Stanley Matthews, Manning F. Force and Mr. Spofford, later Librarian of Congress. This club continues to be a cherished institution and in my girlhood it was the centre of all interest in literature and intellectual pursuits.

My father, John Williamson Herron, was a graduate of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, and was in college with Benjamin Harrison. He was for fifty years a trustee of that institution and was devoted to its interests. My husband’s father, Judge Alphonso Taft, was one of the Yale class of 1833, was for many years a member of the Yale Corporation, and had five sons who graduated at that university. My mother’s brother, Judge Isaac Clinton Collins, and one of my two brothers also graduated at Yale, while my other brother graduated at Harvard, so it will be seen that both my husband and I grew up in the midst of strong collegiate traditions.

To write about one’s childhood is not easy. Memories by the score come flocking up, but, dear as they are, upon examination they turn out to be quite commonplace and hardly worth relating. My memories are not sufficiently “early” to have any special value. The first thing that I dimly remember is sitting on the front steps of my home watching some sort of parade in which there were many soldiers, but I was too young then to know that it was a peace celebration I was witnessing at the close of the Civil War.

My father was a lawyer who came to the bar of Ohio in the ’forties. He was United States Attorney under President Harrison, was a State Senator, and twice declined appointments to the Bench because the salary attached to these positions was not enough to support his large family. I was the fourth in a family of eleven, eight girls and three boys. One boy and two girls died before I can remember.

Our house was one of a block of grey brick houses in Pike Street, at the east end of Cincinnati, which, at that time, was the fashionable residence section of the city. Pike Street runs down to the river on a rather steep incline and, as it was paved with cobblestones, my early memories are somewhat marred by an impression of the frequent clatter and clang of heavy wagons pulling their way up the hill from the river landing.

While our house was not particularly distinguished, being much like those on either side of it, across the street from us there were two very striking and imposing residences which lent distinction to the neighbourhood, and in which, as I grew up, were formed the pleasantest associations of my life. The one directly opposite was a large, square, red brick house which had an air of great dignity. It was the home of Mr. Larz Anderson. There were ten boys in the Anderson family and, though they were all much older than I and most of them had gone away before I grew up, I remember that it was a very lively household always. In my later girlhood we were specially linked to this family by the marriage of one of the boys, Charles, to my sister Jennie.

The house next to Mr. Anderson’s, on the north, I knew as the Sinton home. A low, colonial structure, well set in a garden of green lawns and finely kept shrubbery, it is still one of the most beautiful residences in Cincinnati, and, indeed, in the whole country. Its architecture suggests that of the White House and it was, as a matter of fact, designed by the same architect, an Irishman named Hoban. The Sinton house is lower than the White House, being only one story high with a basement, but it has the same classic outlines and it bears, moreover, the stamp of time, which gives it a character all its own.

It was built about 1800 by a Mr. Martin Baum, but was purchased by the first Nicholas Longworth in the early part of the century and was the home of the Longworth family for a generation. Long before I can remember, it was bought by Mr. David Sinton, one of the most successful business men in Ohio, and to me it was always the Sinton home. When I was about twelve years old, Mr. Sinton’s daughter Annie married my husband’s brother, Charles P. Taft, and as they have always lived in this old house it has come to be known, since Mr. Sinton’s death in 1901, as the Taft house. It is the only Taft house in Cincinnati now, the house where my husband was born having been sold after his father’s death, and it has been the scene of many of the most important events of my life. It was there that my husband received the announcement of his nomination for the Presidency; it was there, in front of the house, that he made his speech of acceptance; and it was there that Charles Taft gathered a large party of friends on the night of November 6, 1908, to receive with us the election returns. And it is now to this house, where my husband’s brother Charles and his wife dispense a generous hospitality, that we always go when we return to Cincinnati.

My girlhood days were spent quite placidly in Miss Nourse’s school, which was known in Cincinnati as “The Nursery,” and where all the girls of the Herron family, as well as Mr. Taft’s only sister, Fanny, received their education. Miss Nourse was a Maine woman with a thorough New England education and with a thoroughly New England idea of imparting it. She insisted, especially, upon languages and literature. Much of my time, outside of that taken up in regular school work, I devoted to the study of music, and I practised my scales on the family piano with such persistence that I wonder the whole neighbourhood did not rebel. Music was the absorbing interest of my life in those days, the inspiration of all my dreams and ambitions.

Our house was none too large for the family, but as there was a wide difference in our ages it happened that my oldest sister was married while my youngest sister was still a baby in long clothes. Then, the boys went away to college and were gone the better part of each year, so it was not often that we were all at home together. Nevertheless, we had our share of the happy-go-lucky and somewhat crowded existence of a large family on a moderate income.

My mother was Harriet Collins, and when she was seventeen years old she came with her mother to Cincinnati, from Lowville, New York, to live with her brother, Judge Collins, who was my father’s law partner and continued to be so for more than forty years. Her father, Eli Collins, was a Member of Congress from the Lowville district of New York. My mother was in many ways a remarkable, as well as a most attractive, woman. She had an exceedingly keen wit and a mind alert to the humour in every situation. With so many children to nurse, to scold, to sew for and, sometimes, to cook for⁠—in a word, to bring up on a small income⁠—she would seem to have had little time for outside interests; but she was very popular in society and I remember that in her busiest years she went out a great deal. She had a stimulating personality and I do know that she made her family circle a very amusing and interesting one in which to grow up.

The only incident of my girlhood which was in any way unusual was my first visit to the White House as a guest of President and Mrs. Hayes. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes and my father and mother had been lifelong friends. Mr. Hayes was, at one time, a partner in my father’s law firm. They had been closely associated for a great many years and had a very warm regard for each other. My youngest sister was born shortly after the election of Mr. Hayes, was named Lucy Hayes Herron, after Mrs. Hayes, and was taken to the White House to be christened. My mother paid several visits to the White House and after my sister Jennie was married Mrs. Hayes invited her and Mr. Anderson to stay a week with her and, to my intense excitement, she added that she would like to have me accompany them. I was seventeen years old; I had never been to Washington and to me it was a very important event. I was not “out,” so I couldn’t spend my time in the White House as I would have liked, in going to brilliant parties and meeting all manner of charming people, but, fortunately for my peace of mind, the Hayes lived very quietly, so it was not so trying to have to devote myself to seeing the sights of the Capital like any other tourist.

I didn’t meet my husband until I was eighteen years old. We had been born and brought up in the same town; our fathers were warm friends and had practised law at the same bar for more than forty years; during that time our mothers had exchanged visits, and my sister Maria and Fanny Taft were schoolmates and close companions at Miss Nourse’s, but the Tafts lived at Mt. Auburn, a hill suburb of Cincinnati, and after Will finished Woodward High School he went for four years to Yale, so it is not at all surprising that we did not meet.

Judge Alphonso Taft was Secretary of War, and later Attorney General, in Grant’s Cabinet while his son Will was at college, but before the latter graduated, the family had returned to Cincinnati, so he came straight home and entered at once upon a law course in the Cincinnati Law School. It was at that time, when he was still a student and working as a law reporter on the Cincinnati Commercial, that I met him. It was at a coasting party one winter’s night, I remember very well, when I went with a party of young people, including the Charles Tafts, to coast down a fine steep hill in Mt. Auburn. Will Taft was there, and after being introduced to me he took me down the hill on his big bobsled. After that we met very frequently.

A small circle of us went in for amateur theatricals with much enthusiasm and great earnestness. We launched ourselves in our histrionic careers in She Stoops to Conquer which we gave at the house of one of the company. Then came A Scrap of Paper in Mrs. Charles Taft’s drawing room, in which both Will and I took part. We had become very ambitious by this time and sent all the way to New York for a professional stage-manager to help us with the production. But it turned out a most nervous occasion. We were all overtrained, I suppose. One thing after another went wrong until at the crisis of the play, where the hero is supposed to find in the barrel of a gun the scrap of paper upon which the whole plot hinges, the amateur hero looked pretty foolish when he discovered there wasn’t any gun. Another one of the company, in a fit of absentmindedness, no doubt due to overwrought nerves, had carried it off the stage, and just when the situation was getting tragic for the hero the culprit came creeping back with it and carefully put it where it belonged, for all the world as if he thought he were making himself invisible to the audience.

But our ardour was not dampened. I remember Mr. Taft especially in a burlesque of The Sleeping Beauty, which, in its legitimate form, had been produced for charity at Pike’s Opera House. The Unity Club, a most respectable organization of the young men of the Unitarian Church, decided to give their version of the same story, and it was a huge success. Mr. Taft played the title role and his brother Horace, who is six feet four in his stocking feet, shared with the Beauty the honours of the evening as a most enchanting Puck.

Then we had parties in the country, too. Many of our friends had country places that spread along the Madison Road and the Grandin Road on East Walnut Hills, and two of my closest friends lived out there in a great house, looking down over the majestic but tawny Ohio River, above the point where the sweeping curve begins that carries it by the amphitheatre in which the business part of the city is built. It was a long distance to East Walnut Hills and in my girlhood we had to go the greater part of the way in a clumsy old omnibus that clumped along over the unpaved roads at the rate of about three miles an hour. But such little inconveniences didn’t trouble us, and many were the vaudeville and charade parties that we had, there being enough “talent” among us to get up an amusing performance at a moment’s notice.

But in spite of all this gaiety, Mr. Taft was making very satisfactory progress in his career. As a law reporter he showed his growing interest in the public welfare by meeting certain elements in Cincinnati politics with vigorous denunciation. There was a man named Tom Campbell, a clever criminal lawyer, who had something more than a suspicion against him of bribery and corruption of both witnesses and juries, and he had succeeded in organising a political machine that was running the town according to his directions.

Campbell was counsel for the defence in what was known as the Hoffman case and was strongly suspected of tampering with the jury, and Mr. Taft in reporting the case, took special pains to bring out all the fine points in the lawyer’s character and methods, telling the truth as he saw it.

This brought him into association with Mr. Miller Outcalt, the Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, who represented the State in the Hoffman case, and when Mr. Outcalt succeeded by election to the position of prosecuting attorney he offered the place of assistant to Mr. Taft, although he had been at the bar not more than seven months. Mr. Taft served in this office for fourteen months and the experience he had in the rough-and-ready practice in criminal trials, in preparing cases for trial, in examining witnesses, in making arguments to the court and in summing up to the jury, was the most valuable experience he could possibly have in fitting him for trial work at the bar.

But this experience was shortened by a circumstance not of his seeking. Major Benjamin Butterworth was the Congressman from one of the Cincinnati districts in President Arthur’s administration, and the President being anxious to relieve the Collector of Internal Revenue, called on Major Butterworth to suggest the name of another man. Major Butterworth had been for a long time a warm friend of Mr. Taft, thought he had a good family name and was too young in politics to have many political enemies, so he suggested him and wrote to urge him to accept the appointment which the President immediately offered to him. He accepted the place and held it for a year, but it proved a serious interruption in his legal career. He resigned as soon as it was possible and began practice with Major H. P. Lloyd who had been his father’s partner before he went to Vienna.

Mr. Taft went abroad in the summer of 1883 to visit Judge and Mrs. Taft in Vienna, and it was about this time, when we had all spent several years in frivolities, that several of us became very serious-minded and decided that we must have something by way of occupation more satisfying than dancing and amateur theatricals. I secured a position as school teacher and taught for two years, first at Madame Fredin’s and then at White and Sykes, both private schools out on Walnut Hills. Then, with two of my intimate friends, I decided to start a “salon.” We called it a “salon” because we planned to receive a company who were to engage in what we considered brilliant discussion of topics intellectual and economic, and we decided that our gathering should include only specially invited guests. Among these were the two Taft brothers, Will and Horace, and other men common friends of us all.

In view of the fact that two marriages resulted from this salon, Mr. Taft has suggested ulterior motives on the part of those who got it up, but there was no truth in the charge. We were simply bent on “improving our minds” in the most congenial atmosphere we could create, and if our discussions at the salon usually turned upon subjects of immediate personal interest, to the neglect of the abstruse topics we had selected for debate, it was because those subjects were just then claiming the attention of the whole community.

Cincinnati, thanks to the activities of Tom Campbell and his followers, was then in a tangle of political mismanagement of a particularly vicious character, and our little circle developed a civic spirit which kept us alive to local interests to the exclusion, for the time being, of everything else. Mr. Taft was intimately connected with the reform movement, and in all its phases, through comedy and tragedy, disappointment and elation, we fought it out at our salon meetings with such high feeling and enthusiasm that its history became the history of our lives during that period.

Then came the famous Berner case. This was in 1884. Berner had committed a deliberate murder of an unusually appalling nature and with robbery as the motive, and there was great excitement about it. Campbell became his counsel and, in a trial which held the attention of the community while it lasted, he succeeded in getting the man off for manslaughter when the unanimous opinion was that he should have been hanged. Nobody could see how an honest jury could have rendered any other verdict. There was intense indignation throughout the city and a meeting was called to denounce Campbell as an embracer of juries and a suborner of perjury.

On the evening when the meeting to denounce Campbell was called we were having a session of the salon and our whole discussion was of the possible developments which might grow out of the infamous Berner trial. We were greatly excited about it. I remember the evening distinctly because of the terrible things that happened. We were disturbed by a great commotion in the street and we sallied forth in a body to see what it was all about.

The mass meeting was held at Music Hall and was presided over by Dr. Kemper, a very effective speaker. The crowd was angry and quickly passed the condemnatory resolutions which were framed. But with all the indignation and resentment everything might have been carried out quite calmly had not the match been applied to the powder. Just as the meeting was breaking up somebody shouted:

“Let’s go down to the jail and take Berner out!”

It was an appeal to the mob spirit which responds so readily in an angry crowd; they went; and of course the worst elements immediately came to the top. They attacked the jail, which was in the rear of the court house, but were held back until the militia, which had been instantly summoned, arrived. Then they went around to the front and set fire to the court house. With the streets packed with raging humanity it was not possible to fight the fire and the building was completely destroyed.

The militia charged the mob and this inspired somebody with the idea of raiding a gun store and seizing arms and ammunition with which to make a resistance. The idea caught on and spread rapidly. One place attacked was Powell’s gun shop near Fourth and Main. But Powell, either forewarned or foreseeing some such development, had quietly made preparations to meet it. He lighted up the front of the store as brightly as he could, then, with two or three other men who were expert shots, he put himself behind a barricade in the rear. The mob came on and as the ringleaders broke into the shop they were picked off by the men behind the barricade and killed in their tracks. Four or five of them went down in a heap and the crowd behind them, not expecting such a reception, instantly was brought to its senses. This was in April, 1884.

Such an outbreak was a disgrace to the city of Cincinnati, but it had the effect of bringing the Campbell controversy to a head. A bar committee of ten men, of which both my father and Mr. Taft were members, was formed to see what could be done to rid the community of the evil reputation it had acquired. This committee made a thorough investigation of Campbell’s character and record, prepared charges against him and, with my father as chairman, presented them, in June, 1884, to the district court of three judges, and asked a hearing and Campbell’s disbarment if the charges were proved.

Campbell had been indicted on a criminal charge of attempting to bribe a man called on the Berner jury and the prosecutor in this case was our intimate friend and associate, Mr. Rufus Smith, who had been in Europe with Mr. Taft the year before. The jury hung, eight to four, although the evidence was strong against the defendant. This fanned the flames of popular resentment and I don’t suppose our little salon was the only place in Cincinnati where Campbell was carefully retried and convicted. In this criminal case Mr. Foraker, who shortly afterward became Governor of Ohio, was counsel for Campbell.

The disbarment hearing was set for the following November and some six months was thus given for taking the depositions of nonresident witnesses. Mr. Kittredge and Mr. Ramsey, leaders of the bar, were retained as senior counsel for the committee, and Mr. Taft and Mr. John Holmes, a warm friend of ours, were junior counsel and were directed to prepare the evidence. In this work Mr. Taft and Mr. Holmes went all over the country taking depositions and we kept in constant touch with them. All the members of the committee expected to have their reputations assailed, being perfectly certain that Campbell would not hesitate at any measure he might be able to take to discredit them, but they went ahead nevertheless.

When the trial came on Mr. Ramsey, of the senior counsel, expected to open the case, but he became quite seriously ill and was confined to his house for days. Through his unexpected absence, the duty of making the opening statement fell to Mr. Taft. He was taken completely by surprise, but he rose to the opportunity, which was certainly a splendid one for a man so young. He had then been at the bar only four years, but having assisted throughout in the preparation of the evidence he knew the case from beginning to end and he made a speech which lasted four hours and a half. Mr. Taft thinks this was an opportunity improved which had an important influence on his career. The special part it played in his subsequent promotion I shall speak of.

The result in the Campbell case was at first disappointing because the Court which heard the disbarment charges found Campbell guilty only on minor charges and, by a vote of two to one acquitted him on those which would have required his disbarment. But the public disapproval of the Court’s decision and the moral effect of the proceedings drove Campbell from the city and the State and accomplished the purpose of the bar association.

The Campbell trial was finished in December, 1884, and in January, 1885, Mr. Rufus Smith, an old and intimate friend, entered the office of County Solicitor and tendered to Mr. Taft the place of Assistant County Solicitor. The advantage of this office was that it paid $2,500 a year and that, while he acted as counsel for the county, he still was able to continue the general practice of law with his partner, Major Lloyd.

Mr. Taft and I were engaged in May, 1885, and were married in June of the following year.

In the summer of 1885 my mother, moved I think by some sentimental attachment to the scenes of her childhood, decided that she would take us all up into the Adirondacks, to a little camp near Lowville. My two older sisters were married so there were only six of us left in the family, but we were still something of a handful to move in a body. However, my mother was equal to it. We packed almost a van load of trunks and set out, and one evening we arrived, over the worst corduroy road that was ever laid down, at a little cottage beside a beautiful lake in a setting of pine-clad hills. The scenery indeed was most satisfactory, but the cottage was so small that the family more than strained its capacity. Then we took our meals at a sort of boarding house called Fenton’s, where the only thing on the bill of fare was fresh beef. I like what is known as “roughing it” as well as anybody, but even the superlative appetite produced by outdoor living demands some variety; and variety we did not get.

Mr. Taft had elected to remain in Cincinnati all summer and save money. It was a Spartan resolution and we all applauded it, but he probably found Lowville a long way from Pike Street; and I certainly thought Mother was sacrificing a good deal for the sake of renewing the memories of her youth. However, the days went on, while the fresh beef grew less and less tempting.

I had written Mr. Taft something about the Fenton fare and he, wanting very much to join us, but having no excuse for breaking his admirable resolution to remain in Cincinnati, hit upon the only plan for escaping comment on his lack of fortitude. He went down to Peeble’s, a fancy grocer, and selecting a box as big as a Saratoga trunk, ordered it filled with every kind of delicacy he could think of or have pointed out to him and brought it with him to Lowville.

We went rowing on the lake about sundown the evening he arrived, and right in the middle of a fine long stroke he suddenly dropped his oars, reached in his pocket and drew out a letter. He laughed a little when he handed it to me, then picking up his oars he rowed on without a word. The letter was from his father.

Judge Taft was at this time Minister to St. Petersburg, having been transferred from Vienna. Will had written him about his engagement and about his plan to remain in town all summer and devote himself strictly to business and the accumulation of funds; and this was the answer.

There were a lot of nice complimentary things about me, with the warmest congratulations and good wishes; then the letter closed by saying: “I am very much pleased with your decision to remain in Cincinnati this summer. I myself have found it not at all bad if you take care of yourself, and there is no doubt that during the quiet months one can make and save considerable money by staying at home. I congratulate you on your strength of character.” We really had a delightful summer at Fenton’s after that.

My father had given me a very nice lot at the end of McMillan Street on the site of an old quarry, which commanded a fine view of the Ohio River and the surrounding country, and Mr. Taft and I determined to build a house on it which should be ready for us when we got back from our wedding trip. So the winter before our marriage was filled with architects’ plans, contractors’ estimates and all the other fascinating details of building, and we thought that we had finally settled upon a design that met with every requirement of good taste and modern comfort.

For our wedding trip, we went abroad, and I had my first taste of the foreign travel of which I had always dreamed. We crossed on the City of Chester which was the oldest, and therefore the cheapest ship of the Inman line. We chose her for the simple reason that her rates accorded with our means, but we found, much to our astonishment, that we were the only people on board who had deliberately selected her. Everybody else had been forced to take her because of some emergency or some mishap. One man had to miss the Germanic in order to give his dentist time to relieve a very troublesome tooth. Another man was called to court just as he was about to board the Britannic. Those were the proud ships of the Atlantic in those days and it was not at all difficult to understand why anybody should prefer them to the City of Chester, but it amused us greatly to hear the shamefaced excuses of our fellow passengers. My husband and I were not ashamed, nor were we so particular about our comforts that we did not thoroughly enjoy ourselves. Besides, we had the gratifying consciousness of the money which the low rates had left in our pockets to be spent much more profitably abroad.

The trip was full of interest to us both. We spent the greater part of the summer in England and saw the sights of London and the cathedral towns in great detail. Our only trip on the Continent was through Holland to Paris. I remember that in Amsterdam I bought some old and rather large Delft plates. They wouldn’t go into any trunk we had, so I had them carefully packed in a wicker hamper and this article became thereafter a part of our hand luggage, and was the occasion for a decided disagreement between my husband and me as to what the true object of travel was. He used to say that he “toted that blamed thing all around Europe and after all it arrived in Cincinnati with its contents in small pieces.” Which was true. He had “toted” it all around Europe, but when we arrived in New York I entrusted it to an express company with the result that when we opened it we found its contents in such a condition that only an accomplished porcelain mender could put a sufficient number of pieces together to make what my husband always afterward referred to as “the memento of our first unpleasantness.”

Our trip from Cincinnati to Cincinnati took just one hundred days and cost us just one thousand dollars, or five dollars a day each. I venture to say that could not be done nowadays, even by as prudent a pair as we were.

During a subsequent trip abroad, two years later, I was able to indulge my desire to hear music. We went to Beyreuth, to the Wagner festival, and heard Parsifal and The Meistersingers gloriously rendered; after which we went to Munich and attended operas and concerts until Mr. Taft rebelled. He said that he enjoyed a certain amount of music just as much as anybody, but that he did want to get something more out of European travel than a nightly opera and a daily symphony.

So⁠—we went to Italy and saw Rome and Florence in true Baedecker style. When we arrived in Rome we opened our Baedecker and read that there was almost no foundation for Rome’s awful reputation as an unhealthy place. “Rome is a very healthy place,” said Baedecker, “at all times of the year except the first two weeks in August, when a visit there is attended with risk.” We had arrived for the first two weeks in August!

When we came home from our wedding trip we found that our house was not yet completed, so we went to stay with Judge and Mrs. Taft for a month at the old house in Mt. Auburn. It was a nice old place, with about three acres of ground, but the air around it was just about as sooty as if it had been located down under the factory chimneys. Mt. Auburn is on a sort of promontory which juts out into the city; it is on a level with the tops of the smoke stacks and it catches all the soot that the air can carry that far.

Judge and Mrs. Taft had come home from their European mission in time for our wedding. Judge Taft had been ill in St. Petersburg and had given his family a great deal of anxiety, but he was now settled down to the business of quiet recuperation and the enjoyment of well-earned rest.

My husband’s father was “gentle” beyond anything I ever knew. He was a man of tremendous firmness of purpose and just as set in his views as anyone well could be, but he was one of the most lovable men that ever lived because he had a wide tolerance and a strangely “understanding sympathy” for everybody. He had a great many friends, and to know him was to know why this was so.

Mr. Taft’s mother, though more formal, was also very kindly and made my visit to her home as a bride full of pleasure. The two, the father and mother, had created a family atmosphere in which the children breathed in the highest ideals, and were stimulated to sustained and strenuous intellectual and moral effort in order to conform to the family standard. There was marked serenity in the circle of which Judge and Mrs. Taft were the heads. They had an abiding confidence in the future of their children which strongly influenced the latter to justify it. They both had strong minds, intellectual tastes, wide culture and catholic sympathies.

Not long after we arrived my husband came to me one day with an air of great seriousness, not to say of conciliation and said:

“Nellie, Father has got himself into rather a difficulty and I hope I can rely on you to help him out⁠—not make it too hard for him, you know⁠—make him feel as comfortable about it as you can. The truth is he used to have a messenger at the War Department in Washington whom he was very fond of. He was a bright man⁠—colored, of course⁠—and he was very devoted to Father. Now this man called on Father down town today. He’s here on a private car and Father says he’s made a great success as a porter. Father got to talking to him, and there were lots of things they wanted to talk about, and besides the man said he would like very much to see Mother⁠—and Father, who was just about ready to come home to lunch said⁠—right on the spur of the moment⁠—you understand he didn’t think anything about it⁠—he said to this man, ‘Come on home and have lunch with us.’ He’s downstairs now. Father came to me and said he had just realised that it was something of a difficulty and that he was sorry. He said that he could take care of Mother if I could take care of you. So I hope you won’t mind.”

As soon as I could control my merriment caused by this halting and very careful explanation, I went down to luncheon. I didn’t mind and Will’s mother didn’t mind, but the expression on the face of Jackson, the negro butler, was almost too much for my gravity. I will say that the porter had excellent manners and the luncheon passed off without excitement.

