oli Me Tangere." Ibarra, viewing Manila by moonlight on the first
night after his return from Europe, recalls old memories and makes
mention of the neighborhood of the Botanical Garden, just beyond
which the friend and mentor of his youth had died. Father Leoncio
Lopez died in Calle Concepcion in that vicinity, which would seem to
identify him in connection with that scene in the book, rather than
numerous others whose names have been sometimes suggested.

Two writings of Rizal recall thoughts of his youthful days. One tells
how he used to wander down along the lake shore and, looking across
the waters, wonder about the people on the other side. Did they,
too, he questioned, suffer injustice as the people of his home town
did? Was the whip there used as freely, carelessly and unmercifully by
the authorities? Had men and women also to be servile and hypocrites
to live in peace over there? But among these thoughts, never once
did it occur to him that at no distant day the conditions would be
changed and, under a government that safeguarded the personal rights
of the humblest of its citizens, the region that evoked his childhood
wondering was to become part of a province bearing his own name in
honor of his labors toward banishing servility and hypocrisy from
the character of his countrymen.

The lake district of Central Luzon is one of the most historic regions
in the Islands, the May-i probably of the twelfth century Chinese
geographer. Here was the scene of the earliest Spanish missionary
activity. On the south shore is Kalamba, birthplace of Doctor Rizal,
with Binan, the residence of his father's ancestors, to the northwest,
and on the north shore the land to which reference is made above. Today
this same region at the north bears the name of Rizal Province in
his honor.

The other recollection of Rizal's youth is of his first reading
lesson. He did not know Spanish and made bad work of the story of the
"Foolish Butterfly," which his mother had selected, stumbling over the
words and grouping them without regard to the sense. Finally Mrs. Rizal
took the book from her son and read it herself, translating the tale
into the familiar Tagalog used in their home. The moral is supposed
to be obedience, and the young butterfly was burned and died because
it disregarded the parental warning not to venture too close to the
alluring flame