We made a short visit at my mother’s on Pike Street before we moved into our new house on McMillan Street; but we began the year of 1887 under our own roof which, though it was mortgaged, was to us, for the time being, most satisfactory.

One day after we had been married less than a year my husband came home looking so studiously unconcerned that I knew at once he had something to tell me.

“Nellie, what would you think,” he began casually, “if I should be appointed a Judge of the Superior Court?”

“Oh, don’t try to be funny,” I exclaimed. “That’s perfectly impossible.”

But it was not impossible, as he soon convinced me. My father had just refused the same appointment and it was difficult to believe that it could now be offered to my husband who was only twenty-nine years old. It was a position made vacant by the retirement from the Bench of Judge Judson Harmon who was my husband’s senior by more than a decade.

One of the most prominent and prosperous law firms in Cincinnati was that of Hoadley, Johnston and Colston, and both Mr. Hoadley and Mr. Johnston had been invited to go to New York and become partners of Mr. Edward Lauterbach who was then doing an enormous business.

They went, and the old firm in Cincinnati being broken up, Mr. Colston asked Judge Harmon, who was then on the Superior Court, to take Mr. Hoadley’s place. Mr. Harmon decided to do so, but he was anxious to resign his judgeship in such a way as to leave a long enough vacancy to attract a good man. It was an elective office and the law provided that a vacancy occurring within thirty days before election could not be filled by an election until the following year. Judge Harmon resigned so as to make the appointment for a period of fourteen months. After my father declined it, the choice lay between Mr. Taft and Mr. Bellamy Storer. Mr. Taft always thought that but for his opportunity in the Campbell case Judge Hannon would not have recommended him and Governor Foraker would not have appointed him. That is why he says he traces all his success back to that occasion. Mr. Foraker was opposing counsel in the Campbell case, but he had a lawyer’s appreciation for a lawyer’s effort.

After the first pleased surprise at the honour which came to us so unexpectedly I began to think; and my thinking led me to decide that my husband’s appointment on the Bench was not a matter for such warm congratulation after all. I saw him in close association with men not one of whom was less than fifteen years older than he, and most of whom were much more than that. He seemed to me suddenly to take on a maturity and sedateness quite out of keeping with his actual years and I dreaded to see him settled for good in the judiciary and missing all the youthful enthusiasms and exhilarating difficulties which a more general contact with the world would have given him. In other words, I began even then to fear the narrowing effects of the Bench and to prefer for him a diverse experience which would give him an all-round professional development.

He did not share this feeling in any way. His appointment on the Superior Court was to him the welcome beginning of just the career he wanted. After serving the interim of fourteen months he became a candidate for the office and was elected for a term of five years. This was the only elective office Mr. Taft ever held until he became President.

My own time and interest during that winter was largely spent on my house. We had been very particular about the plans for it and had fully intended that it should combine outward impressiveness with inward roominess and comfort. It was a frame structure, shingled all over, and with certain bay window effects which pleased me exceedingly. In fact, with our assistance, the architect had made a special effort to produce something original and, while I don’t claim that the result was a conspicuous architectural success, to my mind it was anything but a failure. And our view of the Ohio River and the surrounding country was really superb.

But I was not destined to enjoy my satisfaction with my surroundings very long. The section had been at one time a stone quarry, and the man who had levelled off the land and filled in the gulches made by the quarry operations, took as a part of his compensation two building lots which happened to be just across the street from ours. He forthwith proceeded to put up a sort of double house which looked more like a gigantic dry-goods box than anything else, and I felt that it quite robbed the neighbourhood of the “tone” which I had confidently hoped our house would give it. The double house had just one quality and that was size.

I think the owner, whose name was Jerry something, lived in one side of it, and he had a tenant in the other who hung clothes out of the front windows. But tastes in architecture differ, as we soon found out.

We were paying taxes on our house at an assessed value of $4,000 and the undervaluation had been troubling my husband’s conscience for a long time, in spite of my assuring him that tax collectors ought to know their own business. Some men from the board of equalization were to call one day to make a new appraisement and I had very much hoped that my husband would not be at home. But he was; he was there to welcome them and give them every possible assistance. Without waiting for an examination of the premises, he addressed one of them, an Irishman named Ryan.

“See here, Mr. Ryan,” he said, “I understand that Jerry, my neighbour across the street, has his property assessed at $5,000. Now I don’t think that’s fair. I’m assessed at only $4,000 and I’m sure my house cost a good deal more than his. As a matter of fact it cost over $6,000. Now I’m a Judge of the Superior Court; I get my income out of taxes and I certainly have no disposition to pay any less than my share.”

“Well, Judge, your Honour,” said Mr. Ryan, “that is a sentiment very befitting your Honour. Now I’ll just be after goin’ over and lookin’ at those houses of Jerry’s, and then I’ll come back and look at yours.”

I watched them as they went over to the other houses; then I saw them go up the street a way and down the street a way, looking us carefully over from every possible viewpoint. When they came in they wore a very judicial aspect and I expected to see taxes go up with one wild leap.

“Well, Judge, your Honour,” began Mr. Ryan, “I think you’re givin’ yourself unnecessary concern. We assess houses for what they’re worth and not for what they cost. While your house no doubt suits your taste, it has a peculiar architectural style that wouldn’t please very many people, and certainly it ain’t to compare with those houses of Jerry’s. There’s a modern polish about those houses that will rent, Judge, your Honour.”

My son Robert was born in this house on McMillan Street in September, 1889. In the following February an interruption occurred in our peaceful existence which was welcome at least to me. President Harrison offered the appointment of Solicitor General of the United States to Mr. Taft and he, with a few regretful glances at his beloved Bench, accepted it. I think that once again it was Major Butterworth who suggested my husband’s name to the appointing power. I was very glad because it gave Mr. Taft an opportunity for exactly the kind of work I wished him to do; work in which his own initiative and originality would be exercised and developed. I looked forward with interest, moreover, to a few years in Washington.

Mr. Taft made his first official arrival in Washington alone. My baby, Robert, was only six months old and I concluded to remain in Cincinnati until my husband could make arrangements for our comfortable reception. His description of his first day in Washington is, in the light of later events, rather amusing.

He arrived at six o’clock on a cold, gloomy February morning at the old dirty Pennsylvania station. He wandered out on the street with a heavy bag in his hand looking for a porter, but there were no porters. Then he stood for a few moments looking up at the Capitol and feeling dismally unimportant in the midst of what seemed to him to be very formidable surroundings. He wondered to himself why on earth he had come. He was sure he had made a fatal mistake in exchanging a good position and a pleasant circle at home, where everybody knew him, for a place in a strange and forbidding city where he knew practically nobody and where, he felt sure, nobody wanted to know him. He lugged his bag up to the old Ebbitt House and, after eating a lonesome breakfast, he went to the Department of Justice to be sworn in. After that ceremony was over and he had shaken hands with the Attorney General, he went up to inspect the Solicitor General’s Office, and there he met the most dismal sight of the whole dismal day. His “quarters” consisted of a single room, three flights up, and bearing not the slightest resemblance to his mental picture of what the Solicitor General’s offices would be like. The Solicitor General’s stenographer, it seemed, was a telegrapher in the chief clerk’s office and had to be sent for when his services were required. Altogether it must have been a very disheartening outlook.

As Mr. Taft sat looking over briefs and other papers, and trying to get some definite idea about his new work, a messenger brought in a card.

“Mr. Evarts, New York,” it read.

Evarts was a well-known name, of course, but it was hard for Mr. Taft to believe that the William M. Evarts, leader of the American Bar and then Senator from New York, could be calling on the Solicitor General of less than a day. He knew that Wm. M. Evarts had known his father.

Mr. Evarts entered.

“Mr. Taft,” he said, as he gave my husband’s hand a cordial grasp, “I knew your father. I was in the class of ’37 at Yale and he had graduated before I entered; but he was there as a tutor in my time and I valued his friendship very highly.”

Then the visitor came straight to the point.

“Mrs. Evarts and I are giving a dinner tonight for my former partner and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Choate. Mr. Choate is in Washington for a short time to argue a case before the Supreme Court. Now, unfortunately, one of our guests has sent word that he can’t come and I thought, perhaps, considering my long-standing friendship with your father, you might consent to waive ceremony and fill the place at our table at this short notice.”

My husband accepted the invitation with almost undue alacrity, and when his guest left started in on his new duties feeling that, after all, Washington might afford just as friendly an atmosphere as Cincinnati, once he became accustomed to it.

There is just one incident in connection with the dinner party which Mr. Taft adds to his account of that day. As he sat down to dinner the ladies on either side of him leaned hastily forward to see what was written on his place card. “The Solicitor General”⁠—that was all. Of course neither of them knew who the new Solicitor General was and it didn’t occur to him to enlighten them until it was too late to do it gracefully. So he allowed them to go on addressing him as “Mr. Solicitor General” while he, having them at an advantage, addressed them by the names which he had surreptitiously read on their place-cards. They were Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge and Mrs. John Hay.

When my husband had been in Washington two weeks I joined him and we took a small house on Dupont Circle where for two years we lived a life, sometimes amusing, sometimes quite exciting, but, on the whole, of quiet routine.

Washington society was much simpler then than it is now. Since that time a great many people of very large means have gone to Washington to live because of its unusual attractions and its innumerable advantages as a residential city. They have changed Washington, by their generous hospitality, into one of the most brilliant social centres in the world, where large dinner parties, balls, receptions, musicals and other entertainments are of daily and nightly occurrence throughout the season. The very character of the streets has changed. The small, red brick houses, closely grouped together and neighbouring, even in fashionable quarters, on negro shacks and cheap tenements, are being everywhere replaced by marble and granite residences of great beauty and luxury.

In 1890 Society in Washington still consisted, chiefly, of the “best families” of the old city, the Diplomatic Corps and the highest among the government officials. A dinner party of twelve was still considered large, and only a few people had weekly evenings At Home. There were occasional big receptions, but for nobody was society the mad rush that it is today. We ourselves lived very simply even for those simple days.

My daughter Helen was born in 1891, so for the last year in Washington I had two small babies to care for. In order that he might get a little much needed exercise Mr. Taft bought a horse and, fortunately, for us, he secured a most adaptable creature. He was supposed to be a riding horse, but he didn’t mind making himself generally useful. The Attorney General lent us a carriage which he was not then using⁠—a surrey, I think it was called⁠—and we hitched him to that; and the whole Taft family drove out of a Sunday afternoon to the Old Soldiers’ Home, which was the fashionable drive in those days, or up the aqueduct road to Cabin John’s bridge. My sister Maria who visited us used always to speak of our steed as “G’up,” a name suggested by Bobby’s interpretation of his father’s invocations to the good-natured and leisurely beast. Poor old “G’up”! I suppose with his “horse sense” he finally realised that he was leading such a double life as no respectable horse should lead; he gave up and died before we left Washington.

The Justices of the Supreme Court and the Attorney General, the men with whom Mr. Taft came most in contract, were, with their wives, very kind and attentive to us, including us in many of their delightful parties. Chief Justice Fuller was then the head of the court and I have the pleasantest memories of his and Mrs. Fuller’s hospitality. Justice Grey had married a Miss Matthews, a daughter of Mr. Justice Matthews. I had known Mrs. Grey in Cincinnati before her marriage.

During the course of my first weeks in Washington Mr. Taft had taken special pains to impress on me many times the necessity for my calling on Mrs. Grey without any delay. Much importance attached to the formality of first calls and I was the newest of newcomers who had to call on the wives of all my husband’s official superiors before they noticed me. Still, it was a full month before I had time to go to Mrs. Grey’s and I was considerably worried about it. But when, finally, I did go and had been most kindly received, I explained at once that the settling of myself and my small baby in a new house had, until then, kept me too busy for any calls. Mrs. Grey hastened to assure me that she understood my position perfectly and had not thought of blaming me.

“Indeed, my dear,” she said, “I knew that you had a small baby in the house and that you must be kept constantly occupied. As a matter of fact I should have waived ceremony and come myself to welcome you to Washington except for one thing which I could not very well overlook, and that is⁠—that Mr. Taft has not yet called on Mr. Justice Grey.”

I think I have rarely seen anything more satisfactorily amusing than the expression on my husband’s face when I told him this.

But, in spite of the friendliness of the Justices and others, we really went out very little. On one occasion when my sister Maria had been visiting us for several weeks we went for a Sunday night supper to the house of a lady whom Maria had known very well in Cincinnati. She was living that winter in Washington and seemed to be rather well pleased with her social success. She talked loftily throughout supper, and during a good part of the evening, about the dinner parties she had attended and the grand people she had met. Then just as we were about to start home she turned to my sister and said:

“And have you been much entertained, my dear Maria?”

“Oh, I’ve been enjoying myself tremendously,” was the answer.

“Well, with whom have you dined, dear?” persisted our hostess.

“Why, we’ve dined with the Andersons, with the German Ambassador, with the Chief Justice, and with the Maurys, and with the French Ambassador⁠—and with, oh, a number of other people.”

Our hostess was visibly impressed.

“Why! you really have been very gay, haven’t you, dear!” she exclaimed.

When we got into our cab to go home Maria turned to my husband and said:

“I had my eye on you all the time I was talking, Will Taft. I was perfectly certain that your terrible sense of fact would overcome you and that you would blurt out that I dined with all those people on the same evening at the same dinner party!”

President Harrison, in March, 1892, appointed my husband on the Federal Circuit Bench, so once more I saw him a colleague of men almost twice his age and, I feared, fixed in a groove for the rest of his life. However, he was greatly pleased and very proud to hold such a dignified and responsible position at the age of thirty-four. I think he enjoyed the work of the following eight years more than any he has ever undertaken.

We moved back to Cincinnati. Mr. Taft’s circuit included parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan⁠—reached in fact, from Lookout Mountain to Marquette, and he was much away from home. My own life during those years in Cincinnati was very busy, for, in addition to my occupation with family and friends, I became interested in a number of civic movements.

My principal work was the organisation and management of the Cincinnati Orchestra Association. I found, at last, a practical method for expressing and making use of my love and knowledge of music.

We had not had a good symphony orchestra in the city since Theodore Thomas left, but with our music-loving population it was only necessary that somebody should take the initiative and arouse definite enthusiasm and keep it going, in order to establish and maintain such an institution. There were many public-spirited citizens, some of them true music-loving Germans, and I saw no reason why I should not get strong popular support for my project. I was not disappointed. From the first the response was general and generous and we did not have much difficulty in raising the necessary funds for financing the orchestra, although in addition to our box-office receipts, we had to secure $30,000 a year for six consecutive years. It could not have been done had it not been for such liberal friends as my brother and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft, Mr. Charles Krippendorf, Mr. M. E. Ingalls, Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Ault, Mrs. Charles Fleishmann, Mr. J. G. Schmidlapp and others.

For the first year we had three different directors, Mr. Seidl, Mr. Schradick and Mr. Van der Stücken, who came to Cincinnati and led two concerts each. Then we secured Mr. Van der Stücken as a permanent leader and he remained with the orchestra ten years.

I think I regretted the Cincinnati Orchestra Association more than anything else when we left for the Philippines, but I left it in good and well-trained hands. Mrs. C. R. Holmes, who succeeded me as President of the Association, had taken a great part in the original work of organisation and management, as had my sister-in-law, Mrs. Charles P. Taft, and others. Through their efforts the orchestra has been enlarged and improved and it is still a source of great pride and satisfaction to the city of Cincinnati. Mrs. Charles Taft is now the President and through her interest, activity and generosity it has been enabled to grow in excellence.

Except for the orchestra, our life was tranquil; quite too settled, I thought, and filled with the usual homely incidents connected with housekeeping and the entertaining development of small children. My youngest child, Charles, was born in 1897, and my family was thus complete.

I come now to the years which we gave to the Philippine Islands and I must say that I wonder yet how our lot happened to be so cast.

There had never been any unusual interest in our family as to the results of the Spanish-American War. Like most patriotic Americans we had been greatly excited while the war was in progress and had discussed its every phase and event with a warmth of approval, or disapproval, as the case might be, but it did not touch us directly, except as citizens, any more than it touched the vast majority of the people of the United States. And yet, it came to mean more to us personally, than any other event in our times. The whole course of my husband’s career was destined to be changed and influenced by its results.

Mr. Taft was strongly opposed to taking the Philippines. He was not an anti-imperialist in the sense that he believed the Constitution required us to keep the boundaries of the United States within their continental limits, but he thought the Antipodes rather a far stretch for the controlling hand, and he thought the taking of the Philippines would only add to our problems and responsibilities without increasing, in any way, the effectiveness and usefulness of our government.

Oddly enough, he had expressed himself to that effect when he happened, during the Spanish War, to be dining with a number of judges including Justice Harlan who, although later an anti-imperialist, was at that time strongly upholding the policy of taking over Spanish territory in both oceans.

Mr. Taft knew just about as much about the Filipino people as the average American knew in those days. What he definitely knew was that they had been for more than three centuries under Spanish dominion and that they now wanted political independence. He was heartily in favour of giving it to them.

It was one day in January, 1900, that he came home greatly excited and placed before me a telegram.

“What do you suppose that means?” said he.

“I would like to see you in Washington on important business within the next few days. On Thursday if possible,” it read. And it was signed⁠—William McKinley.

We didn’t know and we couldn’t think what possible business the President could have with him. I began to conjure up visions of Supreme Court appointments; though I knew well enough that Supreme Court appointments were not tendered in that fashion and besides there was no vacancy.

Mr. Taft lost no time in responding to the President’s summons and I awaited his return with as much patience as I could muster. In three days he came home with an expression so grave that I thought he must be facing impeachment. But when he broke his news to me it gave me nothing but pleasure.

“The President wants me to go to the Philippine Islands,” he said, in a tone he might have used in saying: “The President wants me to go out and jump off the court house dome.” “Want to go?” he added.

“Yes, of course,” I answered without a moment’s hesitation. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew instantly that I didn’t want to miss a big and novel experience. I have never shrunk before any obstacles when I had an opportunity to see a new country and I must say I have never regretted any adventure.

“The President and Mr. Root want to establish a civil government in the Philippines,” said Mr. Taft, “and they want me to go out at the head of a commission to do it.” It was only after I had accepted the invitation to go ten thousand miles away that I asked for an explanation.

In answer to the President’s proposal, Mr. Taft said that he didn’t approve of the acquisition of the Philippines in the first place, and that in the second place he knew nothing about colonial government and had had really no experience in executive work of any kind. But Mr. McKinley did not accept these objections as final. He called in Mr. Root, who was then Secretary of War, and who would be Mr. Taft’s chief in the proposed mission to the Philippines, and together they presented the case so strongly that my husband could not help but waver in his decision. Neither Mr. McKinley nor Mr. Root had rejoiced in the taking over of the Philippines for that matter, but that was beside the question; the Philippines were taken, and it behooved the United States to govern them until such time as their people had learned the difficult art of governing themselves.

Mr. Root said:

“The work to be done in the Philippines is as great as the work Livingston had to do in Louisiana. It is an opportunity for you to do your country a great service and achieve for yourself a reputation for the finest kind of constructive work. You have had a very fortunate career. While you are only slightly over forty you have had eight years on the Federal Bench, three years on the State Bench and two years as Solicitor General. These places you have filled well, but they have been places which involved no sacrifice on your part. Here is a field which calls for risk and sacrifice. Your country is confronted with one of the greatest problems in its history, and you, Judge Taft, are asked to take immediate charge of the solution of that problem 7,000 miles away from home. You are at the parting of the ways. Will you take the easier course, the way of least resistance, with the thought that you had an opportunity to serve your country and declined it because of its possible sacrifice, or will you take the more courageous course and, risking much, achieve much? This work in the Philippines will give you an invaluable experience in building up a government and in the study of laws needed to govern a people, and such experience cannot but make you a broader, better judge should you be called upon again to serve your country in that capacity.”

My husband promised to consult with me and with his brother Charles and give his answer in a few days. He didn’t know whether or not I would be willing to go, but that was a question soon settled.

His resignation of his judgeship was the greatest difficulty. The President told him he did not think it would be at all necessary for him to resign since the work in the Philippines would take only about six months⁠—nine months at the longest⁠—and that he could absent himself from his duties for that length of time, and for such a purpose, without fear of any kind of unfortunate consequences. Mr. Taft’s investigation and study of the situation immediately convinced him that Mr. McKinley was wrong in his expectation that the work could be done so quickly. Nor did Mr. Root have any such idea. Even with the meagre information which was then available, my husband at once saw that it would be years before the Philippine problem would begin to solve itself. So he resigned from the Bench; the hardest thing he ever did.

After sending in his acceptance he went immediately to Washington to discuss with Mr. McKinley and Mr. Root the whole situation and, especially, the names of four other men who were to be chosen to serve with him on the Commission. He had met Mr. Worcester, a member of the first Commission, and had got from him a great deal of valuable data. If Professor Shurman, the chairman of the first Commission, had become a member of the second, he probably would have been at its head, but he did not, and this position fell to Mr. Taft. He was thereafter known as President of the Commission, until civil government was organised in the Philippines and he became governor.

After he had gone to Washington I began at once to make hasty, and I may say, happy preparations for my adventure into a new sphere. That it was alluring to me I did not deny to anybody. I had no premonition as to what it would lead to; I did not see beyond the present attraction of a new and wholly unexplored field of work which would involve travel in far away and very interesting countries. I read with engrossing interest everything I could find on the subject of the Philippines, but a delightful vagueness with regard to them, a vagueness which was general in the United States at that time, and has not, even yet, been entirely dispelled, continued in my mind. There were few books to be found, and those I did find were not specially illuminating.

I gave up my house in Cincinnati and stored my belongings, packing for shipment to the Orient only such things as I thought would be absolutely necessary. We were to leave almost immediately and I had very little time in which to do a great many things. Mr. Taft came back to Cincinnati for a short period and we entered upon a busy season of goodbye hospitality. Everybody we knew, and we knew nearly everybody, wanted to give us a farewell dinner or entertainment of some sort. Mr. Taft, especially, was fêted in a way which proved to him how much more widely he was valued in his native town than he had ever realised. In the opinions of people then we were going, sure enough, to the ends of the earth, and many of our friends were as mournful about it as if they had private foreknowledge that it was to be a fatal adventure.

When the banquets and dinners and luncheons and receptions and teas had all been given; when the speeches had all been made, and the goodbyes had all been said, Mr. Taft hastened off to Washington once more to meet his colleagues and make final arrangements, and I was not to see him again until we met in San Francisco a week before the date set for sailing.

I asked my sister Maria to go with me for the first year, and she accepted with delight. So, one morning in early April, with our world waving at us from the platform of the station, we started south to join the Southern Pacific railroad at New Orleans and to make our way from there to Los Angeles and so to San Francisco.

I had with me my three children, Robert, Helen and Charlie. Robert was ten years old, Helen eight, while Charlie, my baby, was just a little over two. It did not occur to me that it was a task to take them on such a long journey, or that they would be exposed to any danger through the experience. They were normal, healthy and very self-reliant little people and I made preparations for their going without 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 Philippines, and our assuming control over them, to the natural enterprise of a people who had themselves gone so far in a land of development and hope.

Everything that could be done to make smooth the path of the new Commission was done. At their own request the powers of the Commissioners were carefully defined so that complications with the military government then in force in the islands, might be avoided. They were given equal rank with ministers plenipotentiary in the matter of naval courtesies and precedence; and Mr. Root drafted a letter of instructions, which the President signed, outlining their duties in such precise and correct detail that it was afterward adopted and ratified in its entirety in the act of Congress by which the Philippine government was established.

So⁠—I believed we were going to have “smooth sailing” in every sense, when we started on the long voyage with which began this interesting experience.

The United States Army Transport Hancock had been assigned to the Commission for the trip from San Francisco to Manila and it was at noon on a pleasant day in mid-April⁠—the seventeenth⁠—that she pulled away from the crowded dock and headed straight for the Golden Gate and the long path across the Pacific that leads to the other side of the world. There were forty-five people in our party and, although most of us had met for the first time in San Francisco, we soon became well acquainted, as people do on shipboard, and proceeded at once to prove ourselves to be a most harmonious company.

The Hancock was the old Arizona, a onetime greyhound of the Atlantic, which the Government had purchased and remodelled for service as an army transport. A considerable fleet of such vessels plied the Pacific at that time, carrying large consignments of troops to and from the Philippines and, though there are not so many now, I still read with interest of the comings and goings of ships whose old, friendly sounding names became so familiar to us in the course of our residence in the East. The Grant, the Sherman, the Sheridan, the Thomas, and others, all named for great American generals, awaken memories of interesting days. The Hancock was later given up by the Army and turned over to the Navy on account of her heavy consumption of coal. She is now used as a recruiting ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

We found her very comfortable. There were few people aboard besides the members of our party, and, as she was equipped to carry the officers and men of an entire regiment, we found ourselves commodiously quartered. Moreover, the commissary of the transport service had received instructions to give us excellent fare; this, I believe, through the thoughtful kindness of Mr. McKinley himself.

Mr. McKinley never failed to take a personal interest in the everyday welfare of all those in his administration who came under his own observation and we were made to feel this throughout our experience on the Philippine Commission, while he lived. On every appropriate occasion we were certain to receive from him some kindly compliment, a cablegram or other communication, and it made everybody who came within range of his influence anxious to serve him well and to make the work which was being done satisfactory and pleasing to him. I owe to our connection with President McKinley’s administration some of my happiest recollections.

The men who made up the second Philippine Commission were Mr. Taft, General Luke E. Wright of Memphis, Tennessee; Judge Henry C. Ide of Vermont, Professor Dean C. Worcester of the University of Michigan, and Professor Bernard Moses of the University of California. A short introduction of my husband’s colleagues and the members of their families who went with them to the Philippines will be necessary at this point, because I was destined to be constantly associated with them during four of the most interesting years of my life. Our cooperation, social and governmental, was based upon a common purpose, and our attachment to this purpose, as well as the bonds of friendship which united us, were greatly strengthened by the opposition we had to meet for some months after we reached Manila, not only from the Filipinos, but also from the military government which the Commission was sent out gradually to replace.

The men of the Commission, coming, as they did, from different parts of the United States, were widely contrasted, no less in associations than in their varied accents and family traditions.

General Wright was, and is, one of the ablest lawyers in Tennessee, and enjoyed, at the time of his appointment on the Commission, the finest practice in Memphis. He is a Democrat; and old enough to have been a lieutenant in the Civil War on the Confederate side. But perhaps his finest laurels for bravery and devotion to duty were won at the time when he exerted himself to save Memphis in the days when she was in the grip of a terrible epidemic of yellow fever. I don’t know the exact year, but the epidemic was so out of control that all who could, left the city, while General Wright remained to organise such resistance as could be made to the spread of the dread disease.

Mrs. Wright was a daughter of the famous Admiral Semmes of the Confederate Navy and for some time after the war she travelled with her father in Mexico and abroad, thereby acquiring at an early age a very cosmopolitan outlook. Admiral Semmes was a great linguist and Mrs. Wright inherited his gift. She had learned to speak Spanish in her girlhood, so when she arrived in Manila she had only to renew her knowledge of the language. General and Mrs. Wright had with them their daughter Katrina, who was then about fourteen years old, but their two sons, one a naval officer, did not join them in the Philippines until later.

General Wright had, on the whole, the most delightful social qualities of anybody on the Commission. He had a keen sense of humour and could recount a great number of interesting personal experiences with a manner and wit which made him, always, a delightful companion. He was a devotee of pinochle and he instructed the entire party in the game until it was played from one end of the ship to the other. He was slow to anger, very deliberate and kindly in his judgments, and offered at times a decided contrast to his wife who was a little more hasty and not infrequently founded judgments on what he would jocosely criticise as “a woman’s reason.”

Judge Ide was born and bred a Vermonter and had many of the rugged characteristics of the Green Mountain State, not the least among which is a certain indefinable, but peculiarly New England caution. In addition to a large and active law practice in both New Hampshire and Vermont, he had banking connections through which he had gained a better knowledge of business and finance than is possessed by the average lawyer. Moreover, a long term as Chief Justice of Samoa had given him diplomatic experience and a knowledge of the Polynesian races which were to serve him well in his work in the Philippines. As Chief Justice he exercised diplomatic and consular as well as judicial functions, and his position brought him in close relations with the English and German officials of the joint protectorate of the Samoan islands and in constant social contact with the naval officers of many countries whose ships very frequently called at Apia. He was a widower with two young daughters.

These daughters, Anne and Marjorie, or “the two Ide girls” as they were then popularly known, displayed no sign of Puritan ancestry or upbringing. They were just remarkably beautiful and altogether charming and delightful. A large part of their girlhood had been spent in Samoa; they were the product of an intermittent, but very picturesque education, and there was ingrained in them some of that happy-go-lucky attitude toward life, and that freedom from useless convention which the Occidental is not unlikely to acquire in the Orient.

These girls had, in Samoa, been great friends of Robert Louis Stevenson. Anne, the elder, was the especial favourite of the beauty-loving invalid and he willed to her his birthday, as can be learned from his Samoan letters. She was born near Christmas time and had never known what it was to have her birthday celebrated, a great deprivation in childhood. But she now celebrates as her own the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson and it is, I believe, her most cherished possession.

Marjorie, whose career, ever since our first trip together, I have followed with the greatest affection and interest, had even more of the carefree attitude than Anne. She used to convulse us with cruelly funny accounts of her adventures with admirers, of whom there were many, and with descriptions of some of the strange acquaintances she made during her travels with her father.

Among the passengers on the Hancock was Dr. Kneedler, an army surgeon, with his wife and two little girls. These little girls were exceedingly bright and inquisitive. Young ladies and gentlemen had particular and irresistible attractions for them and the Ide young ladies kept them very much occupied. The Ide young ladies didn’t encourage their attentions and this fact engendered their hostility. They therefore referred to the Misses Ide as “them there Ides.” With their delightful sense of humour the Ides, of course, rejoiced in the designation and in all the thirteen years since then they have never met Mr. Taft or me without presenting themselves as “them there Ides.”

The Misses Ide were destined to be the unrivalled belles of Manila society for six years and then to move on to broader social spheres. Anne was married to Mr. Bourke Cochran shortly after her father left the Philippines, but Marjorie continued to be her father’s companion for several years, going with him to Madrid when he was appointed Minister to Spain and presiding over the American Legation there until she married Mr. Shane Leslie and went to London to live.

General Wright, Judge Ide and Mr. Taft were the lawyers on the Commission and it was felt that their familiarity with law and governmental matters greatly enhanced the strength and preparedness of the Commission for the work they had to do.

Mr. Worcester was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. He too was a Vermonter, with quite as much fortiter in re, but with somewhat less of the suaviter in modo than Judge Ide inherently had, or had acquired in his Samoan experience.

Mr. Worcester was the only member of the party who had ever been to the Philippines before. I think he had been there twice with scientific expeditions before the Battle of Manila Bay had thrust the guardianship of the Filipinos upon our country, and in the course of his trips, with his fluency in Spanish as it is spoken in the Philippines, he had acquired a very intimate knowledge of the people and their customs, as well as of the flora and fauna of the islands. He had written a book on the Philippines which came out at a most fortunate time, just when Dewey’s victory had turned the eyes of the country upon that never-before-thought-of corner of the world. This book led to his appointment on the first Commission and his useful, loyal, courageous and effective labours with that body led Mr. McKinley to appoint him on the second.

He is a large, forceful man with rather abrupt manners and very decided opinions and perhaps no greater contrast could be imagined than exists between him and Mrs. Worcester, who, in outward seeming, is the frailest kind of little woman, with a sweet face and engagingly gentle manners which suggest timidity. Mrs. Worcester has proved herself to possess the frailty of flexible steel. At that time we were quite concerned about her, I remember, thinking she would not be able to endure the Philippine climate even for a short period. But she has lived there from that day to this. She has been with her husband through many experiences from which the strongest woman would shrink, toiling with him over hundreds of miles of mountain and jungle trail on his frequent expeditions into the countries of the wild tribes and meeting every difficulty without comment. She is in excellent health and is a living refutation of the familiar exaggerations as to the effect of the climate. They had with them two little white haired children, one of them quite delicate, who have grown up in the Philippines strong and healthy and have received most of their education in the schools established there under American government.

The last member of the Commission was Professor Bernard Moses of the political and historical department of the University of California. He was a man of profound learning, a Connecticut Yankee, combining a very excellent knowledge of business with his unusual qualifications as an historian, economist and student of politics. He was especially familiar with all Spanish-American countries, had travelled extensively in the South American republics and had written a learned book on the constitution of Colombia. My husband always says that he thinks Mr. McKinley exercised the wisest discretion in the selection of all the members of this Commission since they possessed, among them, qualifications for every line of work in practical government and original research.

Mrs. Moses, a graduate from the University of California, was a very attractive woman. She had a gift for vivid description and for seeing the funny side of every situation. Her book, Unofficial Letters of an Official’s Wife, gives an interesting and accurate picture of social life in the early days of military rule, which are known in Manila history as “the days of the Empire” and of that period when American civil government was in the process of organisation. Her wit sometimes had a suggestion of the caustic in it, but she never failed to contribute her quota to the day’s amusement.

There were many other interesting members of the party, including Mr. Arthur Fergusson, the Spanish secretary, and Mrs. Fergusson, Mr. Frank A. Branagan, the disbursing officer, and Mrs. Branagan, and several private secretaries with their families.

The voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu was quite perfect. As we sailed toward the tropics the weather gradually grew warmer and the sheltered decks became the most attractive part of the ship. The promenade deck of the Hancock reaches from bow to stern. I believe there is a regular term to describe such ship construction⁠—“decked over all” is it?⁠—but to me it was just a very long deck which served unusually well for exercise. The Commission held regular business sessions in a cabin which had been fitted up for the purpose, but when work was over they would start on a long march around and around the deck, covering many miles each day. My husband was especially industrious and walked one man after another “off his feet” until, finally, he was obliged to finish his long tramp alone. He set himself the task of so many miles a day, so many times around the deck being a mile, and to keep count of laps requires some concentration. His quiet persistence in this kind of exercise was calculated to make the lazy onlooker intensely nervous, and when I had done my modest little turn I was always glad to indulge in a sort of counter-concentration at a whist table, or at General Wright’s ever constant pinochle.

Altogether the days passed very pleasantly and we were a very merry and friendly party by the time we reached Honolulu.

At Honolulu I got my first glimpse of real tropics, and I was enchanted. It was a glorious sensation for me that April morning when I saw these mid-Pacific islands, for the first time, rise before me out of a white-capped sea; clear-cut in an atmosphere which seems never to be blurred by mist.

American energy, ambition and initiative have wrought great material changes in the islands and these, which were even then important, were brought to our admiring attention later on. I shall always think of Hawaii⁠—of the island of Oahu, rather⁠—as it appeared to me then when our ship steamed past Diamond Head, skirted the high breakers of Waikiki and made its way up through the bright waters of the bay into the harbour of Honolulu. Honolulu is a little, modern city lying, all in sight, against the green of a narrow, gently-sloping, peak-encircled valley.

The Punchbowl, a spent and emptied volcano, outlined in perfect form against the higher hills behind it, plainly tells the story of the spectacular construction of the islands and makes it almost possible to visualise their sudden rise from the sea. They are not very old, according to scientific measurements of time, but they are old enough, at any rate, to have clothed themselves in the most brilliant luxuriance, which is the first thing to impress the traveller as his ship sails into the harbour.

The brilliance from the ship’s deck is the brilliance of every imaginable shade of green, massed against the towering, pointed hills and picked into contrasts of highlight and shadow by a sun and atmosphere peculiar to the tropics. Once ashore, the green foliage becomes the background for a wealth of blooming flowers, flowers everywhere, of unnumbered different varieties, with the flaming hibiscus in every garden, striking the high note of colour. Until we left Honolulu laden with “leis”⁠—long festoons of flower petals which are thrown upon the shoulders of departing friends and visitors⁠—there were always flowers.

And with the flowers and the foliage and the tall palm trees and the warm tropic sunlight, there is music, the music of the native which greets one in welcome at the dock and contributes constantly to the spirit of festivity until the departing ship gets too far from shore to catch the strains of the farewell song “Aloha” whose closing words: “Until we meet, until we meet again,” linger long in the mind of the grateful recipient of Hawaiian hospitality.

The first thing we were to learn when our ship came up into the harbour was that the bubonic plague had been epidemic in Honolulu for a long time. It was our first encounter with this terror of the East. There had been seventy-one cases in all, and sixty-one deaths. Six Europeans had contracted the disease and of these four had died. When we dropped anchor we were at once boarded by the local health officer, Dr. Carmichael of the Marine Hospital Service, who was accompanied by United States Minister Sewell and Consul General Hayward. They wanted us to land, of course, and we were very anxious to do so, but as the quarantine was not yet raised they could not answer for the attitude of the Japanese health officers when we got to Yokohama. Our going ashore might result in a long detention in quarantine for ourselves and, aside from the discomfort of this, we could not afford the delay. There was no particular danger for us personally, since no new cases had been reported for twenty-four days, but it was all a question of being able to land later in Japan. It was really too much of a disappointment; there was not a dissenting voice on that score, and Honolulu kept getting more and more attractive as the possibility dawned on us that we might not see it at all. But it was arranged. We sent for the Japanese vice-Consul and explained matters to him and he finally agreed to hold himself responsible for our breaking the quarantine, in so far as it concerned Japan, if we would keep our ship out in the stream instead of tying up at the dock, and permit no member of the crew to go ashore during our stay. This we readily agreed to do and made our plans accordingly. We, too, were to live on board the Hancock, but there were any number of harbour launches put at our disposal.

We were received by the Americans in Honolulu with the utmost cordiality and immediately found ourselves sharing the exhilarating suspense with which the people were then awaiting the passage of the bill in Congress which was to make the Hawaiian Islands a part of the United States. The first thing the Commission did was to call on President Dole, of the provisional republican government, and with him they met the Ministers of the Treasury and the Interior, Mr. Damon and Mr. Young. Indeed, we met all the people who had the affairs of the islands in hand and were most delightfully entertained by them. We found them of one mind, just anxiously waiting to be annexed to the United States. The men, who realised the importance of our mission to the Philippines, were eager to foregather with the Commission and discuss with them, long and earnestly, this broad American venture and its possible effect upon the future prosperity of the Hawaiian Islands, but in so far as I was concerned, nothing in the way of state problems was allowed to intrude itself upon their purely social hospitality. There were dinners and luncheons and teas and receptions, and, in the intervals, sightseeing.

There are a number of entertaining things to do in Honolulu and while I do not wish to make this, in any way, a book of travel, I must record my impressions of the world as they came to me.

The Hawaiian Islands have a background of romantic history which makes the museums, the public buildings and even the cemeteries of the capital extremely interesting. Besides all of which there are some wonderful views which everyone must see.

The trip to Nuuani Pali is the first thing to be undertaken in Honolulu, perhaps because it is the greatest thing on the island of Oahu. We didn’t know what the Pali was⁠—had no idea. It was just the place to go, so we went⁠—the very first day. We drove up the valley over a perfect road which wound in and out past beautiful, palm-shaded country homes, and along the bank of a noisy, crystal-clear little mountain stream, until we came to a point which looked to me like the “jumping off place.” And it is; the “jumping off place” is the Pali. The road turns sharp around the solid rock wall of the cliff and winds its way on down into the valley on the other side, but it is a distinct surprise to find that it doesn’t end right there. The Pali is the Pass of the Winds; the meeting place of all the young hurricanes of the Pacific. They say the winds in the Pali are never still. We were flattened out against the wall of the cliff, our hats were torn from our heads and we had to hold onto our coats for dear life, but before us lay one of the grandest spectacles in the whole world. Coral-tinted, purple, rose and bright blue sea; beetling, pointed, terrible cliffs, and a broad, green plain running down to a surf-washed ribbon of beach; a panorama as wide as the compass of vision. I have been back since then thinking that, on first sight, I might have overestimated the grandeur of the Pali. But I didn’t. It is one of the world’s great views. And it has its touch of savage history too. It was up these hills and over the cliffs of the Pali that King Kamehameha drove to certain death the offending hordes in arms against his sovereignty. There was no escape for them. Once in this pass they had either to go over the precipice or back against the spears of the enemy. This being history, and not myth, it adds much to the thrill of the spectacle.

After a visit to the indescribable “aquarium of the painted fishes”⁠—painted, I suppose, by the bright sun-rays in the coral shallows of the tropic seas⁠—we went, as guests of Mr. Carter, a prominent member of the American colony, who afterward became governor of the islands, out to Waikiki Beach for surf-bathing⁠—or, surf-riding, as it is more aptly called.

Surf-riding at Waikiki Beach is a great game. In the first place the surf there doesn’t look as if any human being would dare venture into it; but when you see a beautiful, slim, brown native, naked save for short swimming trunks, come gliding down a high white breaker, poised like a Mercury, erect on a single narrow plank⁠—it looks delightfully exhilarating. It took me some time to make up my mind, but after sufficient persuasion I finally decided to risk my life with the others. Dressed in bathing suits, we were taken out beyond the line of breakers in long canoes with outriggers and, with a native at prow and stern armed with broad paddles to guide the craft, we rode in on the crest of the waves. Even this modified version of the natives’ foolhardy performance is dangerous enough. There is every likelihood of an upset and not any of us could be said to swim expertly, so there was great excitement when one member of the party after another was plunged, out of depth, into the foaming and seething water. Two members of our party, indeed, had a narrow escape, though we didn’t know it at the time. General Wright and Judge Ide were capsized in a particularly vicious breaker and Judge Ide at once began to make frantic efforts to attract attention and secure aid, but in the confusion his signs of distress were taken for indications of vast enjoyment and he would have been left to drown if he hadn’t been washed ashore by the force of the surf. General Wright, though much the better swimmer, had no less difficulty, and they were both quite white and shaken when they crawled up on the beach.

We stayed four days in this “Paradise of the Pacific,” during which we made many interesting trips, were introduced to many strange Hawaiian customs and were regaled with many feasts, not always, I may say, particularly appetizing. I have had in my time, for politeness’ sake, to eat various queer messes in all sorts of odd corners of the earth, but to me “poi” will always be “poi”⁠—in a class by itself. It is the true Hawaiian dish and is offered to guests by the natives in the same spirit of compliment with which we offer to “break bread” with our friends. It is the custom for Americans residing in Honolulu to introduce visitors to this dish, and the native viands which go with it, in entertainments which are called “poi dinners,” and we were treated to as many of these as our time would permit. “Poi” bears an unpleasant outward resemblance to cockroach paste and, try as I would, I was never able to cultivate a taste for it. But foreigners do learn to like it, for I found Americans in Honolulu eating it with the greatest relish and dipping it up with their fingers in true Hawaiian style.

On our last evening in Honolulu, after a morning of sightseeing, a luncheon, an hour in the buffeting surf, and a large tea-party, we were given a particularly elaborate “poi dinner” where we all sat on the floor and at which all the guests appeared in native costume with “leis” around their necks and in their hair. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Mott Smith, sent the Hawaiian Band, whose leader came out from old Emperor William to King Kalakaua, and they serenaded us with most wonderful Hawaiian music, interspersed, for their own pride’s sake, with well rendered selections from the finest operas. The girls came in flaming bright “Mother-Hubbard” dresses, crowned and covered with “leis,” to dance for us the curious folklore dances of the old-time. It was a delightful whirl of music and lights and colour⁠—added to fish and poi and a cramped position⁠—but I was tired enough not to be sorry when the time came for the singing of “Aloha Oe” and our departure for the ship which lay out in the harbour ready to up-anchor at daybreak and start on its way to Japan.

On the evening of the tenth of May we reached the estuary near the head of which is Yokohama and further on is Tokyo. For at least two hours we steamed past a low-lying shore line before we came in sight of the sweep of steep cliff to the southward which forms the great outer harbour.

There was just one thing that we could really look at; one insistent, dominant point in the landscape which caught us and held us fascinated⁠—Fujiyama. I had seen Fujiyama on screens and fans and porcelains all my life, but I had no conception of it. For one half hour this “Queen of Mountains”⁠—rightly called⁠—rising thirteen thousand feet out of sheer sea-level, perfect in form, snow-capped, majestic, blazed for us against the western sky. Then a cloud curtain fell⁠—and the sun went down.

As we steamed up close to the breakwater in the grey light of late evening we could see nothing but the dark outlines of many ships and a long row of substantial looking buildings, under high arc lights, stretching along a wide, waterfront street which I was afterward to know as The Bund.

We wanted to go ashore, but it was not possible. We had to lie outside the breakwater and wait for the doctors to come aboard. “Wait for the doctors to come aboard;” how familiar that proceeding becomes to the traveller among the ports of the East, and especially, of Japan. You arrive at Yokohama and are examined there; you go just around the bend of the coast line and arrive at Kobe and you are examined there; you go on through the Inland Sea to Nagasaki and again you are examined. Wherever you arrive in this land of much caution you must “wait for the doctors to come aboard.”

But our doctors didn’t keep us waiting long. About eight o’clock half a dozen of them, important little men with much gold lace, came smiling up the gangway. We worried, rather, about the plague we had braved⁠—and we did hope none of our crew would develop symptoms⁠—but, having faith in the Japanese Vice-Consul in Honolulu, we hoped for special leniency. We were not disappointed. They examined the ship’s company with great care, but our examination was a mere formality, a sort of apologetic enumeration as a matter of fact, and after giving us a clean bill of health the doctors bowed themselves most courteously away. But we had a narrow escape. Charlie’s nurse developed a suspicious sore throat the very next afternoon and gave us many days of anxiety for the baby and the other children. And, as I shall make plain further on, our anxiety was not without cause.

In reading over my own and my husband’s letters, written on that trip to various members of the family, I find that Charlie was very much in evidence at all times. I suppose he was spoiled because, certainly, everybody took a hand in his misguidance, but the spoiling process at least kept him in high good humour, unless it happened to take the form of secret indulgence in prohibited sweets; then I had to meet the consequences. I find my husband writing to his brother Charles: “Charlie continues to be as full of spirits and as determined to have his own way as ever. We call him ‘the tornado’; he creates such a sensation when he lands in the midst of the children on board the ship. He is very badly in need of discipline and I long for the time to come when he will be better able to appreciate it. Maria has become quite as much a slave to him as Nellie and you may tell his Aunt Annie that I am still the only hope the boy has of moral training.” This sounds so much like the average father that I thought I ought to quote it.

When Bessie, Charlie’s nurse, was taken away from him and quarantined we got for him a Japanese “amah” who filled him at first with indignation, not unmixed with fear. But she was so patient, and followed him around so much like a faithful watchdog, that he grew to be exceedingly fond of her and straightway proceeded to exchange his small English vocabulary for, to him, more useful Japanese words.

The first thing to claim our attention in Yokohama Harbour was the American cruiser Newark, the Admiral’s flagship of the Asiatic fleet, with Admiral Kempff aboard. As soon as we came inside the breakwater she fired a salute of seventeen guns, and we wondered what it was all about, until suddenly we remembered that the Commissioners had the rank of ministers plenipotentiary and decided that it was meant for us. It was the first time in my husband’s life that he had ever been saluted. In his later career he reached a point where he would have been almost willing to assume a disguise in order to escape the thunder of the twenty-one guns that roared at him whenever he approached a naval vessel of any kind, but I think he was rather elated by this first tribute to his official standing.

We found later that an old friend, Captain McCalla, was in command of the Newark. We had known Captain McCalla in Washington when my husband was Solicitor General. He had been court-martialed and suspended from the Navy for a year for striking an unruly and insubordinate sailor and at his request Mr. Taft read the record of the court-martial. Mr. Choate had been his counsel, but the case was given a great deal of unpleasant publicity. He displayed such bravery at the Battle of Guantanamo, in Cuba, that the files he had lost were restored to him. He also rendered distinguished service in the Philippines, taking over the surrender of one of Aguinaldo’s generals at Caygayan; and later on, in China, he was in the van of the allied troops that relieved Peking and was severely wounded. Being a man of broad intelligence and great enterprise he appreciated the importance of the Philippine Commission and lost no time in extending to them all the courtesies at his command.

Shortly after we landed and got ourselves comfortably settled at the Grand Hotel, an ensign from the Newark came to ask when the Commission would receive the Admiral. The hour was set for this formality and when it had been duly disposed of, Captain McCalla called on us unofficially, with much news for our hungry ears from the big world that we had known nothing about for eleven long days. That was before the wireless era when going to sea was really going to sea, and seldom has the world known a more exciting year than 1900. Grim talk about the terrible Boxer insurrection was on every tongue and Captain McCalla told us that the Newark was lying in readiness to proceed to China at an instant’s notice. The British were just then pressing the Boers northward in South Africa, and our own troubles in the Philippines were by no means over. We had nearly seventy thousand troops in the field, and we heard of decisive engagements between the division under General Young and some religious fanatic insurrectos in northern Luzon. We found ourselves feeling very much in touch with big events.

The Commission went out to the Newark to return the Admiral’s call and when they got back to the hotel they were full of valuable information and advice about sightseeing in Japan, housekeeping in the Orient and other important things. Among other bits of news they had to tell their wives was that we would all probably be received at the Japanese Court⁠—which was quite exciting.

My experience is that the most formal branch of the government service is the naval branch. The state department may be as formal, but I doubt it. The ceremony on board naval vessels is constant, and the severity of the penalties for any failure to follow the regulations impresses itself upon every naval officer. Therefore, every naval officer must have diplomatic training and must be alert in finding out and in carrying out the duties of polite intercourse which prevail in every country.

Captain McCalla regarded the Commissioners as proconsuls going to an important province, quite equal to the foremost diplomatic representatives of the United States anywhere, and he thought it was incumbent upon them to make the fact of their presence in Japan known at the Imperial Court and to apply for an audience with the Emperor. It hadn’t occurred to them. Their minds were so full of the weighty problems confronting them at Manila that they had given no consideration to any possible intervening formalities, and, anyhow, Mr. Taft said he thought the Emperor wouldn’t lose much sleep if he did miss seeing them. But this was not the proper attitude at all, and Captain McCalla, expostulating with them for their too casual conduct, finally prevailed upon them to communicate with the American Minister in Tokyo and ask to have application made for the audience. They were immediately informed that their arrival had been expected and that the matter had already been attended to.

The Commission had only a week in Japan and, although their purpose in stopping had been to coal ship and get some clothing suitable for the tropic heat they were going into, they naturally were anxious to see something of the country during their stay, so the days were filled with expeditions around Yokohama and Tokyo and to points of interest nearby. My sister Maria and I did not accompany them on many of these trips because we were planning to remain in Japan for the summer and wanted to view its attractions at our leisure.

The trip to Nikko was made memorable by Mr. Taft’s most triumphal progress. On account of his unusual proportions he had already been an object of tremendous interest to the Japanese.

Nikko is nearly a day’s ride from Tokyo, up in the hills to the north, and when you get there you find that the railway station is a long way from the hotel and that much of the distance is a steep incline. The only kind of conveyance available is a jinricksha, and when my husband climbed into one of these little perambulators the unfortunate coolie to whom it belonged began to utter strange sounds. He rolled his eyes and gesticulated frantically until he prevailed upon a second man to help him in propelling his unaccustomed burden. But even then his excitement did not abate. As they approached the first rise in the road some of the villagers along the way, attracted, no doubt, by the coolie’s weird cries, came out to stare and, as usual, remained to laugh. The little ’ricksha man began chattering and grimacing at all of them and kept it up until he had enlisted the services of at least half the population of the village to help him in attaining the crest of the hill.

Two days before the Hancock was to start on her way toward Manila the great event of our visit to Japan transpired. We had our audience with the Emperor and Empress.

The first thing the ladies all asked, of course, was, “What shall we wear?” It was a most important question. I supposed we should have to wear evening gowns and was congratulating myself that I had a very nice new one that would do beautifully. But only on the afternoon before the day appointed, it was decreed that we should appear in high-necked frocks with trains. That was more difficult⁠—especially the trains. I didn’t own an afternoon frock that I considered good enough. I was going to the tropics and had got a supply of thin white muslins and linens, but I had nothing that would do for a cold May day in Japan. Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Worcester and Mrs. Moses were as greatly concerned as I, but we finally managed. I solved the problem by having a Chinese dressmaker in Yokohama make me, overnight, a lace guimpe which I wore with my perfectly acceptable evening gown.

Judge Ide had been particularly interested in the audience and in the fact that the ladies would also be received and he was very much chagrined when he found that “the ladies” meant only the wives of the Commissioners and that he could not take with him his two beautiful daughters. He quite lost interest in the whole proceeding, and we didn’t blame him in the least.

The Palace in Tokyo is not a “Forbidden City” literally, as the old palace in Peking used to be, but it looks from the outside just as “forbidden,” or more so. It is surrounded by a wide, deep moat which is crossed at intervals by curved and gracefully balustraded bridges. On the other side of the moat is a high stone wall. There is nothing of the palace to be seen except a few low, tiled roofs which peep out from the midst of many trees. The Imperial gardens are vastly more impressive than the palaces⁠—there are several within the walled enclosure⁠—and I would have wanted to linger and really look at things if I had not been so keenly interested in the experience which awaited us. Our carriage hurried on over the beautiful drives, through the most entrancing little artificial landscapes, past lakes full of little rock islands on which were perched tiny pavilions with uptilted roofs and the most beautiful polished wood and snow-white paper windows. It was all most fascinating and much too wonderful to be merely glanced at, but it was only a few moments before we approached a low, grey building and drew up before the door. It didn’t look at all like a palace, but it seemed that we had arrived.

We were ushered into a large reception room which was neither Japanese nor European, but a curious mixture of both. The walls were of gold leaf and were decorated with beautiful Japanese paintings in exquisitely soft colourings, but the furniture was mostly of the heavy foreign type. It was unexpected to say the least and I thought what a pity it was that the Japanese had not met the European invasion in their own original and picturesquely beautiful style, instead of trying to conform to western customs, or rather, to engraft western customs upon their own unique orientalism. But so it is. They either like our ugly heaviness, or think they confer a polite compliment on us by adopting it.

We were not kept waiting long. We were separated from the men of our party and were led into another room, much like the first, where the Empress awaited us attended by three or four ladies of her court. We curtseyed very low, not without difficulty on the part of most of us in spite of much practice, and after receiving a gracious smile and bow from Her Majesty, we were able to stand erect and observe her at our leisure. Both she and her ladies-in-waiting were dressed in European costume which made them look much smaller than they would have looked in their own beautiful kimonos. Her Majesty’s face was sweet and almost timid looking, and her voice was peculiarly gentle. Our conversation, carried on through an interpreter, was commonplace in the extreme, but her manner was pleasant and cordial. I was tremendously interested because I had been reading Japanese history and was duly impressed with the hoary antiquity of this court of the Son of Heaven. The Empress addressed a few remarks to each of us, after which we curtseyed again and retired. That was all.

Our husbands were received in a similar manner by the Emperor, though His Majesty granted a separate interview to each of them. Mr. Taft entered first with the Minister of the Household in charge of the ceremony. He bowed when he entered the door, bowed again halfway up the long room, and yet again when he arrived before the Emperor. The others, also bowing, followed close behind but remained just outside of the audience chamber while my husband’s audience was in progress. Mr. Nagasaki, who acted as interpreter, said that His Majesty was very much pleased to see the Commission in Japan. Mr. Taft expressed his appreciation of the audience. The Emperor asked if he had ever been in Japan before. He said he had not. The Emperor asked when he was going to leave Japan. He replied, “In two days, Your Majesty.” After which this, his first audience with the Mikado, was at an end and he left the chamber while the rest of the Commissioners, each in his turn, went through the same ceremony.

After our husbands had been received by the Empress also, they rejoined us and we were conducted through some other rooms in the palace which interested us greatly. They all showed a curious mingling of Japanese and European objects of art and nobody could see them without deciding that, in that particular setting at least, the Japanese objects were far the more beautiful.

The Japanese Court is much inclined to imitate things European and the results are sometimes astonishing. Years later, when my husband was in Japan without me, the Empress presented him with a tapestry for me which had been copied from a Gobelin piece. It represented the meeting of Columbus and Isabella, and, it shows the most exquisite workmanship, but the faces have a curiously Oriental cast.

There is a story in connection with this tapestry which I think I must tell. My husband was Secretary of War when it was presented to me; and I say me with emphasis, because thereby hangs the story. He brought it home and displayed it with great pride and satisfaction, but it was so enormous and, from my standpoint, so useless, that I rather protested and wondered why, as long as he was getting such a gorgeous present he couldn’t have managed in some way to make its size correspond with my circumstances.

“Oh, well,” said he, “never mind. I’m going to present it to the Smithsonian Institute anyway, because you know, my dear, it is against the Constitution for an official in the United States government to accept any kind of favours from foreign courts.”

This was not the first time in my life that I had met the Constitution face to face, but theretofore I had been able to accept its decrees with what I had hoped was patriotic resignation. But now that tapestry suddenly became to me a most desirable thing. It had been sent to me by the Empress of Japan and I wanted to enjoy the mere possession of it⁠—at least for awhile. So, as my husband would say, I took the question up with him. I tried to convince him that I was not an official of the United States government and that he, as an official, had nothing whatever to do with my present from the Empress of Japan. He stood firmly by the Constitution, as usual, and eventually I had to submit the question for arbitration to President Roosevelt, who agreed with me that I was a private citizen and had a perfect right to accept the gift. I afterward hung it in one of the big wall spaces in the state dining-room of the White House and had the pleasure of watching many a guest vainly endeavouring to locate its origin and figure out its meaning.

We concluded our first audience at the court of Japan by signing our names in the Imperial album, after which we went to the American Legation to a beautiful luncheon which the Minister had arranged in our honour. Our Minister in Tokyo then⁠—it was some years before the Legation was raised to an Embassy⁠—was Mr. Buck of Georgia, a most affable and agreeable gentleman. He had invited a number of his diplomatic colleagues to meet us and, among others, we met for the first time Baron and Baroness Rosen, of the Russian Legation, who were afterward with us in Washington.

I sat on the right of the Minister and next to Baron Sanomiya, the Court Chamberlain, who had conducted our audience. I was greatly interested in Baron Sanomiya’s wife. She was an Englishwoman at least twice his size.

At Mr. Taft’s request the Minister had invited an old classmate of his, Baron Tajiri Inajiro. At Yale he was known as Tajiri, and the first two letters of both their names being “Ta” he and my husband had been brought together in the classroom, seated alphabetically, and had enjoyed a pleasant association. So Mr. Taft looked forward with great pleasure to renewing the acquaintance in Japan. Baron Tajiri, like most Japanese, was a little man, and his teeth were so formed that he was never able to master the pronunciation of English in such a way as to enable one to understand him easily. But he seems to have acquired at Yale a sound knowledge of business and finance since he became Assistant Minister of Finance under Yamagata and had taken an active part in the change of the Japanese currency from the silver to the gold standard, which was a great step in Japan’s progress toward a place among the world’s powers. He had been made a life peer and sat in the Upper House. At the luncheon he wore a frock coat which Mr. Taft felt confident he recognised as an old college friend of the ’seventies. In those days the Japanese wore their “foreign clothes” only on “foreign occasions” or at court. They kept them carefully folded up and put away, and they had not yet come to recognise the desirability of pressing them when they took them out for use. Also a silk hat once was a silk hat always; vintages didn’t trouble them, and they didn’t mind in the least which way the nap was brushed.

Baron Tajiri wanted to be appointed Minister of Finance when Yamagata retired, but he was put, instead, at the head of the Board of Audits, a life position. Marchioness, now Princess Oyama, wife of the Field Marshal, told my husband this on the occasion of his second visit to Japan, and said that the disappointment had made Tajiri very much of a recluse. In any case, Mr. Taft has never seen him again, although he has tried to seek him out and has made inquiry about him every time he has been in Japan.

We were very much interested in our Legation at Tokyo. It was the first one we had ever seen that the American government owned. The house was not what it ought to have been, but it was surrounded by spacious and beautifully kept grounds and was so much better than the nothing that we have in other countries that we liked to dwell upon it as an honourable exception to the disgraceful and miserly policy pursued by Congress in dealing with our representatives to foreign capitals.

Mrs. Wright, with her daughter Katrina, had decided to remain with us in Yokohama for the summer, so we took a cottage together on The Bluff, a high foreign residence section of the city, and prepared to make ourselves most comfortable.

Two days later the Commissioners and the rest of the party went aboard the Hancock and we waved them goodbye from a harbour launch as they steamed away toward Manila.

To be quarantined in a house too small for the number of its occupants, behind closed doors, each one of which bears aloft a sinister yellow placard across which is printed in large, black letters: “Diphtheria,” is no way to begin a visit to a strange and interesting country.

No sooner had Bessie, Charlie’s nurse, been released from quarantine by the doctors in Yokohama than our older boy, Robert, developed suspicious symptoms which, upon diagnosis, were pronounced to be diphtheritic. The sore throat began before Mr. Taft left for Manila, and he was loathe to go, but as the new serum treatment for diphtheria had robbed the disease of much of its terror, and as we were in the hands of an excellent American physician, Dr. Eldridge, I felt confident there was no cause for serious apprehension.

We sent Helen and the baby to be taken care of at the Grand Hotel, while Mrs. Wright, Maria and I resigned ourselves to a long and tedious period of isolation. Robert’s diphtheria did not develop to a dangerous stage, but the sore throat persisted and it was three weeks before we were released upon a none-too-welcoming world. Our long quarantine had marked us as objects to be avoided⁠—in a social sense⁠—even after the doctors had pronounced us safe.

Mrs. Wright and my sister and I spent that entire three weeks only wishing that we were in our own land where some friendly voice might at least shout an inquiry about us from a distance, and not in this faraway place where only strange and very foreign sounds came floating in to us from curious and crowded streets whose every nook and corner we were aching to explore.

Our house was charming. All the “foreign” houses in Japan seem to me to be charming. The solidity of Occidental construction, with the light touch of Japanese interior decoration, make a fascinating combination, especially in that environment. The Japanese landscape is⁠—well, peculiarly Japanese, and the gardens, however “foreign” they may be, have an air quite unique and unmistakably oriental.

The Foreign Settlement in Yokohama consists of a broad business section, solidly built, on the low lands fronting the harbour, and The Bluff. The Bluff is a garden of beautiful homes. At one end it rises high above the bay and commands a wide view of harbour, town and Pacific Ocean, while the other end runs inland to meet the higher hills beyond and forms a deep valley in which has been built up a teeming native quarter full of colour, of picturesque outline and of never-ending oriental clamour. Around this village are terraced, bright-green rice paddies and high hills covered with dark, Japanese pines which grow at curious angles.

Our house, a spreading bungalow in a large and well-kept garden, was on the inland side and overlooked this valley. From a Buddhist temple on the opposite hill, a quaint structure with uptilted roof and great stone torii gateway, came the ceaseless drone of a priest repeating over and over an endless invocation to the constant, measured tum-tum accompaniment of little wooden drums, while from the narrow streets below rose the strange cries of itinerant food venders. Throughout the whole long evening sounded the long wail of the blind masseurs who, with their thumping bamboo sticks, tramp from door to door seeking patronage. At intervals the single low tong of a great temple bell set the hills to vibrating.

We rented the house from an Englishman who was “going home” on vacation, and with it we rented a complete ménage, including a most efficient little Japanese woman named Matsu who served us both as waitress and housekeeper and answered to the call of “Amah!”⁠—meaning either nurse or maid. Besides the Amah, there was only a cook, an excellent one, but the two contrived to run the house with a smoothness and an economy which I have never seen equalled. They were so economical, in fact, that we had difficulty in getting them to serve to us enough of their well-prepared food. There were six of us in family, not including Charlie, or Baby San as he was called, and at each meal Matsu would bring in just six portions of whatever there was, six chops, six croquettes, six little fishes, always six⁠—no more. We resorted to strategy sometimes and announced, well in advance, that there would be guests.

“How many, O Ku San?” says Matsu cautiously.

“Well, maybe two,” says we.

Whereupon we would get eight little chops, or eight little croquettes, or whatever it might be. But we couldn’t play this game very often because we were afraid that if too many guests failed to materialise the time would come when we really would be giving a party and be forced to act out the “Wolf! Wolf!” story to our own very great embarrassment. I’m glad to say this never occurred; Matsu always obeyed orders; but when an unexpected guest dropped in we had to exercise the principle of “family hold back” in real earnest.

However, while Matsu was in command none of us had any cause for complaint. She had plenty of native shrewdness and didn’t neglect her own interests to any appreciable extent, but she displayed none of the traditional oriental duplicity which we had been warned to look out for in all Japanese servants. She relieved us of all the responsibilities of housekeeping and left us free to wander around among the fascinating shops and to go off on long sightseeing expeditions at our pleasure.

While we were still in the midst of the miseries of quarantine I got my first letter from my husband, and as he had sailed away into what to me then was a very far distant and somewhat unreal world, I was exceedingly glad to hear from him.

The Hancock had stopped at Kobe and had then gone on to Nagasaki where it had to lie for two days taking on coal. The Commissioners seem to have begun by that time to chafe at delays and to long for their settled, definite employment. But they had to go to Hong Kong on some business matters and it was from Hong Kong that my first long letter came. They were received by the British authorities with the usual formality; pompous calls to be returned as pompously; dinners, luncheons, club privileges, launch parties and much entertaining gossip; but they were interested, principally, in meeting for the first time the genus Filipino irreconcilable.

The Filipinos, after three centuries of Christian education, which had taken the form of religious instruction only, had, with reason, risen in revolt against the Spanish system of friar domination and had demanded some measure of freedom and a voice in the control of their own affairs. This is a long and complicated story which can only be touched upon here.

They were engaged in a hopeless struggle with Spanish authority when the Spanish-American War, unexpected, undreamed of, suddenly turned the tables and placed them in an entirely new situation. They saw Spain defeated and turned from the islands she had held since Magellan’s first voyage, while another flag quickly rose above their ancient forts and strongholds. Then it was that the handful of ambitious “illustrados,” or well-to-do and educated ones, began freely to preach independence and were encouraged by not a few Americans, including some in official relation to the situation, who, in complete ignorance of real conditions, approved the so-called aspiration and gave hope of its early fulfilment.

The idea of these Americans was that our forefathers had fought for independence and that it was against our most cherished principles to hold any people against their will. But they didn’t take into consideration the fact that the Filipinos were Malays, not ten percent of them with even a primary education, used only to a theocratic and absolute government and without any experience in the rule of the people. Nor did they consider that our forefathers had, for a century and a half before the revolution, been carrying on what was really self-government and were better fitted by training and tradition to make self-government work than any people in the world. They indulged in sentiment to the exclusion of thought; and so the situation was created.

The idea of complete independence was never shouted from the housetops in Spanish times, but the new flag represented free speech, a free press, and such freedom generally as the Filipinos had never dreamed of in their wildest aspirations and the “illustrados” and the men who had tasted power in the insurrection against Spain were not slow to take advantage of it. An alluring conception of independence, freedom from all restraint and the enjoyment of luxurious ease, really, was sent abroad among the densely ignorant masses by the handful who had education, with the result that by the time the American government was free really to face the issue, the demand for our immediate withdrawal was unanimous, or nearly so.

But it couldn’t be done. Aguinaldo tried his hand at a government for six months and failed miserably. Corruption was rife. Chaos reigned; the country was impoverished and absolutely unprotected; and it didn’t take the Americans long to recognise the fact that “independence” meant nothing more nor less than the merciless exploitation of the many by the few and the establishment of worse conditions than any the people had ever known.

So we stayed; there was nothing else to do; and the insurrection against constituted authority was taken up where it left off when Admiral Dewey steamed up Manila Bay. It was hopeless from the start, and one after another of the leading insurrectos, as the months went by, abandoned the struggle in favour of prosperous peace and came in to Manila to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. But as pacification progressed a few of the leaders declared themselves to be “irreconcilable” and either took to the hills with marauding bands of ladrones, or went over to Hong Kong and joined the little Filipino colony there. This colony in Hong Kong⁠—which still exists, by the way⁠—was known as the “junta” and its business in life was to hatch schemes for murderous uprisings, smuggle arms and incendiary literature into the islands, raise money for carrying on hostilities and make itself useful generally.

The methods employed by these “irreconcilables” were peculiarly their own. They consisted, mainly, of coercion and threats of assassination among Filipino people who were staying at home and endeavouring to keep out of trouble. Then, too, they were reported to have made a great deal of money by compelling Filipino hemp and tobacco planters to sell to them these valuable products at prices fixed by themselves, and later disposing of them in Hong Kong at the regular market price which gave them a tremendous margin of profit.

These were the conditions⁠—merely sketched⁠—which existed in the Philippine Islands when the second Commission was sent out, and the first Filipinos Mr. Taft ever met, he met in Hong Kong. They were not members of the “junta” but were high-class, wealthy, noncombatant refugees named Cortez, who lived under a threat of assassination, who had had all their property confiscated because of their sympathy with the insurrection against Spain, had secured restitution through the government at Washington, and who came now to beg the Commission for protection against their own people and for the speedy establishment of peaceful American rule in the islands.

Then came Artacho. Artacho had been Aguinaldo’s rival in the insurrection against Spain and he very much resented the selection, by the Americans in command, of Aguinaldo as the leader of the Filipino forces when Dewey went into Manila. He was sufficiently annoyed to leave the country and take refuge in Hong Kong. He professed entire ignorance of the activities of the “junta” and unqualified loyalty to the government of the United States, but, as he had with him a “secretary” who very carefully listened to all he had to say, and as he seemed to be very cautious in all his expressions, Mr. Taft decided that he was being watched and was, if not actively connected with the “junta,” at least “on the fence” and in his call only “casting an anchor to windward” in case the Americans should succeed in pacifying the Islands and establishing a government there with which it would be very nice indeed to be connected. It must have been a very diplomatic, a very soft-spoken and a most amusing meeting.

Among other things the Commission had to do in Hong Kong was to secure Chinese servants. They had been told that this was absolutely necessary because the unsettled state of affairs in Manila made Filipino servants entirely undependable.

Captain McCalla, of the Newark, had given to my husband in Yokohama, a letter to one L. Charles, a Chinese who ran a sort of employment agency in Hong Kong, but when L. Charles came out to the Hancock, in response to a message from Mr. Taft, he brought with him the surprising news that the servants had already arrived from Shanghai and had been waiting for several days. Mr. Taft was greatly astonished, as he was unconscious of having made any arrangements at all, but L. Charles smilingly explained to him that Admiral Dewey had attended to it. Then Mr. Taft remembered that, sure enough, Admiral Dewey had, several months before in Washington, offered to secure servants through his own Chinaman, Ah Man, but he, himself, had forgotten all about it.

However, he sent for the men and when they came aboard one of them proudly produced a note from the flag officer of the Brooklyn, enclosing a note to Ah Sing, the steward of the Brooklyn, from Ah Man, Admiral Dewey’s servant. It read:

My dear Ah Sing:

It is a new Governor-General coming up to Manila City. His name is Mr. Wm. H. Taft and he is going to sail from here first of April. The Admiral asked me to write to you and ask if you please find him some good Chinese servants for Mr. Taft. He like to have a very good cook just like myself the Admiral said and two men to wait on table a butler and second man just like you. Now would you be so kind as to try to find some very nice people that will take good care and will understand their business. The Admiral will be very much oblige to you I am

This is an example of what is known in the East as “flen-pidgin,” which may be literally translated as “friend-work.” It is a Chinese system, but it has been adopted by the representatives of every country in the world to be met out there and it is by no means the least of the elements which enter into the charm of the Orient.

One of the objects for stopping in Japan was to enable the Commissioners to get white duck and linen clothes for the tropics and Mr. Taft had the worst of luck in getting anything to fit him. In the beginning we had some rather heated discussions as to the style of dress that he should adopt. He had been assured that the most comfortably dressed men were those who wore “straight button ups” as they are called. These are coats which have a high, round collar and button straight down from the chin⁠—plain military jackets, in fact. They are worn without shirts, collars, ties or anything except underwear and trousers and are, no doubt, very nice for the tropic heat. But I did not consider that such a severe style would bring out the lines of my husband’s figure to the best advantage, so I prevailed upon him to have all his clothes made with sack coats which should be worn with the usual accessories. It was a sad experience in Yokohama, but he left for Hong Kong full of hope, having been told that the tailors there were much better. He wrote in utter disgust. The tailors were not good; he had been to every shop in town looking for wearing apparel of all kinds and could find nothing large enough for him. He said he had imagined that Englishmen were, as a rule, large enough to demand men’s sizes⁠—but evidently not. He had to have everything, shoes, stockings, underwear, shirts, collars and hats made to order⁠—and then they didn’t fit.

My husband’s letter, full of strange names, of assassination, of smuggled arms, of dark intrigue and unrest generally, left a vague impression in my mind that he was going into a country where he would be subjected to murderous attacks every few minutes. Then I reflected that he was not quite alone; that General MacArthur and about seventy thousand American troops were down there too, and that they could probably be depended upon to do everything in their power to protect him.

Our life in Yokohama was very placid. It was some time after our yellow placards were removed before our neighbours began to call on us, and we didn’t blame them. No doubt they felt that it would be foolish to risk getting diphtheria just for the sake of being formally polite. We were delightfully entertained, both before and after the Commission sailed, by Mr. and Mrs. T. Williams McIvor, who are among the old American residents of Yokohama. Mr. McIvor had been American Consul General, but when we met him he was engaged in a private law practice, representing the American Tobacco Company and other large foreign concerns. As Consul General he had taken care of the Chinese during the Japan-China War and had sent about eight thousand of them out of the country. He was now representing the foreign business community in its dispute with the Japanese government as to whether or not the property known as the Foreign Concession, or The Settlement, was taxable. This area had been granted by the Japanese government on perpetual lease at the time the first treaties with Japan were made, and the holding of it by foreigners was conditioned on the payment of a ground rent to the government which, it was provided, should never be increased beyond a certain amount. But now Japan was greatly in need of money, was taxing its own people in every way possible, and eventually decided to levy a tax on the houses and improvements upon this land, on the theory that improvements on land are not a part of the land itself. But by the Civil Law and the Common Law the provision in the treaties that no tax should be paid on the property greater than that fixed in ground rent would have prevented the levying of any tax on the buildings because, by such laws, improvements are considered to be a part of the land. But in Japanese law it was said they were not so regarded and the question was whether the treaties were to be construed according to Japanese law or according to the laws of foreign governments. The subject was one of endless discussion while we were there, and Minister Buck had already referred the question to the State Department at Washington.

We also dined with Mrs. Scidmore, whom I was to meet many times in after years. Mrs. Scidmore is the mother of Eliza Ramaha Scidmore, the well known writer about Far Eastern countries, and is, I suppose, the most notable foreign figure in the Orient. She had lived in Japan since the early days, not so long after the country’s doors were opened to the world. Her son was in the Legation service when I met her and she had a charming house on the Bund, in which was gathered a remarkable collection of Japanese curios and objects of art. Mrs. Scidmore was then nearly eighty years of age I think, but she was as bright and young as a woman of fifty. The last time I saw her she was nearly ninety and she entertained us at luncheon in Nagasaki, where her son was American Consul. She dresses with as much care and is as interested in fashions and fabrics as any girl, and it is a rare pleasure to see her, with her snowy hair piled up on her head and a white silk gown spread out about her, sitting in the centre of a group of people discussing, with great animation and entire comprehension, general topics of current interest. She afterward went to “keep house” for her son in Seoul, Korea, where he became Consul General, and she continues to be a sort of uncrowned queen of foreign society.

Leaving our children at the bungalow with their nurses, Mrs. Wright, Maria and I went about, to Nikko, to Kamakura, to Kyoto and other interesting places, and we spent the intervals, indeed all our time, in restraining our intense desire to purchase everything we saw in the extraordinarily attractive little shops.

About the last of July, when the heat began to be rather more than we could stand, we left Yokohama and went up into the Hakone Mountains to Miyanoshita. The trip to Miyanoshita includes a two hours’ climb in ’rickshas up a steep incline from a village on the railway, where there was then no sort of accommodation for “Europeans,”⁠—only Japanese inns which, though they may have been excellent from a Japanese standpoint, did not seem to us to have been built for inn purposes. When we got out of the train it was seven o’clock in the evening. There were Mrs. Wright and her maid, her daughter Katrina, my sister Maria, the three children, Bessie the nurse, and I. We wanted dinner above all things else and we decided to get it. It all had to be prepared “European style” at one of the little inns, so by the time it was served and disposed of the night was upon us, and, I may say, the blackest night I ever remember seeing. We debated at length the possibility of taking the two hours’ ’ricksha ride in such darkness, but the chattering coolies, mainly by gesture and facial expression, succeeded in convincing us that it was the most desirable thing in the world to do. Incidentally, and aside from our objection to the bedless inns, we were most anxious to reach our journey’s end. So⁠—we set out, in eight ’rickshas, six for us and two piled high with hand luggage. I put Helen and Robert together in one and took Charlie in with me, and each of us had an extra man behind to push, also two men each for the baggage ’rickshas, which made sixteen men in all. We made quite a cavalcade and I felt fairly satisfied, not to say mildly festive, until we got away from the lights of the town and discovered, to our amazement, that for some reason or other, the ’ricksha men had failed to bring lights. I believe the idea was that they could keep the road better without them. We went along for a short distance in the Stygian darkness, then Maria decided that she wouldn’t have it. Whatever we might do, she was going back for a lantern. We were not in an argumentative mood, so we let her go without a word, while we plunged on.

By that time the wind was tearing down through what seemed to be a very deep, and what certainly was a very dark, canyon, and it was raining steadily. My coolies lagged behind and the first thing I knew I found myself entirely alone. The others had gone so far ahead that I couldn’t even hear the sound of their ’ricksha wheels, though the ’ricksha of those days was a very noisy little vehicle. I had been nearly two months in Japan, had had plenty of experience with ’ricksha coolies and I knew them to be the most inoffensive little men in the world, but the darkness and the wind-driven rain and the discomfort generally, must have got on my nerves because I began to be perfectly sure that my two men were nothing less than brigands and that the separation from my party was a prearranged plan for murder and robbery. I didn’t know how wide the road was, but I knew that on one side there was a very deep chasm because I could hear the roar of a mountain torrent far down and directly below me. Then the coolies chattered and grunted incessantly, as Japanese coolies always do, and I was convinced that they were arguing about which should take the initiative in violence. But I sat tight and said nothing, which was the only thing I could do, of course⁠—except to soothe Charlie who was crying with discomfort and fright⁠—and after awhile⁠—ages it seemed to me⁠—I came upon the rest of my party where they had halted in the road to give their men a breathing spell. I couldn’t see them; I couldn’t even make out the outlines of a ’ricksha, but I could hear Helen sobbing and stammering something about having lost her mother for good and all.

The coolies were chattering at each other at a terrific rate and I judged, from their tones, that they liked the night no better than we. While we were standing close together in the road, all talking at once and trying to tell each other what horrible experiences we had had, we saw a faint glimmer away in the distance, growing more and more distinct as it came up the long hill. It was the dauntless Maria with a light. We fell upon her with the warmest welcome she probably ever received in her life, and everybody at once cheered up. Even the coolies got happier and seemed to chatter less angrily in the lantern’s dim but comforting yellow glow. Nor did we separate again. Everybody wanted to keep close to that light. It revealed to us the reassuring fact that the road was, at least, wide enough for safety, and so we rolled soggily along, with no other sound but the rattle of many wheels and the splash of mud, until we arrived at the Fujiya Hotel, sometime after ten o’clock, in a state of utter exhaustion.

I am not going to describe Miyanoshita because it has been very well done by scores of writers, but I will say that the Fujiya Hotel, away up in the mountains, at the head of a glorious canyon, is one of the most splendidly situated, finely managed and wholly delightful places I ever saw.

And there are plenty of things to do. We were carried in chairs over a high mountain pass to Lake Hakone, which, still and bright as a plate-glass mirror, lies right at the base of Fujiyama and reflects that startlingly beautiful mountain in perfect colour and form.

Then there are temples and wayside shrines, and teahouses⁠—teahouses everywhere. We were coming back from a tramp one day and stopped at a teahouse not far from our hotel where we encountered an Englishwoman who gave us our first conception of what the terrible Boxer Insurrection was like. She entered into talk with us at once and told us a most tragic story. She was a missionary from the interior of China and had been forced to flee before the Boxers and make her way out of the country in hourly peril and through scenes of the utmost horror. Her husband had elected to remain at his post and she didn’t then know but that he might already have died under the worst imaginable torture. She made our blood run cold and we were tremendously sorry for her, though she did tell her harrowing story calmly enough. It seems she had with her a young Chinese refugee who was a convert to Christianity and, because of that fact, in even more danger in China than she.

We expressed our sympathy and good wishes and continued on our way. But we hadn’t gone far when we heard a frantic shouting behind us:

“Have you seen my Chinaman! Have you seen my Chinaman anywhere on the way!”

It was the missionary, distracted and running violently after us; and, we had not seen her Chinaman. She rushed past and up into the woods faster than one would have thought she could run, and all the time she kept calling, “Joseph! Joseph!” at the top of her voice. We decided that Joseph was the Chinaman’s new Christian name since we had heard that they all get Biblical names at baptism. We hastened along, thinking she might have gone suddenly mad and we wondered what in the world we should do. But as we came around a bend in the road we saw her coming toward us with a grinning little queued heathen marching meekly before her. She was looking very much relieved and stopped to explain her rather extraordinary conduct.

“I was perfectly certain that boy had committed suicide,” she began.

“Why, what made you think that?” I asked.

“Well, he wrote that, and I found it!” And she thrust into my hand a piece of paper on which was scrawled in printed characters:

Just as I am, without one plea,
Save that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

She explained that Joseph had had a great deal of trouble; was away from his people; that Chinamen didn’t care anything about their lives anyhow; and that she had been afraid for some time that he would grow despondent and do something desperate.

But there stood Joseph, broadly smiling and looking for all the world like an oriental cherub who would have liked very much to know what all the commotion was about. Poor chap, he didn’t understand a word of English and had been merely trying to learn the words of an English hymn by copying them, in carefully imitated letters, on bits of paper.

In the meantime my husband had arrived in Manila and had already sent me several letters through which I came gradually to know something of the situation he was facing.

The principal impression I received was that between the Commission and the military government, in the person of General Arthur MacArthur, there did not exist that harmony and agreement which was considered to be essential to the amicable adjustment of Philippine affairs. In other words, General MacArthur seemed to resent the advent of the Commission and to be determined to place himself in opposition to every step which was taken by them or contemplated. It was not very easy for the Commissioners, but as far as I can see now, after a careful reading of all the records, they exercised the most rigid diplomacy at times when it would have been only human to have risen up and exercised whatever may be diplomacy’s antithesis.

The description of the arrival of the Commission made me rather wish I had accompanied them;⁠—except for the heat. It was June and my husband said the sun beat down upon and came right through the heavy canvas awnings on the decks of the Hancock. The men had, by this time, become accustomed to their ill-fitting white linens, but they had not yet mastered the art of keeping them from looking messy, and they must have been a wilted company during their first few days in Manila.

They came up into the harbour on Sunday and during the course of the day received many interesting visitors. General MacArthur was not among them, but he sent a member of his staff, Colonel Crowder, to present his compliments and make arrangements for the going ashore ceremony the next day. Then came the Americanistas, as the Filipinos who sympathised with American control were called. These had been recognised by General Otis before General MacArthur had arrived and many of them have always been prominently associated with the American government in the Islands. Among others were Chief Justice Arellano, Mr. Benito Legarda and Mr. Pardo de Tavera. The Commissioners talked about the situation with these gentlemen, through Mr. Arthur Fergusson, the Spanish Secretary of the Commission, and found them not altogether despondent, but certainly not optimistic about the outcome. They thought the Commissioners were facing very grave problems indeed, if not insurmountable difficulties.

The next day⁠—“just when the sun got the hottest,” wrote Mr. Taft⁠—all the launches in the harbour gathered around the Hancock, many whistles blew, many flags and pennants fluttered, and the Commission was escorted to the shore. They entered the city with great pomp and circumstance, through files of artillerymen reaching all the way from the landing at the mouth of the Pásig River, up a long driveway, across a wide moat, through an old gateway in the city wall and up to the Palace of the Ayuntamiento where General MacArthur, the Military Governor, had his offices. But it was not a joyous welcome for all that. All the show was merely perfunctory; a sort of system that had to be observed. Their reception was so cool that Mr. Taft said he almost stopped perspiring. There were few Filipinos to be seen, and as General MacArthur’s reception to the Commission was anything but cordial or enthusiastic they began to feel a discomforting sense of being decidedly not wanted.

If they had any doubts on this point General MacArthur soon cleared them up. He frankly assured them that he regarded nothing that had ever happened in his whole career as casting so much reflection on his position and his ability as their appointment under the direction of the President. They suggested that he could still rejoice in considerable honour and prestige as a man at the head of a division of more troops than any general had commanded since the Civil War and that he was, moreover, still enjoying the great power of Chief Executive of the Islands.

“Yes,” said he, “that would be all right if I hadn’t been exercising so much more power than that before you came.”

Whereupon Mr. Taft gently reminded him that he had been exercising that power for about three weeks only and said he hoped he had not become, in that time, so habituated to the situation as to prevent his appreciating the rather exalted position in which he would still be left. They afterward exchanged some correspondence as to what powers each did have, but they seemed to have disagreed from the first.

General MacArthur succeeded General Otis in command of the United States Army in the Philippines and he had fallen heir to a policy with which he was entirely out of sympathy. General Otis had scattered the troops in small divisions and detachments all over the Islands, and General MacArthur found himself in command of about seventy thousand men, but with only a few regiments where he could lay his hands on them for action in his own immediate vicinity. He believed that the only way to get rid of the predatory bands and bring order out of a chaotic state, was to concentrate the army on the island of Luzon where most of the active insurrectos operated. And he thought it would be many years before the Filipinos would be ready for anything but the strictest military government. But the trouble was that thousands of Filipinos all over the Islands had already sworn fealty to the United States, or had gone quietly back to work, and it was known that the lives of many of these would not be worth a moment’s purchase if the protection of the American troops was withdrawn from them. That was the situation.

The last engagement between real insurgents and American troops had taken place in February before the Commission arrived. There had been men of some ability and real patriotism in Aguinaldo’s cabinet and among his followers at Malolos, but by this time the best of them had come in and taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, others were in prison slowly making up their minds as to whether they would or would not follow this course, while still others had gone over to Hong Kong to join in the activities of the “junta.” Aguinaldo was still roaming around the mountain fastnesses of Luzon, posing as a dictator and issuing regular instructions to his lieutenants for the annihilation of American regiments; but the insurrection had degenerated.

The companies of men who still kept the field did so, for the most part, because they found that the easiest way to make a living. Money was getting scarce and the people were steadily refusing to contribute to the cause. A letter from one of Aguinaldo’s lieutenants was intercepted in which he said that he had found a certain town obdurate and that he thought it would be necessary to take four or five lives before the people could be induced to give money. Murder and rapine, torture and robbery; these were the methods employed, and very little of the money realised ever found its way into the general revolutionary coffers. Most of the remaining “patriots” had become ladrones and were harrying their own people much more than they were opposing the American forces.

These conditions led the Commission to think the time had come to organise a native constabulary, under American officers, with which thoroughly to police the Islands. But General MacArthur did not agree with them; thought it would be folly to trust any Filipino with arms and cited instances of where those who had been armed as scouts had proved entirely untrustworthy. But the suggestion was received by many of his own officers with the utmost approval and one man, in the Ilocos country in northern Luzon, said he had only to issue a call and he could have five thousand as loyal men as ever wore uniform enlisted in twenty-four hours. I may say here that the Filipino people are divided into a number of distinct tribes and that some of these never did take much, if any, part in the insurrection. The insurrection is today referred to as the Tagalog rebellion, the Tagalogs being one of the principal tribes, though not the largest.

There had always been a great number, a majority in fact, of Filipinos who did not like the awful conditions created by the insurrection and who easily could be persuaded to an attitude of loyalty toward any decent and peaceful government; and it was from this number that the Commission wanted to recruit a native constabulary. But no. The Commission would not begin to exercise such powers as it had until September and in the meantime General MacArthur was absolute and in answer to this proposition he merely reiterated his belief that the only way to meet the situation was with additional American troops.

In my husband’s earliest letters he characterised the Filipino people much as he did after years of experience with them. He wrote me that of the six or seven millions of Christian Filipinos about two percent were fairly well educated, while all the rest were ignorant, quiet, polite people, ordinarily inoffensive and lighthearted, of an artistic temperament, easily subject to immoral influences, quite superstitious and inclined, under the direction of others, to great cruelty. He thought them quite capable of becoming educated and that they could be trained to self-government. He was inclined to think that they had, because of their environment and experience under Spanish rule, capacity for duplicity, but he did not think they had the Machiavellian natures which people attributed to them. Some of those who call themselves “illustrados”⁠—the higher class⁠—took to political intrigue with great gusto.

Almost the first experience which the Commission had with Filipino Machiavellian methods involved them in a complication which might have proved quite serious. If there is one thing in the world that the Filipino people, as one man, love, it is a fiesta. A fiesta is a holiday, a celebration with music, marching, many flags, best clothes and plenty of high-flown speechmaking. Now there was one Pedro A. Paterno, an unctuous gentleman, who, while he had taken the oath of allegiance and had fairly put himself in the pocket of American authority, was still supposed to be more or less in sympathy with Aguinaldo. He made himself the mediator between General MacArthur and Aguinaldo and occasionally promised Aguinaldo’s surrender. Nobody ever knew what he promised Aguinaldo, but it was known to a certainty that he was “carrying water on both shoulders” and doing his best to keep in well with both sides. He had played the same role in Spanish times. He made what is known in history as “The Peace of Biacnabato,” between the insurrectos and the Spanish government, by the simple means of “interpreting” to each the demands of the other in perfectly satisfactory terms. He did all the translating, on both sides, himself and the “Peace” was signed. Then before its irregularities were made clear he asked of the Spanish government, as his reward, a dukedom and a million dollars upon which to live up to the title. His letter to the Spanish governor is still extant.

This gentleman one day, out of a clear sky, proposed what he called an Amnesty Fiesta; a grand banquet in honour of General MacArthur to follow a day of celebration and all-round relaxation from the strain of hostilities. General MacArthur didn’t see that it would do any harm, but said he would not attend the banquet in his honour and that all the speeches that were to be made would have to be carefully censored. To this Pedro readily agreed and went immediately to work to make elaborate preparations for the occasion. He got a committee together and sent them to wait on the Commission with an invitation to the banquet. Only three of the Commissioners were in town, but these, after making careful inquiry as to the nature of the entertainment and discovering that no incendiary speechmaking was to be allowed, decided to accept the invitation. Paterno was in high feather and nothing but the fiesta and the banquete was talked about for days. But gradually information began to reach the ears of Mr. Taft that all was not as it should be. He learned that arches were being erected across certain streets bearing inscriptions that were insulting to the American flag. One arch, in front of Malacañan Palace, where General MacArthur lived, had a picture of President McKinley on one side and a picture of Aguinaldo on the other, and it was said that General MacArthur had ridden under this arch without noticing it. That would be taken for sanction by an ignorant Filipino. But as soon as notice was called to them all the objectionable features of the arches were removed and preparations went on. But rumours kept coming in about the speeches until Mr. Taft became curious. He went to General MacArthur and asked who was doing the censoring.

“Why, Pedro Paterno,” said the General; as much as to say, “What more could you ask?”

Mr. Taft went back to the office and straightway set about to get copies of those speeches. And, he got them. Some of them were already in type at a local newspaper office and were to be printed in full the next morning. This was the day of the fiesta and it was proving a very quiet affair. There was little enthusiasm on the streets, but there was plenty of interest in the coming banquete. The Commissioners looked over all the speeches and found them, without exception, seditious in the extreme. So, of course, they could not go to the banquet. They could not sit by and listen to misrepresentations without getting up immediately and making vigorous denial and protest and they could not lend the sanction of their presence to an entertainment that had been so arranged. The banquete was in General MacArthur’s honour and the speeches glowingly promised everything short of immediate evacuation and complete independence.

The Commissioners wrote a polite little note to Señor Paterno and said they were very sorry to find that it was not possible, under the circumstances, for them to be present that evening.

Mr. Taft and General Wright were living together in the house that my husband had secured for us, and they went home and had a comfortable dinner in their everyday white linens and were enjoying postprandial talk on the cool verandah when Pedro Paterno came rushing in and, figuratively, threw himself on his knees before them. He begged them to come with him to the banquete; the crowd had assembled; it was past nine o’clock; and he would be placed in a terrible situation if the gentlemen of the Commission did not reconsider their cruel decision. The gentlemen of the Commission asked how about the carefully censored speeches. Paterno vowed that no speeches at all should be delivered, that no word of any kind should be said, but that they must show themselves to the people, if only for a little while. All right. They quickly got into their hot evening clothes and went down to the banquet hall. They sat through a couple of silent, weary hours, took a few sips of wine, smiled a few smiles, shook a few hands, and then went home. That was all there was to it. But Pedro was discredited in both camps. His purpose had been to have the speeches made before the Commissioners, claim all the credit with his own people for getting the Commissioners there and then to deny to the Commissioners all responsibility for the occasion.

The forms of military government were being strictly observed; there was a nine o’clock curfew and nobody was allowed on the street after that hour without a pass. Mr. Taft wrote of several trying experiences when he went out in the evening and forgot his pass and, starting home about half past ten, was held up by one sentry after another who demanded an explanation at the point of a gun.

Mr. Bryan was running for President at this time and he was making a good deal of political capital out of the Philippine situation. He had promised to call a special session of Congress, if he were elected, to consider means for settling the Filipinos in immediate self-government, and he had a large following of mistakenly altruistic anti-imperialists supporting him. Mr. Taft was inclined to think that the whole anti-American demonstration, which was to culminate in the Amnesty Fiesta banquet, was planned by a Mr. Pratt, an American politician then visiting Manila, who wanted the “grandly patriotic” speeches to publish in American newspapers. They probably would have been perfect material for the anti-imperialists to grow sentimental over.

In the meantime Mr. Bryan’s promises and the possibility of his being placed in a position to redeem them, were retarding pacification. All that was needed to discourage the last of the insurrectos was Mr. McKinley’s election, and the Presidential campaign of 1900 was probably not watched anywhere with more breathless interest than it was in the Philippine Islands.

Such were the lessons in letters that I got from my husband, and my imagination was fired. He had great projects in hand. The Commission proposed to establish municipal governments wherever conditions made it possible and among the first things they undertook was the framing of a municipal code upon which to base such governments. They sent this to General MacArthur for his comments, but his comments consisted in a rather pointed intimation that military rule was still in force and that he thought they were several years ahead of possibilities, but that they might go on and amuse themselves since their municipal code would not deter him in any action he found it necessary to take at any point where it was in operation. All this was couched in most excellent diplomatic language, of course, but it amounted to just that. An equally diplomatic reply seems to have brought the General to a realisation that the powers of the Commission were well defined, that their object was peaceful pacification wherever it was possible and that they would probably be supported by Washington in any reasonable measures they might take to that end.

They had many plans already; a big general school system for the organisation of which they had engaged a superintendent from Massachusetts; good roads to open up the country for commerce; harbour improvements; health measures; a reliable judiciary; a mountain resort where American soldiers and civilians might recuperate from tropic disease, thereby saving many lives to say nothing of millions of dollars to the government in troop transportation charges; and they were already attacking the vexed friar question that had caused all the trouble in the first place.

The letters made me anxious to finish my visit in Japan and get down to Manila where so much of vital and engrossing interest was going on. My husband wrote rather discouragingly about the house he had taken, but he was having some improvements made and, though I did not expect to find comfort, I was sure I should manage to get along. I had purchased in Japan a number of bright and artistic objects in the way of house decorations and I thought that, with these, I should be able to make almost any place look inviting.

The Boxer rebellion was troubling us more than anything else at the moment. We wanted very much to go to Shanghai, but were told that it would be absolutely unsafe for us to go anywhere in China except to Hong Kong. I didn’t know much about the East at that time and was ready to believe anything that was told me. However, I remembered that there were thousands of foreign residents in Shanghai who were going on about their daily affairs much as if there were no such thing as a Boxer. So we, too, decided to go on our usual tranquil way and we set sail for Manila, via Shanghai and Hong Kong, on the Japanese steamer, Kasuga Maru, on the tenth day of August.

The China Sea has an evil reputation. On its shores one hears much about the typhoon season and the changing monsoons, and bad sailors would, no doubt, like to have their sailing dates determined by the Weather Bureau; but this is not always possible.

The Kasuga Maru, on which we made the voyage from Yokohama to Manila, lay in Hong Kong Harbour while one of the great mid-August storms tore up from the south and set skippers and seamen agog with fears of dreadful conditions we would have to meet on the trip across to Manila. In the China Sea there are crosscurrents which make for bad going at the best of times, and when they are piled up by a typhoon into great, warring waves the result is likely to be extraordinary.

My husband cabled me to take a larger vessel, a United States army transport which left Hong Kong about the same time we did, but I was comfortably located with my family on the little Kasuga Maru; the transfer of baggage was a troublesome task; and I figured that as long as the Kasuga Maru had been afloat in south seas for a good many years, she might be trusted to keep afloat for a few days longer.

We caught the calm between two storms. The sea had been beaten down by torrential rains; and while great, smooth waves rose under us and sent us rolling in a sickening zigzag all the way across, there was in them no threat of destruction, and I really began to feel that the China Sea had been maligned.

A feeling of intense curiosity got me out of my stateroom bright and early on the morning of our arrival in Manila.

To the northward lay a stretch of unbroken, mountainous shoreline; while we were headed for a narrow channel guarded by rock islands against which the surf broke in clouds of spray.

“Corregidor,” said the skipper, pointing to a high, green hill behind the rocks. Corregidor⁠—it was the first time I had ever heard the name which since has become synonymous, in so many minds, with Gibraltar. On the other side of the entrance to Manila Bay stood Meriveles, a beautiful mountain, sloping gently back from the sea and up into soft, white clouds. But Manila⁠—where was Manila? Cavite⁠—where was Cavite? And where did the Spanish ships lie, when Dewey sailed in past Corregidor not knowing what he would find? Questions, these, which everybody asked in those days. Manila was twenty miles ahead at the far end of the Bay, while Cavite, across on the south shore, in the nearer distance, lay flat and almost invisible under low-spreading trees.

Flat; that is the word which occurs to everybody who sails for the first time into Manila Bay. The city is built on the lowlands; low, as I afterward learned, to the point of being below sea-level in certain places, and subject to sudden floods in the big typhoons. But far behind the flats are towering ranges of blue and purple hills, with here and there a softly rounded mountain standing, seemingly, alone.

The hot sun beat down on the glassy surface of the Bay and sent back a blinding glare which brought an ache into eyes and nerves, but we were all too interested to seek shelter in the darkened cabin.

While our ship was still miles from shore we could see long lines of low, red roofs and the white gleam of many domes and spires; and off to the right we had pointed out to us the eloquent wrecks of some of the Spanish fleet whose masts and battered hulks rose high out of the shallow water in which they were sunk.

But for ourselves, for me, for Mrs. Wright, for Maria and the children, the most important thing in sight was a little fleet of harbour launches which came hurrying down the Bay to meet us. I saw my husband and General Wright standing in the bow of one of these long before they could pick us out in the crowd of passengers lining the rails of the Kasuga Maru.

Then came the happy welcomings which make absences worth while; excited children; everybody talking at once; explanations begun and never finished; interruptions by customs officials⁠—American soldiers in those days; comments on the heat and the bright white light, and laughing assurances that it wasn’t hot at all and that the climate was perfect; transferring baggage to the launch; glimpsing, occasionally, strange scenes and strange peoples; asking and answering a thousand questions; busy, bustling, delightfully confusing hours of landing in the farthest orient.

Our husbands turned themselves into willing “Baedekers” and instructed us on the way. We steamed up in our little launch to the mouth of the Pásig River, wide and deep and swift, and covered with what looked to me like millions of small, green cabbages.

“Carabao lettuce; the river’s full of it,” explained Mr. Taft, but I was much too occupied just then to stop and ask what “carabao lettuce” might be.

We came up past a bristling fort at the corner of a great, grey, many-bastioned and medieval wall which stretched as far as I could see down the bay shore on one side and up the river on the other.

“The Old Walled City,” said General Wright, and I knew at once that I should love the old Walled City.

“The oldest parts of the walls were built in the seventeenth century,” continued our animated guidebook, “and the fort on the corner is Santiago. The big dome is the Cathedral and all the red tile roofs are convents and monasteries. The twentieth century hasn’t reached here yet. To all intents and purposes the Walled City is still in the Middle Ages.” The truth is that only part of the walls are really very old⁠—some parts have been built within seventy years.

The river was full of strange craft; long, high prowed, cumbersome looking boats, with rounded deck-houses roofed with straw matting and painted in every conceivable colour and pattern, which, we were told, were cascoes⁠—cargo boats which ply the length of the Pásig and bring down the coconuts and sugarcane and other products from the middle provinces. The only visible propelling power on these cascoes⁠—and the only power they have⁠—are natives, naked to the waist, armed with long bamboo poles upon which, having fixed them firmly in the mud at the bottom of the river, they push steadily as they walk the length of the narrow running board along the outer edge of the deck. I should say they might make a mile in about two hours.

Then there were the curious little bancas; narrow canoes, hewn out of single logs and kept on an even keel, usually, by graceful outriggers of bamboo.

Across the river from the Walled City is the Custom House, and there, in a few moments, we drew up at a slippery, low, stone landing and climbed ashore. My feet, at last, were on Philippine soil.

If I had, for the time being, forgotten that a war was going on I was immediately reminded of it. The Custom House was in the hands of the Military Government and it was surrounded by khaki-clad guards who all stood stiffly at attention as my husband and General Wright passed. All our necessary luggage had been released and put into the hands of orderlies to be delivered, so we were free to start at once for home.

My husband had written me that the Philippine horses and the Philippine cockroaches were just about the same size, but I was hardly prepared for the diminutive turnout to which he proudly escorted me. Two little brown ponies, no higher than my shoulder, and with very shaggy manes and foretops, were hitched to a Victoria which had been built to fit them. When I stepped in and sat down, with Charlie on my lap, I felt twice my natural size and it seemed impossible to me that there was still ample room for Mr. Taft.

On the box were two stolid little men, dignified by the titles of coachman and footman. They each wore white linen trousers and thin shirts which hung outside, making them look as if they had forgotten a most important act in the process of dressing. Their bare feet were thrust into heelless red carpet-slippers, while on their heads were wide, flopping, shapeless straw hats which they did not trouble to take off at our approach.

The streets were full of such conveyances as ours, and others of varieties even more astonishing. Maria, with Robert and Helen, followed in a quilez⁠—a miniature, one-horse omnibus affair into which the passengers climbed from the rear. Then there were calesas, caromatas, carretelas and carabao carts.

The carabao carts interested me particularly, and there seemed to be more of them than of anything else. The cart itself was nothing⁠—just a few planks nailed together and balanced upon a pair of heavy, broad, wooden wheels⁠—but the beast attached to it was really extraordinary. The first carabao I saw had horns at least six feet across. Indeed, they all have very long horns, and how they keep from obstructing traffic in the narrow streets I never did understand. They do obstruct traffic, as matter of fact, but not with their horns; only with their slow motions. Nobody can possibly know just what the word slow signifies until he has seen a carabao move. Great, grey, thick-skinned, hairless beast; his hide is always caked with mud, and he chews and walks at exactly the same pace while the half-naked, sleepy driver on the cart behind him gives an occasional jerk on the thin rope attached to the ring in his nose.

It was some time before I came to know calesas, caromatas and carretelas apart, though their only likeness lies in the fact that each has two wheels and to each is attached one busy little bit of a horse. The calesa and caromata are the better class vehicles, while the carretela is a plebeian public carryall in which there always seems to be “room for one more.” I saw dozens of these packed with Filipinos; the driver⁠—always and inevitably smoking⁠—sitting close up behind his horse and lashing it continually while it struggled sturdily along and looked every minute as if it would be lifted off its feet by the overbalancing weight behind it. It was something of a shock to see many women, in carretelas and on the street, smoking huge black cigars; while I noticed, immediately, that the men, as a rule, smoke only cigarettes.

I didn’t look for speed from our little brown creatures, but I was yet to become acquainted with the Philippine pony. We started off over the rough cobblestones at a pace that was truly terrifying, and everybody else seemed to be going at about the same rate. I expected a collision every moment. Wheels passed wheels without an inch to spare, and without an instant’s slackening of speed. My heart was in my mouth until we got through the maze of narrow streets 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.

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 got a bit of grading done is typical. The first conclusion he reached in Manila was that the people knew nothing about the value of time, and it must have been a strain on his temperate-zone nervous system to watch a squad of men at work in his garden.

They deposited the material⁠—as usual⁠—as far as they could from the spot where it was to be used; then, one after another, barelegged, bare bodied, incessantly smoking, they would take up small shovels full of earth, carry them all the way across the garden, resting once or twice on the way, dump the material somewhere in the vicinity of the place where it belonged, then drag slowly back and repeat the operation. This was the sort of thing which made Americans, in the early days, dance with impatience; the sort of thing which made Mr. Bryan’s campaign talk about “cheap” Filipino labour invading the United States seem to us so utterly ridiculous. We knew that Filipino labour was the most expensive labour in the world; since it took ten men to do one American’s work.

My husband had written me about the difficulty he had had in securing a suitable house, and had also explained that he was having a number of repairs and changes made which, he hoped, would put the place in good order by the time I arrived. The garden was large, but it boasted neither lawns nor flowers of any kind. A few patches of grass struggling with the hard white gravel and clay, and looking pretty hopeless, nothing else. Around a curving drive we swung up under a porte-cochère, over which hung a magnificent rubber tree, and, stepping from the undersized Victoria onto the finest of white marble steps, I found myself at home.

Our house was really the best that my husband could secure. When he first looked at it he was certain it wouldn’t do at all. It belonged to Chief Justice Arellano, and the army officer who went with him to look for quarters assured him that it was the only thing in town that he could possibly live in; but he didn’t believe it. It had been occupied by army officers and had been greatly abused. Its furniture was broken and piled in heaps; its walls were ragged; and its floors were scarred and dirty.

“I’ll just have a look at some others,” said Mr. Taft.

And he did. He went all over town, and he says that every house he looked at added some new, desirable aspect to the Arellano house, until, finally, it became in his eyes a sort of palace which needed only a touch here and there to make it quite perfect.

It backed directly on the Bay, and among the first things he did was to have a seawall built which he thought added safety to the top-heavy structure, but which, during the typhoon season, really cost him more than it was worth. Every time a big wind came and roughed up the Bay a little, a part of his wall went out. His first complaint to me was that he had been “holding that wall down” all summer, and that part of it was always sure to try to get away every time he found himself particularly occupied with harassing governmental difficulties.

He had had sod laid down between the house and the seawall, and had watched it for awhile with a faith which should have been rewarded, but the salt spray came dashing over it and he had to have it carefully taken up and moved around to the sheltered side of the house. Good sod was scarce in Manila in those days.

My husband was certainly glad to see me, and I don’t doubt that General Wright was just as glad to see his wife. The two of them had been “keeping house” together for three months under conditions wholly new to them, and I gathered that they found a bachelor existence rather complicated and, in certain details, annoying. In some ways, after the manner of men, they had permitted the house to run itself and I did not find it easy to break up the system which had been inaugurated.

The house was not perfect, by any means, but it was big and roomy and had what a woman knows as “great possibilities”; possibilities which I found had to be slowly developed with the assistance of a somewhat taciturn and not altogether willing ménage.

Coming in from the grand marble steps one passed up a short, but spacious hardwood stairway into a wide central hall which opened out on a tile floored verandah, overlooking the Bay and running the entire width of the house. This verandah was enclosed by sliding windows divided into panes about six inches square, not any two of which were the same colour. All the other windows in the house were made of beautiful, translucent pearl-shell in four inch sections⁠—more like screens than windows⁠—which let in the light and kept out the glare, but on the verandah the architect had tried to surpass himself, with the result that royal purple, orange, pink, bright blue and green glass disclosed to one a multicoloured and distracting stretch of otherwise beautiful bay. The hard white light was a thousand times more bearable than such a kaleidoscope, and after I got home those windows were seldom closed.

On either side of the broad central hall were two large rooms; one the dining-room, the others commodious bedrooms; while over the porte-cochère was a small drawing room. Downstairs were the baths and three large rooms and a duplicate of the upstairs verandah. This part of the house, which was dry and well built, I forthwith turned over to the children.

Some of the furniture was very fine; big hardwood tables and old Spanish pieces made from the beautiful woods of the Islands, but everything was greatly in need of the polisher’s brush and chamois. The floors, alternating, broad, hand hewn planks of narra and ipil, were as fine as any I ever saw, though they, too, needed long and painstaking attention. In the bedrooms were high canopied and mosquito-netted beds with cane bottoms, exactly like cane-bottomed chairs, and without mattresses. Everything else was wicker.

The thing which caught my attention first, however, were the fans. My husband had written me, with great pride and satisfaction, that he had put in electric fans, and that they had “saved his life.” I had some sentimental attachment for them on this account⁠—until I saw them. But when I saw them I felt at once that everything else, to be in keeping, ought surely to be swathed in fly-specked pink gauze. The electric fans were of the variety associated in one’s mind with ice-cream “parlours”; two broad blades attached to the ceiling in the middle of the room. They had been installed in both the dining-room and sala⁠—or sitting-room⁠—and it was not possible in either room to see anything else. These fans were the subject of endless contention between Mr. Taft and me, but I gave in and left them to continue their mission of saving his life. He says yet that I often acknowledged on hot nights that he was right about them, but I never did.

My husband had secured his house staff in Hong Kong, through the kind offices of Admiral Dewey’s servant, Ah Man, as I have already written, but being new to the ways of the Oriental, he was destined very quickly to gather some unique experience. There were four of them: the cook, the number one boy, the number two boy and the laundryman. The laundryman was Mr. Taft’s own inspiration. The Filipino laundryman, he had heard, takes the linen of his master’s household down to some stream, preferably the shallows of the Pásig, and hammers it into ribbons on smooth rocks which he uses for washboard purposes. Then he spreads the articles on the grass to dry, and the consequences were found, not infrequently, to be a bad outbreak on the master’s skin of what is known as “adobe itch,” a troublesome disease. So Mr. Taft had engaged a Chinese laundryman and had sent back to San Francisco for tubs and washboards and wringers and all the necessary paraphernalia, and had installed an up-to-date laundry in his own house, where the orders were to boil the clothes and hang them on a line. It worked perfectly, though it did take the Chinaman from the wilds of Shanghai some time to learn the uses of the various modern implements.

In Manila the marketing is usually done by the cook, but in our household this duty was delegated to the number one boy. One day the cook and the number two boy came to Mr. Taft with the announcement that they could not remain in the house with number one boy; that number one boy was a thief; that he smoked opium all the time he was supposed to be marketing; and that he was a bad Chinaman generally. Mr. Taft had always given number one boy the money with which to pay the other boys’ salaries and the cash market charges, so he said to the cook:

“Has number one always paid your wages?”

“Yes,” said the cook, with an eloquent shrug of his shoulders, “just my wages and nothing more.”

This meant, of course, that number one boy was committing the unforgivable sin of not dividing the “squeeze.”

There is no use going into what “squeeze” means in the Orient. It may come partly out of the master’s pocket and partly out of the pockets of the tradesmen; nobody knows. But the housekeeper soon learns that she gains nothing by trying to circumvent the system in doing the marketing herself. The “squeeze” works, no matter who does the buying, and it soon comes to be recognised as a legitimate part of household expenses. The only thing that one can do is to make a complaint when it becomes too heavy.

It seems to have been very heavy in my husband’s establishment, and investigation proved to him that it was necessary to let number one go, so when I arrived there were just the two upstairs servants, the cook and number two, who had been promoted to the proud position of number one.

I went immediately to work to order my household as I always had been used to doing, and there’s where I began to get my experience of the Oriental character. My cook was a wrinkled old Chinaman who looked as if he had concealed behind his beady little eyes a full knowledge of all the mysteries of the East, to say nothing of its vague philosophies and opium visions. He called me “Missy” and was most polite, but in all the essentials he was a graven image. He was an unusually good cook, though he did exactly as he pleased, and seemed to look upon my feeble efforts at the direction of affairs with a tolerant sort of indifference. He would listen to my instructions most respectfully, carefully repeat after me the nice menus I devised, say, “yes, Missy,” then return to his kitchen and cook whatever suited his fancy.

It took me some time to get used to this, but I came to value him highly, especially when I learned that he had, finely developed, one glorious characteristic of his kind. He could make something out of nothing. If Mr. Taft sent word at six o’clock, or even as late as seven, that he had invited four or five of his associates to dinner to continue a discussion begun earlier in the day, or for some other reason, I had only to tell Ah Sing that there would be seven or eight instead of three at dinner, and a perfect dinner would be served. Where he got his supplies with which to meet these sudden demands I never knew. I learned to accept the gifts of the gods without comment, which is the only thing to do in the East.

Ah Sing was particularly proud of his sweets. He loved to make puddings and pies with lavish decorations upon them, though none of the family cared much for such delicacies. One evening, shortly after my arrival, I was giving quite a formal dinner party; I had, as usual, given the cook a menu well thought out and, I believed, wholly appropriate to the occasion and the climate. For a sweet I had ordered an ice with some small cakes, and I was pleasantly surprised to see them duly served. But just as the party was about to rise from the table and go out on the verandah for coffee, in came Mr. Number One Boy with a ponderous, steaming bread-pudding, all covered with coloured ornaments, which he smilingly displayed for the benefit of the astonished party. It had to be served, of course, and I felt that my explanations regarding Ah Sing’s eccentricities didn’t make much of an impression.

Over none of the servants did I exercise the control I thought to be necessary, but this was due to the fact that for three months they had been obeying the master; the master had paid them their wages, and to the master they looked for all orders. It took me some time to discover this, but when I did I began to handle household accounts without assistance.

It was about the end of the typhoon season and the predictions were that there would be no more heavy storms. But it began to rain and blow one day with rather more force than I had ever seen before, and I was told that we were in the midst of a typhoon. “Oh, well,” I thought, “if this is all I don’t see why there is so much talk about it.” It was just a very hard and very persistent storm. When I began to think it was about time for it to have blown itself out I was awakened one night by what seemed to me to be the bombardment of heavy artillery. My bed was shaking under me, the house was swaying, and the noise was terrifying. I jumped up with an instant idea of insurrectos, and a feeling that I must meet the situation on my feet; then I realised, at once, that it was the typhoon. It was as if all the winds that had blown for two days had gathered themselves together and were hurling themselves in one blast upon us. I reached for the electric switch, but there were no lights; I turned the button time and again; nothing happened. I fumbled for matches all over my room and could find none. My nerves were just at the crying out point when my door was thrown open and in rushed Maria, holding aloft a glimmering candle.

She was shaking with fright.

“Nellie,” she exclaimed, “I just can’t stand it any longer! Do let’s find everything there is to light and call Will and sit out in the sala. Heaven only knows what’s going to happen!”

We searched around and found some more candles; then I went to call my husband. He was sleeping as soundly as if nothing at all were happening. I shook him and called him and shook him again. I thought he never would wake up, but finally he did, and just then I heard the crash of a tree blowing down in the garden, while the floor seemed to heave under my feet.

“What’s the matter?” asked my sleepy husband.

“Will, there’s an awful storm. Please come out in the sala and sit with Maria and me.”

“All right,” he said, and slowly got himself into an all-enveloping dressing gown.

We huddled ourselves in chairs in the big hallway and sat listening. Rain always comes with the wind in typhoons and the dash of water against the windows and the sides of the house was deafening. But the noise was suddenly punctuated by a gentle snore. Mr. Taft had settled himself back in his chair and gone quietly to sleep. Maria’s nerves were on edge; without a word she jumped up and shook her tired-out brother-in-law most vigorously, crying above the roar of the storm:

“Will Taft, what do you think we waked you up for? You can’t go back to sleep. We want you to stay awake and comfort us!”

“All right, Maria,” said he, with the utmost good nature; whereupon he sat up, changed his position to one more comfortable, and proceeded to lapse again into peaceful slumber.

The next morning Maria and I drove down through the town to see the effects of the typhoon. Three trees were uprooted in our own garden, and across the street a house was flattened out. Groups of Filipinos stood here and there talking and gesticulating in their usual manner, but nobody seemed unduly excited. We saw many houses unroofed, and once in a while we met a native with a piece of nipa or tin roofing balanced on his head, quietly carrying it back where it belonged.

We drove down through the Escolta and into the crowded Tondo district beyond, and there we suddenly found ourselves hub-deep in a flood. The below-the-sea-level quarters were under several feet of water, and we got a sudden revelation as to why all the nipa houses are built on such high and unsightly stilts. Crowds of Filipinos were paddling through the flood, most of them carrying some part of a house, or other belonging, and nearly all of them playing and splashing like pleased children. Bancas⁠—long canoes from the river⁠—were plying from house to house as if it were an everyday affair and conditions were quite normal.

I had heard a great deal about the severity of typhoons, but as I had passed a whole season in the East and had crossed the China Sea during the typhoon season without encountering one, I began rather to scoff at the general fear of them. But I never did after that; when anybody said typhoon I knew exactly what it meant. The water subsided rapidly and in a day or two Manila showed few signs of the fury which had passed, but for several days the Commission continued to receive reports of the damage done and the lives lost throughout the surrounding country. It was the worst and the last storm of that year.

When we arrived in Manila we found the social atmosphere somewhat peculiar. Members of our own party, who had crossed the Pacific on the Hancock, welcomed us at once with dinners and teas and other kinds of parties; also a number of Army ladies called without delay, and our circle broadened rapidly. But General MacArthur, who was the Military Governor and lived at Malacañan Palace, did not entertain anybody except a select military circle. He sent an aide with cards, of course, and he accepted our invitations to dinner, but that was all. Not that we minded, except that it made it rather awkward and added something to the “feeling” that all was not well between the Army and the new civil government.

The Commission had been for three months busily engaged in investigating conditions, as directed by the President, before they assumed any authority, and then they acted with no haste. We were impatiently awaiting news from America with regard to the Presidential election. It was thought to be futile to take any definite steps toward the establishment of local governments and the inauguration of far-reaching reforms until the status of American control should be settled. Mr. Bryan had promised political independence, and if Mr. Bryan were elected all the Commission’s plans would go for naught.

The provincial and municipal codes were completed; certain important questions between the Church and the people were being considered, and many open sessions were held for discussion, with the purpose of advising the people that they would be listened to by a civil government. In the meantime the insurrectos were keeping things lively in a guerilla warfare with small squads of greatly harassed and very much disgusted American soldiers. There were occasional rumours about uprisings in Manila⁠—when the guard at our gate would be doubled⁠—but Mr. Taft assured us that Manila was as safe as New York or Chicago and we really had few fears.

General MacArthur continued to resent the coming of the Commission and to consider himself personally humiliated by their being appointed to divide his power. He was still in command of about seventy thousand men and had the general executive control of a large civil force, but this, apparently, was not enough. The tone he adopted in his correspondence with the Commission kept them in a constant state of controlled anger. They were very careful in return to observe every courtesy and to manifest an earnest desire for harmony and cooperation. They were tremendously interested in their problems and wanted much to succeed, but their efforts at conciliation did little good. The General objected to almost every suggestion put forward by them and did not hesitate to tell them in plain words that he did not welcome advice from them concerning military or any other matters. It was really a very difficult situation.

The Commission thought General MacArthur took an entirely erroneous view of the attitude of the Philippine people in general, and that in everything he did he moved with an exasperating slowness. They wanted a large native constabulary which they knew could successfully be organised and relied upon to render great assistance in the pacification of the Islands. He did not agree with them and held the matter up for many months. He was not in sympathy with any move they made, and his greatest cross was that he had no power to veto their legislation. He saw military dangers in all manner of things without being able to state just what they were, and he was always calling for more troops, while the Commission was entertaining hopes that it would not be a great length of time before a large part of the troops already there could be recalled. I find my husband writing at this time:

“General MacArthur, knowing that we differ from him as to the condition of things in the Islands, makes it a point to send me an account of each disaster as if it vindicated his view. This is not the spirit of a man who is likely to succeed in giving energy to a campaign which will bring about successful results, but the matters will solve themselves in spite of his slowness of movement and lack of enthusiasm.⁠ ⁠…

“The minute the policy with respect to these Islands is settled by Bryan’s defeat and the election of McKinley, the leniency which has been almost too great towards ladrones and these murdering generals will have to be changed. They must be given an opportunity to come in and if they do not come in in a short time, they ought to be deported from the country and sent to Guam. This will have an effect so healthy that a short time will see accomplished what we desire. There will be a great awakening for some of these men who have come to rely on the supineness of the Americans, and who do not understand that we can be severe when we choose.⁠ ⁠…

“It was General Otis who inaugurated the plan of laughing at the insurrection, of capturing men and letting them go, and the result is that they have laughed at us, but with a little tightening of the reins their laugh will cease.⁠ ⁠…

“They dread deportation more than anything else and I have written to Secretary Root and asked him to have a prison constructed at Guam to which we may send those whom we think worthy of a less punishment than hanging. The insurrection must be suppressed for the benefit of the United States and, still more, for the benefit of the Filipino people. The lenient methods, having been tried for two years, must be changed to those more severe.⁠ ⁠…

“The insurrection, such as it is now, is nothing more than a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the United States sustained by murder and assassination of Filipinos by Filipinos.⁠ ⁠…

“MacArthur is drawing the reins a little tighter, though not as tight as we think he ought to draw them, and he has now imprisoned about fifteen hundred insurgents. There have been a great many arrests made in Manila, which has been the head centre of the insurrection in the way of raising money. I should think there have been fifty or sixty insurgent officers arrested in the city.⁠ ⁠…

“I sent a telegram to the Secretary of War on Sunday night which was signed by Buencamino and other prominent Filipinos, about a dozen of them, in which they spoke out with emphasis about the continuation of the insurrection. They propose to organise what they call a counterrevolution; that is, they mean they will organise a military movement among the Filipinos against Filipinos. They are getting very tired and weary of this murder and assassination policy without which the insurrection could not last a week.⁠ ⁠…

“You could hardly believe the closeness with which the Presidential matters are being watched by the Filipinos, and how they follow the speeches made against the Republican cause. General Smith, away down on the island of Negros, told me he had found speeches by Hoar and Bryan, and other anti-expansionists and anti-imperialists, in the most remote mountains of his district.⁠ ⁠…

“Everyone is waiting and it is not impossible that should Bryan be elected there might be some riotous demonstration among the natives. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Señor Arellano, has made arrangements, should Bryan be elected, to leave the islands three days after the announcement. He is the ablest Filipino in the islands, by far the best lawyer and a man of the highest probity. He says that much as he is interested in the success and prosperity of his fellow citizens, he knows that they are utterly incapable of self-government and should the guiding hand of the United States be withdrawn, chaos, conscription and corruption would follow inevitably.⁠ ⁠…”

I have taken these excerpts at random from my husband’s letters to his brother during the months of September and October, 1900, and they serve to show the situation which existed and will illustrate the fact that we were living in interesting times. But they deal only with the insurrection, while the main body of his correspondence shows that the Commissioners were engaged upon legislative matters of the gravest import which would be rendered entirely superfluous should Mr. Bryan be elected and his announced policies be carried into effect. In that event they proposed immediately to turn matters back to the military government and withdraw, leaving Mr. Bryan to face the problems which they knew he would soon discover had to be dealt with from the standpoint of constructive statesmanship.

In the meantime the peace movement was rapidly gaining adherents among the people in spite of the still active insurrectos, or rather, because of them and their methods; while everybody seemed to welcome the change from a strictly military to a partially civil government.

The popularity of the Commission, as offering a change from the strictness of military rule, was becoming every day more marked. Juan de Juan, a Spaniard, and editor of the lively organ El Progreso, which was always in opposition to anything American, said that on the first of September when the Commission began to exercise its authority, he intended to devote the whole front page of his paper to just three words: “Gracias a Dios,”⁠—Thanks to God! Juan de Juan was a good deal of a Bohemian and really cared little what happened so long as he got a sensation out of it. September first came and went, and I don’t remember whether he made good this extravagant threat or not. I presume he didn’t for, though I had been in Manila less than a week, I surely would have remembered.

After the Commission had been in power for just a month, and while the excited interest in events in the United States was at its height, Juan de Juan broke out in a characteristic Spanish editorial, a translation of which has been preserved. We had entertained Juan de Juan at dinner, and he evidently was impressed. We made it a rule from the beginning that neither politics nor race should influence our hospitality in any way, and we came thus to have a very wide and diverse acquaintance. The editorial in El Progreso gives such a curious picture of attitude and conditions in general, as well as of my husband, my family and my home, that I think I must quote it⁠—at least in part. It is headed simply:

Señor Taft

The most uncompromising jingoes; the rabid partisans of militarism, as well as the men of democratic sentiments who consider the occupation of the Philippines as an odious Caesarism, respect and venerate the President of the Civil Commission, whose surname serves as the caption of these lines. Uprightness and bonhommie always demand recognition.

Before the Hancock, bearing this statesman, had anchored in Manila Bay, the echo of his reputation and the radiations of the brilliant aureole which his success in the judiciary of his country had imposed upon him⁠—and we underline the word imposed because the characteristic trait of Mr. Taft is his modesty⁠—had reached the Philippines. The Filipinos awaited him with the same pleasing curiosity with which a child opens a toy with a concealed surprise, and the foreigners as the incarnation of those American patriarchal, democratic ideas with which Castelar portrayed to his followers the country of Lincoln.

Behind that spacious brow of the thinker, between his liberal tendencies and the incomparable exactions of the enormous burdens which his country undertook in Paris, fierce struggles are waging. The President of the American Civil Commission has broad shoulders, but the weight of a people whom patriotism endows with the strength of a colossus is very great.

We must concede to all the leading authorities whom America has sent to the Philippines the trait of being industrious. We know that General Otis worked more than twelve hours a day; MacArthur, that Daban of the American Army through the rapidity of his advancement, follows the same course as his predecessor, and Mr. Taft leaves his house every morning at eight and, as unostentatiously as a clerk, proceeds to become a part of his chair in the Ayuntamiento. There his first occupation is glancing over the American press, and what is of interest in the Spanish papers.

Then the show begins. Paterno, Macabulos, Montenegro, some envoy from Cebu, for example, who come to sound him, as the slang saying goes, arrive. Mr. Taft has the same respectful smile for all, the same courtesy, and addresses them all in the same terms, which his athletic Secretary, Mr. Fergusson, repeats in Spanish with the gravity of a Sphinx and the fidelity of a phonograph. When the matter warrants it, Mr. Pepperman, the chief stenographer of the Commission, enters the office and proceeds to take notes of the interview.

In this way the Americans are forming a luminous record which, united to what were our archives, which they preserve through the terms of the Treaty of Paris, will guide them well in the administration of the Philippines.

Later Mr. Taft becomes engulfed in the examination of the bills which the other members of the Commission present for him to study; he discusses their text with his colleagues, listens to all their observations, and judging them by a standard most favorable to the interests of the Philippines, the most liberal within the instructions from Washington⁠—it is proper to say that Mr. Taft is the most democratic element of the Commission⁠—he expresses his opinion, generous, calm and noble, which assuredly, in view of his personal prestige, must carry great weight in the framing of the bills, whose execution is entrusted to the Military governor.

To dissipate the gloomy smoke of the conflagration, to still the groans of those who fall in this immense expoliarium into which fatality has converted the Philippine fields, is the mission which the men composing the American Commission desire to bring to a successful issue. To make peace. For this they came, and if fortune does not reserve for them the happy chance of accomplishing so beautiful an ideal, they will retire, and the factor they represent in the problem to be solved, with its distinguishing traits of civil moderation, will be substituted as a system that has failed, by another, wherein the martial power will prevail over political wisdom.

As General MacArthur undoubtedly spends many hours over maps of the Philippines, Mr. Taft also often rests his gaze on a map covering one of the walls of his office, tracing, in mente, a railroad which, crossing the island, shall drown with the cheery whistle of the locomotive the moans of the victims of war. Thus would Mr. Taft like to pacify the Philippines.

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It is now one o’clock p.m. and Mr. Taft is at home, where this personage stands out more boldly before us, since the trials through which the country is passing do not permit us yet to judge him politically.

The President of the Commission, in his private life, has many points of similarity with Count de Caspe, that stainless gentleman the Filipinos still recall with veneration. Excepting the brilliancy of those splendid entertainments with which he endeavoured to blot out all racial differences by mingling in fraternal embrace Filipinos and Spaniards at the Malacañan villa, there ordinarily reigned in the governor’s mansion the placid silence of the home of a well-to-do retired merchant. The Countess, who on Thursdays did the honours of her salon with exquisite tact, was during the other days of the week a housekeeper who did not disdain to go to a grocery store to make purchases, or to look over the laundry list.

The same thing happens in the elegant chalet at Malate where Mr. Taft lives. This is a quiet and peaceful home, a temple erected to the affections, under whose roof Mr. Taft rests some hours after the efforts which his political work demands.

His table reflects his modest character. Four courses, two kinds of fruit, a dessert and sauterne compose the menu of the luncheon where Mr. Taft is always accompanied by some guest, either Filipino, American or Spanish. During the meal politics are banished; if the guest is a Filipino who speaks French Mrs. Taft interrogates him on the customs of the archipelago; if he is Spanish, as to the toilettes worn in Manila by the ladies at the most brilliant receptions held here; as to the favourite musical composer of the Hispano-Filipino society; and this conversation increases in attraction when Miss Herron, sister-in-law of Mr. Taft and the incarnation of the modern woman’s education, takes part therein. Miss Herron speaks French correctly, has travelled much, and journeyed through Spain like an intelligent tourist. The architectural lacework of the Alhambra charmed her, and she went into ecstasies over the orange blossoms growing along the banks of the Guadalquivir. With what Miss Herron was not in harmony, and she berates them like an unsubsidised journalist, were the Spanish railroads. Miss Herron is right.

The children, Robert, about eleven years old; Helen, a girl of nine, and Charles, a baby of three, who is the king of the household:⁠—the McKinley, as it were, of this patriarchal republic⁠—do not come to the table; they eat with the governess.

After the meal, in the fine gallery overlooking the sea, sipping the coffee, Mr. Taft talks of the education of his children, of the difficulties met in the Philippines in the solution of so interesting a problem; and his wife converses of the charitable work she expects to undertake when she shall have assumed a more permanent place in the Archipelago, which Magellan discovered for Spain, and which, through a horrible fatality, is no longer ours. Politics are also eschewed on the gallery.

Needless to say this extraordinary editorial afforded us all boundless amusement; we began to caution Mr. Taft frequently about the careful preservation of his “aureole” and Maria and I decided that we would have to walk warily indeed, if we were destined to be so minutely reported.

In the Far East one meets certain expressions the significance of which may be described as adamantine. Each represents a racial attitude against which it is useless to contend. In Japan it is the equivalent of it cannot be helped; a verbal shrug of the shoulders with which the Japanese tosses off all minor and many grave annoyances. “Masqui,” down the China coast, has the same import, but with the added meaning of “what difference does it make.” In the Philippines the phrase which must be met and which cannot be overcome by any system of reform is “el costumbre del pais”⁠—the custom of the country.

If it is el costumbre del pais it has to be done and there is nothing more to be said about it. The manaña habit⁠—putting everything off until tomorrow⁠—is, perhaps, to Americans, the most annoying of all the costumbres del pais in the Philippines, but it yields to pressure much more readily than do many others, among which is the custom of accumulating parientes; that is, giving shelter on a master’s premises to every kind and degree of relative who has no other place to live. This is, I suppose, a survival of an old patriarchal arrangement whereby everybody with the remotest or vaguest claim upon a master of a household gathered upon that master’s doorstep, so to speak, and camped there for life.

In my first encounter with this peculiarity of my environment I thought there was a large party going on in my cochero’s quarters; and an indiscriminate sort of party it seemed to be. There were old men and old women, young men and young women, many small children and a few babes in arms. We had only Chinese servants in the house, but the stables were in charge of Filipinos and, as I soon discovered, the “party” was made up entirely of our stablemen’s parientes.

I had a pair of ponies and a Victoria; Mr. Taft had his two little brown horses and a Victoria; besides which there was an extra horse to be used in case of accident to one of the others, as well as a pony and calesa for the children. This rather formidable array was necessary because we found it impossible to take a horse out more than twice a day, and usually not more than once, on account of the sun. My ponies were taken out only in the early morning or the late evening, and those of Mr. Taft had all they could do to take him to the office and bring him home twice a day. Distances were long and there were no street cars which ran where anybody wanted to go.

This number of conveyances made a good many stablemen necessary and all of them, with their families, lived in quarters attached to the stables. These families consisted of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins near and far removed, wives, children, grandchildren, and a few intimate and needy friends with their family ramifications. Besides our three cocheros and the stable boys, there was a gardener with his parientes, so it is no wonder that on my first inspection of the lower premises I should have thought that some sort of festivity was in progress. I might have lived in Manila twenty years without being able to straighten out the relationships in this servant colony; it was not possible to learn who had and who had not a right to live on the place; and my protest was met with the simple statement that it was el costumbre del pais, so I, perforce, accepted the situation.

Filipino servants never live in the master’s residence; they never want to; they want the freedom of a house of their own, and these houses are, as a rule, built on the outer edges of the garden, or compound. I believe Americans now are learning to meet the pariente habit by having room for just as many people as they need, and no more. But those who live in the old places, with their ample quarters, still gather the clans and are permitted to enjoy a most expansive and patriarchal sensation.

My horses, when I first saw them, were a source of the greatest pride. A beautifully matched pair of coal-black, stylishly-paced and glossy little stallions, hardly larger than Shetland ponies, they looked as if they had been washed in some sort of shrinking soap and had come out in perfect condition except that they were several sizes smaller than they ought to have been. These Philippine ponies are doubtless descendants of the Arabian horses brought over by the Spaniards and have been reduced to their present size by the change of climate and the difference in food and environment, but they still have the fine lines and the general characteristics of their progenitors.

Mr. Taft secured mine from Batangas, where all the best ponies come from, through the kindness of Mr. Benito Legarda, the staunchest of Americanistas. Batangas was a most unquiet province, the last, in fact, to become pacified, and Mr. Legarda had to pay an insurrecto for bringing the horses through the insurgent lines and delivering them at Calamba, near Manila. Although he did not know their exact origin when he bought them, Mr. Taft said that if the facts became known he would be accused, in certain quarters, of giving indirect aid to the revolutionists; but he wanted the ponies so he did not return them.

When they were hitched to the shining little Victoria which had been built for them, they were as pretty as a picture and, as I did not propose to have such a turnout ruined by a couple of Filipinos on the box in untidy camisas hanging outside of as untidy white trousers, I had made for my cochero and boy, or coachman and footman, a livery of white and green in which they took such inordinate pride that they seemed to grow in stature and dignity.

Maria and I felt a sense of the utmost satisfaction the first time we stepped into this carriage for a drive down to the Luneta where we were sure to see everybody we knew and hundreds of people besides; but our vanity was destined to be brought to a sudden termination.

As we were driving along with much satisfaction, a bit of paper floated down alongside the blinkers of the little ebony steed on the right and he made one wild leap into the air. His companion gave him an angry nip, and then the fight was on. Maria and I jumped out, which was not difficult in a low-built Victoria, and no sooner had we done so than we saw the complete wreck of all our grandeur. With all the leaping and plunging and biting and kicking, in the vicinity of a handy lamppost, the smash-up was fairly complete. Neither of the ponies was hurt, except by the lash of the whip, and I must say the little wretches looked rather funny; like very pretty and very bad children, sorry for what they had done. But their characters were established and they proceeded after that to live up to them. We never could have any confidence in them and my coachman was the only person who could do anything with them. He was a most unsatisfactory man in many ways and used often to call for us at dinner parties in a state of gay inebriety, but we didn’t dare discharge him because everybody else in the stables stood in awe of the blacks while he seemed greatly to enjoy his constant and spectacular struggles with them.

The Filipinos are a most temperate people; there is no such thing as drunkenness among them; but coachmen seem to be an exception in that they allow themselves a sufficient stimulation of the fiery vino to make them drive with courage and dash, sometimes minus all care and discretion. The drivers of public vehicles seem to love their little horses in a way; they are inordinately proud of a fast paced or stylish-looking pony; yet they are, as a rule, quite harsh to them. They overload them and overdrive them, and under all conditions they lash them continuously.

No Filipino cochero likes to have another cochero pass him, and the result is constant, indiscriminate racing, on any kind of street, under any circumstances⁠—and never mind the horse.

My children were driving with their governess to the Luneta one evening, when two caromatas came tearing down behind them, each driver hurling imprecations at the other and paying no attention to what was ahead of him. The result was a violent collision. The two caromatas went plunging on, the cocheros not stopping to see what damage they might have done⁠—which was very characteristic⁠—and the children narrowly escaped a serious accident. Charlie was hurled out and fell under the children’s calesa and Robert and Helen both declare they felt a sickening jolt as a wheel passed over him. The baby, too, vowed that the calesa “went wight over me, wight dere,” indicating a vital spot; but upon the closest examination we could discover nothing more serious than a few bruises. However, it made us very much afraid to trust the children out alone.

The gardener had two little boys, José and Capito, who were a few years older than Charlie, but about his size, and he took a tremendous fancy to them. They were clad, simply, in thin gauze⁠—or jusi⁠—shirts which came down a little below their waists, and I think Charlie envied them this informal attire. He used to order them around in a strange mixture of Spanish, Tagalog and English which made me wonder at my wholly American child; but it was an effective combination since he seemed to have them completely under his thumb and, as he revelled in his sense of power, he never tired of playing with them.

Maria and I soon adopted the universal habit of driving down to the Escolta in the early morning to do such shopping as was necessary. We found a variety of interesting shops, but with very little in them to meet the ordinary demands of an American woman. There were delightful Indian bazaars and Chinese tiendas where all manner of gaudy fabrics and strange oriental articles were on sale, while the Spanish shops upon which everybody had to depend in those days, and which had such grandly European names as Paris-Manila and La Puerta del Sol, catered largely to the Filipino taste for bright colours.

The Escolta at that time was full of saloons, established by the inevitable followers of a large army, and the street being very narrow and the old, rickety, wooden buildings being very wide open, the “beery” odour which pervaded the atmosphere at all hours was really dreadful. Mr. Taft decided that as long as this was the only street in town where women could go shopping, the saloons would have to be removed. There was opposition on the Commission to the bill which provided for their banishment, and it was fought from the outside with great vigour and bitterness, but a majority were in favour of it, so it passed, and the saloons had to move. There has not been a saloon on the Escolta from that day to this and, indeed, they have ever since been under such satisfactory regulation that there is little evidence left of their existence in the city.

I am afraid it is going to be very difficult to convey an adequate picture of Manila society during the first years of American occupation. There had been, in the old days, a really fine Spanish and rich mestizo society, but all, or nearly all, of the Spaniards had left the Islands, and the mestizos had not yet decided just which way to “lean,” or just how to meet the American control of the situation. I may say here that most of the educated, high-class Filipinos are mestizo; that is, of mixed blood. They may be Spanish mestizo or Chinese mestizo, but they have in them a strong strain of foreign blood. Besides the Spanish- and Chinese-Filipinos, there are a number of British mestizos who are very interesting people. Mr. Legarda, Chief Justice Arellano, Dr. Pardo de Tavera and Mr. Quezon, the Filipino delegate to the United States Congress, are Spanish mestizos, while Mr. Arañeta, the Secretary of Finance and Justice, as well as the Speaker of the Philippine Assembly and many able lawyers and successful business men are of Chinese descent. The mestizos control practically all the wealth of the Philippines, and their education, intelligence and social standing are unquestioned. It is the only country in the world that I know about⁠—certainly the only country in the Orient⁠—where the man or woman of mixed blood seems to be regarded as superior to the pure blooded native.

Dating back also to the Spanish days was quite a numerous foreign society consisting of a few consuls, some professional men, the managers of banks and large British and European mercantile firms, and their families. The leaders of the British colony were Mr. and Mrs. Jones⁠—Mr. Jones being the manager of the Manila branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Mrs. Jones, a very beautiful and charming woman, gave some very elaborate parties during that first winter. Bank House, the residence maintained by the bank for its manager in Manila, is a beautiful place in Uli-Uli, a district on the picturesque banks of the upper Pásig, and it is finely adapted for balls and large receptions. Then there were several German families who also entertained quite lavishly, and I remember, especially, one Austrian exile; indeed, I shall never be able to forget him because my husband took such joy in pronouncing his name. He was Baron von Bosch.

This was the “set” which entertained the Commission most cordially during our first season in Manila, while the Army officers, following the lead of their Commanding General, held themselves somewhat aloof. I kept up a constant round of parties of different kinds in my house, and gave a dinner at least once a week at which were gathered companies of a most interestingly cosmopolitan character. And we did not fail to observe all the desirable forms. Both Filipinos and Europeans expect a certain amount of ceremony from the representatives of government and are not at all impressed by “democratic simplicity”; so believing in the adage about Rome and the Romans, we did what we could. Beside the spic and span guard at the outer gate of the illuminated garden, we always, on dinner party nights, stationed coachmen, or other stable boys disguised as liveried footmen, on either side of the entrance, to receive guests and conduct them to the dressing-rooms, and up the stairs to the reception room.

Our house was nicely adapted for a dinner of twelve and I usually tried to confine myself to that number. We always had an orchestra, orchestras being very plentiful in Manila where nearly every native plays some sort of instrument, and the music added greatly to the festive air of things, which was enhanced, too, by a certain oriental atmosphere, with many Japanese lanterns and a profusion of potted plants and great, hanging, natural ferneries and orchids which were brought in from the forests by the Filipinos and sold on the streets.

My husband is supposed to be the author of the phrase: “our little brown brothers”⁠—and perhaps he is. It did not meet the approval of the army, and the soldiers used to have a song which they sang with great gusto and frequency and which ended with the conciliating sentiment: “He may be a brother of William H. Taft, but he ain’t no friend of mine!”

We insisted upon complete racial equality for the Filipinos, and from the beginning there were a great many of them among our callers and guests. Their manners are models of real courtesy, and, while their customs are not always like ours, wherever they are able they manifest a great willingness to be conforme⁠—to adapt themselves⁠—and their hospitality is unbounded.

I shall never forget my first call from a Filipino family. They arrived shortly after six in the evening: el señor, la señora and four señoritas. We went through a solemn and ceremonious handshaking all around. I received them first, then passed them on to my husband who, in turn, passed them on with a genial introduction to my sister Maria. We had been sitting on the verandah, and when a semicircle of chairs had been arranged, the six of them sat down; el señor noisily cleared his throat a couple of times while the ladies calmly folded their little hands in their laps and assumed an air of great repose. It was as if they had no intention of taking any part whatever in the conversation.

El señor explained in Spanish that they were our near neighbours and that they had called merely to pay their respects. Mr. Taft had been studying Spanish diligently ever since he left the United States, but he is not conspicuously gifted as a linguist, and he had not yet waked up⁠—as he so often expressed a wish that he might⁠—to find himself a true Castilian. However, his ready laugh and the cordiality of his manners have always had a peculiar charm for the Filipinos, and he was able on this occasion, as he was on many future ones, to carry off the situation very well. We all nodded and smiled and said, “Si Señor” and “Si Señora,” to long and no telling what kind of speeches from our guests; then Maria and I complimented the ladies on their beautifully embroidered camisas, which started things off properly. They praised everything in sight, and what we didn’t get through the little Spanish we knew, we got from gesture and facial expression. They got up and wandered all around, feeling of my Japanese tapestries and embroideries, breathing long “ahs!” of admiration over my gold screens and pictures and curios, and acting generally like callers who were being very well entertained. Then the children came in and they broke out afresh in voluble praise of them. I assumed the proper deprecatory mien in response to their laudation of my children, and altogether I felt that we were acquitting ourselves rather well in this first interracial social experience.

But at the end of half an hour the strain was getting a little severe and I was wondering what to do next, when our six callers arose and said they must be going. I breathed an inward sigh of relief and was making ready to escort them to the top of the stairs, when my husband cordially exclaimed:

“Why, no! Porque? Tenemos bastante tiempo. Why hurry?” And⁠—they⁠—all⁠—sat⁠—down!

I regretted then even the little Spanish Mr. Taft had learned, though, of course, he didn’t expect them to heed his polite protest. He knew nothing at all about Filipino manners; he didn’t know they expected to receive some sign from him when it was time to go and that they would consider it discourteous to go while he was urging them to stay. He kept up, without much assistance, a brave if laboured conversation, and the minutes slowly passed. Our dinner hour approached and I darted warning glances at him, for I had a horrible fear that he just might ask them to remain and dine. But at the end of another hour a strained expression began to spread itself over even his face, and there was not a word of protest from him when, at a quarter past eight, our little brown neighbours once more indicated an intention of going home. We entertained Filipino callers nearly every day after that, but never again did we urge them to reconsider their sometimes tardy decision to depart.

With regard to Filipino manners and customs; I am reminded that we were nonplussed, though greatly amused by the costumbre del pais which decreed that some return be made by a Filipino for any and all favours bestowed upon him. We grew accustomed to this before we left the Islands, and came to expect a few offerings of sorts almost any day in the week, but in the beginning it was usually most embarrassing.

One time, soon after our arrival, a very loyal Americanista was shot down in the street, during the peaceful discharge of his duty, by an insurrecto. His widow, with her children, came into Manila in a state of utter destitution, to secure some recompense from the government for her husband’s services, and while her case was pending Mr. Taft, in great pity for her, sent her money enough to live on. The next day the whole family, from the wide-eyed boy to the babe carried astride the mother’s hip, came to call on their benefactor, bringing with them as a gift a basket containing a few eggs, some strange Philippine fruits and a lot of seashells. Mr. Taft was deeply touched, and with the brusqueness of a man who is touched, he told her he had given her the money to buy food for herself and her children and not for him, and he refused her offering. I know, by the light of a fuller knowledge of the character of the lowly Filipino, that she went away feeling very much cast down.

But in connection with such gifts there were always more laughs than sighs. We invited to luncheon one day a dashing Filipino named Tomaso del Rosario. Señor Rosario, a man of wealth and prominence who had a fine Spanish education and was well dressed in the high-collared, patent-leathered and immaculate-linened Spanish style, was quite self-confident and enjoyed himself very much. He seemed attracted to Maria and she, being linguistic, was able to talk to him in a mixture of many languages. The next day she received from Señor Rosario, not a floral offering, but a basket filled with nuts, a canned plum-pudding, some canned chocolates and preserved fruits. This attention did not seem so remarkable, however, when we learned, to our amusement, that he had sent exactly the same present to Alice Worcester, then five years old.

Our life, on the whole, was intensely interesting in its unusual atmosphere and curious complications, but throughout everything we were made to feel the deep significance of our presence in the Islands; and the work of the Commission was first, last and always to us the subject of the greatest moment. Even in our daily round of social affairs we dealt with tremendous problems whose correct solution meant the restoration of peace and prosperity to what then should have been, and what we knew could be made, a great country. That for which the American flag had always stood began to assume, for many of us, a broader and a finer meaning; and being so much a part of our flag’s mission in a strange field a certain zest was added to our patriotism which we had never felt before. I believe, and I think all those who know the truth believe, that Americanism, in its highest conception, has never been more finely demonstrated than in the work done by the United States in the Philippine Islands; work, the broad foundation for which the Commission was engaged in constructing during the period of which I write.

So many were the problems to be met and dealt with that in the beginning the Commissioners were each given a set of subjects for investigation and study, their findings being submitted for debate and consideration in the general meetings.

Taxation, civil service, provincial and municipal organisations, currency and finance, police, harbour improvements, roads and railways, customs, postal service, education, health, public lands, an honest judiciary and the revision of the code of laws; these were some of the vital problems, but underlying them all was the immediate necessity for the establishment of tranquillity and confidence throughout the archipelago.

In order to make clear, in any degree, the Philippine situation as we found it, it is essential that, briefly, the position of the Catholic Church and its representatives, the Friars, be explained. For the first time in its history the American government found itself compelled to adjust a seemingly insurmountable difficulty between a church and its people.

With us the Church is so completely separate from the State that it is difficult to imagine cases in which the policy of a church in the selection of its ministers, and the assignment of them to duty could be regarded as of political moment, or as a proper subject of comment in the report of a public officer, but in the first reports of the Philippine Commission to Washington this subject had to be introduced with emphasis.

The Spanish government of the Philippine Islands was a government by the Church through its monastic orders, nothing less. In the words of the Provincial of the Augustinians, the Friars were the “pedestal or foundation of the sovereignty of Spain” which being removed “the whole structure would topple over.” The Philippine people, with the exception of the Mohammedan Moros and the non-Christian tribes, belonged, during the Spanish dominion, to the Roman Catholic Church, and the Church registry of 1898 showed a total membership of 6,559,998. The parishes and missions, with few exceptions, were administered by Spanish Friars of the Dominican, Augustinian and Franciscan orders, and it was to the nature of this administration that Spain owed the insurrections of 1896 and 1898, the latter of which terminated only upon our assuming control of the islands.

In 1896 there were in the Philippines 1,124 monks of the Augustinian, Dominican and Franciscan orders, which body included a company of Recolletos, who are merely an offshoot of the order of St. Augustine and differ from the Augustinians only in that they are unshod. In addition to these there were a few Jesuits, Capuchins, Benedictines and Paulists, but they engaged in mission and educational work only and did not share with the other orders the resentment and hatred of the people. Filipinos were not admitted to any of the orders, but they were made friar curates and served as parish priests in some of the smaller places.

When a Spanish Friar curate was once settled in a parish he remained there for life, or until he was too old for service, and because of this fact he was able to establish and maintain an absolutism which is difficult to explain in a few words. He was simply everything in his parish. As a rule he was the only man of education who knew both Spanish and the native dialect of his district, and in many parishes he was the only Spanish representative of the government. In the beginning, through his position as spiritual guide, he acted as intermediary in secular matters between his people and the rest of the world, and eventually, by law, he came to discharge many civil functions and to supervise, correct or veto everything which was done, or was sought to be done in his pueblo.

He was Inspector of Primary Schools, President of the Board of Health and the Board of Charities, President of the Board of Urban Taxation, Inspector of Taxation, President of the Board of Public Works, Member of the Provincial Council, Member of the Board for Partitioning Crown Lands, Censor of Municipal Budgets, and Censor of plays, comedies or dramas in the dialect of his parish, deciding whether or not these were against the public peace or morals. In a word, he was the government of his parish; and in addition to all things else, it was he who, once a year, went to the parish register, wrote on slips of paper the names of all boys who had reached the age of twenty, and putting these into a receptacle, drew them out one by one and called every fifth man for military service. So hateful was this forced duty to the Filipino youths that many of them would run away into the mountains and hide, become outlaws in order to escape it. But the civil guard would go after them and when they were captured they would be put in jail and watched until they could be sent to their capital.

The monastic orders had behind them a powerful church organisation the heads of which took an active and official part in the administration of government. The Archbishop and the Bishops formed part of what was known in Manila as the Board of Authorities; and they, with the Provincials of the orders, belonged to the Council of Administration, a body analogous to the Council of State in Spain or France, charged with advising the Governor-General on matters of urgent moment, or in times of crises. The Friars, Priests and Bishops constituted a solid, permanent and well-organised political force which dominated all insular policies, and the stay in the islands of the civil or military officer who attempted to pursue a course at variance with that deemed wise by the orders, was invariably shortened by monastic influence. Each order had in Madrid a representative through whom the Court of Spain easily could be reached without the intervention of any authority.

Upon the morals of the Friars I can only touch. That some of them brought up families of sons and daughters is beyond question. Such were guilty of violating their vows of celibacy rather than of debauchery. On this point the moral standard of the Filipino people was not rigid, and women were rather proud than otherwise of the parentage of their Friar-fathered children who were often brighter, better looking and more successful than the average Filipino. The truth is that this charge was urged with more eagerness and emphasis after the Filipinos began to appeal to the American government than during Spanish times, and when the standard of morality in the Filipino priesthood of the period was considered, it seemed as if the accusers thought the charge would have more weight with those they sought to influence than it did with themselves.

The three great orders of St. Francis, St. Augustine and St. Dominic owned, in different parts of the Islands, more than 400,000 acres of the best agricultural land, and this they rented out in small parcels to the people. Their income from these immense holdings was not what a prudent and energetic landlord would have realised, but they paid no taxes, while the Filipino was taxed in every possible way.

In the province of Cavite alone the Friar estates amounted to 131,747 acres, and it was in the province of Cavite, which is just across the bay from Manila, that the two insurrections against Spain, or rather against Friar domination, began.

When we arrived in Manila all but 472 of the 1,124 Friars had either been killed or had fled the country. In each of the uprisings many of them lost their lives, and many more were taken prisoners. Indeed, the last of them were not released until the rapid advance of the American troops in our own encounter with the insurrectos made it necessary for the insurgent army to abandon all unnecessary impedimenta. All the Friars remaining in the Islands had taken refuge in Manila.

Strange to say, this resentment against the Friars interfered in no way with the Filipino’s love for the Church. With a strong and real emotion he loves the religion which has been given him; and the elaborate and beautiful forms of the Roman Catholic Church are calculated, especially, to make a powerful appeal to his mind. It is really an astonishing commentary on the character of these people that they should be able to rise against the men who administered the sacraments which they so deeply loved and revered. Or, is it more of a commentary on the conditions which caused the uprisings?

Without exception the Spanish Friars had been driven from their parishes, and the most burning of all the burning political questions which the Commission met and had to settle, was whether or not they should be permitted to return. It was impossible to make the people understand that the government of the United States and the government of Spain were two different matters, and that if the Friars were returned to their parishes they would exercise no secular functions of any kind. The people had the proverbial dread of the “burnt child” and no amount or kind of reasoning could move them from the position they had taken, nor could any of them, from the highest to the lowest, talk calmly and rationally about the subject. The one point upon which the Filipinos were united was that the Friars should never be reinstated.

Universal agitation, uneasiness, fear, hatred, a memory of wrongs too recently resented and resented at too great a cost; these were the factors which made necessary the stand which the Commission finally adopted. The question with the Friars became one, largely, of getting value for their property, their title to which was never seriously disputed, and it was decided that on condition of their leaving the Islands, the insular government would undertake the purchase of their vast estates. The intention was then to make some arrangement whereby the lands might be sold back to the people in homestead tracts, and on terms which the poorest man might be able, in time, to meet.

It was to negotiate this transaction, involving the expenditure of $7,000,000 that my husband was sent to Rome the following year as an emissary of the United States government to the Vatican. This was in the time of Pope Leo, and it made a most interesting experience which I shall detail in another chapter.

The first thing, really, that the Commission undertook when they arrived in Manila, was the settlement of a definite dispute between the Church and the People as to which had the right to administer the affairs of the Medical College of San José. Their manner of procedure in this case instituted in the Islands a new and never-before-thought-of system of evenly balanced justice, and made a tremendous sensation.

The case was called: “T. H. Pardo de Tavera, and others, for themselves and other inhabitants of the Philippine Islands⁠—against⁠—The Rector of the University of Santo Tomas, a Dominican monk, and the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church, represented by the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of Manila, and the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of New Orleans, Apostolic Delegate.” Its importance, under the conditions then existing, can hardly be exaggerated.

San José was one of the oldest institutions in the Islands; it was founded, as a matter of fact, in 1601, by virtue of a legacy left by a Spanish Provincial Governor named Figueroa who provided that it should always be managed by the head of the Jesuits in the Islands. It was originally a college for the education of Spanish boys, but through various vicissitudes, including the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1766, it had changed from one thing to another until, finally, it had become a college of physicians and pharmacists and was made a department of the University of Santo Tomas, the Rector of which was a Dominican Friar. One of the Philips had granted to the college a Royal charter, and within the last hundred years the Crown had asserted its right of control. So when the American government took over all the public property in the Philippines, General Otis closed San José, but he did not issue an order as to its management. The Church was petitioning for a restitution of what it regarded as its rights in the property, and the Commission was called upon to settle the controversy.

They conducted their examinations in open meetings so that all might see the full and free workings of a wholly equitable system, and the Filipinos were enabled to behold, for the first time, the, to them, astonishing spectacle of high ecclesiastics presenting in open court the arguments upon which they based their claims.

The first hearing Mr. Taft describes as “an historic scene.”

“There were the two Archbishops in their archiepiscopal cassocks,” he writes, “with purple girdles and diamond crosses, accompanied by a Secretary of the Dominican order robed in white; while opposed was a Filipino lawyer, Don Felipe Calderón, who derived his education in the University of Santo Tomas. Accompanying him were a lot of young Filipino students and others of the Medical Association interested in wresting San José from the University. The Archbishop of Manila made a speech in which he was unable to restrain the feeling of evident pain that he had in finding the rights of the Church challenged in this Catholic country. He made a very dignified appearance.”

And at the second hearing:

“Both Archbishops were again present, and the same scene was reenacted except that we had rather more of a formal hearing. We had them seated on opposite sides of a table, just as we do in court at home, and had seats for the spectators.

“Señor Don Felipe Calderón, who represents the Philippine people, was given an opportunity to make the first speech. He had printed his argument and read it, having given us translated copies with which we followed him. His argument was a very strong one, lawyer-like and well-conceived, but he weakened it by some vicious remarks about the Dominican order. The Archbishop of Manila, once or twice, felt so much outraged at what he said that he attempted to rise, but Archbishop Chapelle prevented him from doing so. At the close of the argument Monsignor Chapelle asked for ten days in which to prepare an answer and we granted him two weeks. The scene was one I shall always carry with me as marking an interesting period in my Philippine experience.”

The Commission did not settle the question. After careful consideration and many hearings, they left the property in the hands of the Dominicans, but appointed a Board of Trustees to prepare and present an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Islands, appropriating at the same time, five thousand dollars to pay the expenses of the litigation.

Archbishop Chapelle did not like this decision and telegraphed to Secretary Root asking him to withhold his approval. Then he asked the Commission to modify the law and give him an opportunity, in case the decision in the Supreme Court should go against the Church, to appeal to the Congress of the United States. This the Commission refused to do on good and sufficient grounds, whereupon the Archbishop cabled to the President, declaring that the decision as it stood would retard pacification. Although he had always been strongly opposed to the continuation of military government, we were much amused to learn that in his cable to the President he took occasion to remark, significantly, that “General MacArthur is doing splendidly.”

But if Archbishop Chapelle was displeased with the action of the Commission, the Filipino press was delighted, and the editorial encomiums heaped upon them can only be described as brilliant. The Diario de Manila, the next morning, was absolutely unable to express itself, and it concluded a more or less incoherently eulogistic editorial with the words: “The decision satisfies everybody; it raises a question which threatened to drag itself over the hot sands we tread, cleanses it of all impurities, and makes it the beginning and the end of a most transcendental principle of sovereignty and law.” The Filipino or Spanish editor is nothing if he is not hyperbolic.

When we arrived in Manila it was a source of great worry to us that we could not send our children, eight and ten years old, to school. The Jesuits had a school for boys in the Walled City, and Mr. Taft considered for awhile the possibility of sending Robert there, where he might, at least, learn Spanish; but so strong was the feeling against the Friars that this would have been taken by the people as a certain indication that the President of the Commission was leaning toward the Church in his deliberations on the vital subject. As I have said, they could not look upon this question, in any of its bearings, in a reasonable light.

We eventually settled Helen in a convent where she made an effort to learn Spanish, and Robert we turned over to Mrs. LeRoy, the wife of Mr. Worcester’s Secretary, who was a graduate from the University of Michigan and a most excellent teacher.

Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy went to the Philippines as bride and groom. They were classmates, graduated together, and this was their first big venture into the world. They were a valued part of our little pioneer circle, and it was with the greatest dismay that we learned, after about two years in the Islands, that Mr. LeRoy had developed tuberculosis. He had either brought the germs with him from the United States or had contracted the disease there, where, indeed, it is most prevalent. He continued to act as Secretary for Mr. Worcester beyond the time when he should have gone to another climate to devote himself to a cure, but finally, when he realised that the sentence was upon him, he decided to leave the Islands, and my husband was able to secure for him, because of his splendid efficiency, a position in the Consular service under Mr. Hay, at Durango, Mexico. This post was chosen because it is in a dry, mountainous region where the ravages of tuberculosis are supposed to be checked.

Mr. LeRoy was an exceedingly well-informed and studious man. He was a natural linguist, spoke Spanish with ease, and soon was able to acquire enough Tagalog to enable him to go among the people and get their point of view at firsthand. He immediately became interested in writing a history of the Islands and wanted much to go to Spain to examine Spanish-Philippine documents at Seville and other places, but he was never able to do so.

In the days when death faced him in New Mexico, whither he had gone after leaving Durango, he wrote, as Grant wrote, on a book which he hoped might furnish some means to his wife after his death. He died before he was able to complete what Mr. Taft says is a very accurate, comprehensive and interesting history of the Archipelago from the beginning down to, and including, Dewey’s victory, the taking of Manila and the work of the first Commission. He had planned to give a full account of the work of the second Commission, with which he was so intimately connected, but his pen dropped before his purpose was fulfilled. His history has been only recently published.

Mrs. LeRoy later went to Washington, and Mr. Taft appointed her to one of the few clerical positions not covered by the Civil Service law. This is in the Land Office where she signs the President’s name to land patents. She is the only person in the government who has the right and power, given by special act of Congress, to sign the President’s name to a document.

Throughout the autumn of 1900 the insurrection dragged itself along; behind any bush the American soldiers were likely to find a lurking “patriot”; and the uncensored reports of the “brave stand” of the Filipinos were being sent out daily by Democratic reporters, to help along the anti-expansionist cause, represented by Mr. Bryan, in the United States.

The insurrectos were being assured by their incitants to violence that the eyes of the world were upon them. They were being told that they were winning undying renown throughout the civilised universe; and they believed it. They read with avidity all the anti-imperialistic newspapers which came out to the Islands and accepted as a true estimate of themselves the laudations therein contained. Besides, the promoters of the insurrection pretended to translate from other languages still more extravagant praises, and they certainly were enjoying a most exalted opinion of themselves.

We understood that Aguinaldo was trying to concentrate for one spectacular move shortly before election, in order to add to the chances of a Democratic victory; and there was some cause for alarm. The Filipinos are born politicians and many of them knew much more about the campaign between Bryan and McKinley than the Americans in the Islands knew.

Apropos of this: Archbishop Chapelle told Mr. Taft that Aguinaldo had, through Archbishop Nozaleda, requested an interview with him. Monsignor Chapelle went to General MacArthur and asked that Aguinaldo be allowed to enter Manila. The General readily gave his consent, and even offered the revolutionary Dictator the hospitality of his own roof. Aguinaldo, in due military form, acknowledged this courtesy and fixed the time for his arrival in Manila. He clearly indicated that he was discouraged and had decided to solicit permission, through Archbishop Chapelle, to leave the Islands. But just then the news of Bryan’s plan for calling an extra session of Congress to settle Philippine independence came out, so the insurgent general sent word that he had decided not to come. No American knew just where he was, but he probably got the papers and telegrams just as soon as any of us.

I remember the sixth of November as a very nervous day. We had received all manner of reports from home; we were so far away that mail and newspapers were a month old when they reached us; and the cable reports had been contradictory in the extreme. We really were on our tiptoes with excitement. And the worst of it was that because of the thirteen hours’ difference in time between Washington and Manila, we lived through the day knowing that the United States was asleep, and went to bed just about the time voters began to go to the polls. We kept getting all manner of doubtful telegrams throughout the next morning⁠—when it was night in the United States and the votes were being counted⁠—but just at one o’clock, as we went to lunch, Mr. Taft received a despatch from General Corbin in accordance with his previous agreement. It read: “Taft Manila McKinley Corbin.” It had been sent from the War Department in Washington at eleven o’clock the night of the election and had taken just forty-five minutes in transmission. This was record time for a cablegram then between Washington and Manila, despatches having to be sent by numerous relays.

There was a trying period of unrest and uncertainty in our early experience in the Philippines, during which we lived in a state of suspense which can hardly be described; a state of suspense which included among its various elements the excitement of an intermittent guerilla warfare and frequent threats of native uprisings in Manila. Established order and a fixed governmental policy, so necessary to the tranquillity of the normal citizen, were nonexistent, and one experienced a sense of complete detachment which made plans for even the immediate future seem entirely futile. To unpack all one’s things; to establish a satisfactory home and give one’s attention to its ornamentation; to supply one’s self with the necessities of a long residence in the tropics; in other words, to settle down to the pursuit of a usual mode of existence; all these things had to be done, but, needless to say, they were not done with the enthusiasm incident to a feeling of permanence, nor did such enthusiasm begin to manifest itself in the local atmosphere until after the reelection of Mr. McKinley in 1900 when it became certain that the American flag was in the islands to stay as long as its presence there should be deemed requisite to the peaceful development of the country and the fitting of the people for self government.

There were those who saw long years ahead⁠—not all Americans, by any means⁠—and soon the American spirit began to make itself felt in business, in schemes of civic progress, in social life, in everything. We were there for a purpose which was at last defined, so we cheerfully confronted chaos and went to work.

We were sorry to note that the election of Mr. McKinley and the consequent establishment of the American status in the Philippines did not change the military attitude toward the manner of solving the governmental problems. The Commission was definitely pledged to the rapid adjustment of affairs on a civil and generally representative basis, but the military authorities still maintained that military rule would continue to be a necessity for an indefinite period.

However, the Civil Commission went on its way mapping out a programme of peaceful pacification and carrying it into effect as promptly as possible, while its activities engaged universal attention and formed the chief topic of conversation wherever two or more people were met together. Society became frivolous enough, but nobody ever got very far away from the questions of absorbing interest with which many of us were so closely associated.

Our first Christmas surely would have saddened us in our peculiar exile had we been able to realise its approach, but this was not possible. The “Christmas spirit” does not thrive in a temperature of eighty-odd degrees, and I think I would have taken little interest in preparations for the holidays had not my children been there to remind me that Christmas is Christmas no matter what the thermometer may say about it. It was still the most important day in the year for them and it was almost pathetic to see them trying to defeat the climate through sheer force of their imaginations. It was a “green Christmas” with a vengeance, and very hot.

Our friends at home had not forgotten that we were more than a month’s journey away and letters began to arrive as early as November in each of which some mention was made of a box which would be sent from Cincinnati in time to reach us before Christmas and, naturally, we began at once to imagine its contents. For weeks our children’s favourite amusement was exchanging guesses as to what sort of gifts their affectionate relatives had sent them. Nor were their Aunt Maria and I any less excited. There were transports every two weeks in those days and we were not at all disappointed not to receive our box on the early December ship. There would be another one in on Christmas day and it would be much nicer, we thought, to get it then, and never a doubt did we have that it would come. Mr. Taft had a messenger ready to get it and bring it to the house as soon as it could be landed.

From our balcony we watched the transport steam up the bay; we felt the interest that only a Christmas box from home, ten thousand miles away, could excite; we forgot that it was eighty in the shade; it was really Christmas. We waited as patiently as we could for our messenger, but when he arrived he had only sympathy to offer us. The box had not come. It was a most depressing disappointment, and the children were inconsolable. However, everybody cheered up about dinner time. I had done what I could with red ribbons and greenery, with cotton wool and diamond dust to create the proper atmosphere; then we had invited a number of homeless young secretaries and others to take Christmas cheer with us, and though the cold storage turkey was tough and the cranberry sauce and plum-pudding were from Commissary cans, we managed a near approach to a Yuletide air, and little Charlie went to bed with his Escolta toys quite as happy as he would have been had he been at home in his own country. I assured the three children that the box from home would come in on the next transport and promised that we would then have Christmas all over again. But I reckoned without knowledge of the shipping methods of the transport service. Transports came and transports went; our hopes were dashed to earth any number of times and it was endless weeks before our carefully prepared and holly-decked presents finally arrived.

On New Year’s morning General MacArthur gave a reception at Malacañan Palace. It was such an affair as is spoken of in social circles everywhere as “the event of the season.” It was a very special event to all the members of the Commission and their families, because not one of us had ever been invited to the Palace before.

There was much discussion of the serious subject as to what the civil government officials should wear at the New Year’s reception and, if gossip can be relied upon, it came very near causing several family riots. The men naturally inclined toward the comfort of their white linens, but they were overcome by argument and it was eventually decreed that they should present themselves in frock coats and silk hats. This may sound reasonable, but it wasn’t. It was intensely funny, however, and that helped some. A silk hat which has reposed in a box throughout a rainy season in the Philippines is a curious object. It is not the glossy, well turned and dignified article which a silk hat should be. Its rim is warped, its nap is dulled and roughed beyond repair; it is very sticky, and it has an odour all its own. In Judge Ide’s hat some mice had made a nest and had eaten a small hole through its onetime shiny crown, but it was the only one he had and, as silk hats are not carried in Philippine shops, he had, perforce, to wear it.

My husband communed with himself during the process of getting into his heavy frock coat with all its stiff and its woollen accessories⁠—for the first time in seven months and in the bright white heat of a tropic morning⁠—but we were finally ready and on the way, in our diminutive Victoria behind the prancing black stallion ponies of uncertain disposition.

When we arrived at Malacañan, quite early as we thought, we found ourselves in a long block of carriages which moved up slowly and, one by one, discharged their occupants under the porte-cochère of the Palace. Considerations of rank and precedence had escaped our minds for the moment and this was evidently a very important matter. However, we found a capable staff of military aides who knew just where everybody belonged, and they adopted the method of marshalling the crowds into a room on the first floor and letting them out in the proper order of precedence. In consequence we found a more or less annoyed throng awaiting our arrival. We had plenty of rank, my husband being the ranking civil officer in the Islands, but as everybody in Manila had been invited, the process of forming the line was a long and laborious one and many were the caustic comments of the delayed and rankless multitude. It reminded one forcibly of similar receptions at the White House, except that in Washington everybody knows the rules of precedence governing diplomatic circles and recognises the necessity for following them, while in Manila it was a departure which did not meet with full and general approval.

General MacArthur and his staff were receiving at the head of the grand staircase on the second floor, and, as the spacious rooms became filled with military men in dress uniforms, with gaily attired women and black-coated civilians, the scene was sufficiently dignified to make one feel that a brilliant local society was an established fact. But there was no denying that it was hot and that the Army officers in trim white duck had the frock-coated, camphor-ball-scented and profusely perspiring civil government officials at a disadvantage.

Nowadays⁠—and always after that first experiment⁠—the man in a temperate-zone costume is a sadly conspicuous figure at a social gathering in Manila. The accepted formal evening dress is white linen with either a short mess jacket or a dinner coat of the usual pattern, while for morning or afternoon affairs a man may wear anything his laundryman can turn out for him. As a matter of fact, in the early days in Manila women, as well as men, enjoyed emancipation from the tyranny of clothes. It was a case of discovering how unnecessary many supposed necessities are. There were no fashionable gowns to be had, therefore simplicity, or a more or less rundownedness of onetime respectability, became the fashion. There were no hat shops, so women ceased to wear hats. We went shopping on the Escolta in the early morning hatless; we went to luncheon parties hatless, and in the later afternoon we made our calls and drove on the Luneta minus the millinery which is considered so dear to a woman’s heart. I do not say that the women liked it; there were many plaintive protests; but it was one of the crosses of their environment which saved them numerous jealous pangs as well as much expense. It is different now. The importer of fashionable millinery and sumptuous garments has invaded the field and the women in Manila today are about as finely gowned and hatted as they are anywhere, but I doubt if they are as carefree and comfortable as we were in “the days of the Empire.”

It was expected that the New Year’s reception at Malacañan was intended to inaugurate a gay season of hospitality at the Palace, as General MacArthur announced a dinner and reception to follow early in January. But they were unquiet times; for various reasons there were many postponements; then came the death of Queen Victoria, whereupon the British community went into mourning, and, as it was deemed courteous to observe a period of social inactivity, it was many weeks before we again went to Malacañan.

The campaign of pacification, due to the election of McKinley, the activity of the army, and the actual legislation and organisation work of the Commission, was making great progress throughout the Islands and hardly a day passed that did not bring news of the capture or surrender of insurgent officers and forces in the provinces, while in Manila they were being arrested and imprisoned by the hundreds. They were given an opportunity to take the oath of allegiance and those who persisted in their refusal to do so were banished to Guam. This vigorous policy was having a marked effect upon the spirit of the insurrection and it was rapidly approaching total collapse.

The peace movement was greatly assisted, too, by the activities of the Federal party, a strong political organisation, pledged to the acceptance of American control and American principles, which numbered among its leaders and adherents many of the best men in the Philippines. In its directory were Chief Justice Arellano, Don Benito Legarda, Dr. Pardo de Tavera and General Ambrosio Flores, a onetime leader of the insurrection.

Perhaps the most extraordinary demonstration any of us ever saw in Manila took place on Washington’s birthday in 1901. The Commission had already begun its long task of instituting provincial and municipal governments and its members had just returned from a trip into the country north of Manila where they had been received with great enthusiasm, and where the people had shown every indication of a glad determination to stop all hostilities and settle down to peaceful pursuits under the representative and democratic system which the Commission was inaugurating.

On the evening of February 20, General MacArthur gave a splendid reception at Malacañan, where Americans and Filipinos mingled together in perfect amity, the Filipinos being in the majority. They seemed greatly pleased with the spirit of the occasion which served to demonstrate in a particular manner the fact that America was in the Philippines as a friend rather than as an arbitrary ruler; that there was to be none of the familiar colour or race prejudice, so far as we were concerned, in the association of the two peoples; that the best thing to do was to acknowledge a mutual aspiration and strive for its fulfilment in friendly cooperation; and there was a heart-lift for us all, Americans and Filipinos alike, in the whole tone of the evening. On the night of the 21st, the Partido Federal gave a famous dinner at a new hotel where a French chef prepared the menu. Before this my husband had jokingly written to Secretary Root that he thought some sort of pension should be provided for the widows and orphans of the men who fell in action before the fearful onslaughts of native hospitality, but at the banquet of the Federal party there were none of those mysterious viands to which the Commissioners had been trying to accustom themselves in the provinces, and in consequence the quality of mutual enjoyment was not strained, the Filipino, unlike the Japanese, being as fond of foreign cookery as he is of his own. The speeches were all of the friendliest character and the “dove of peace,” verily, seemed to be hovering near.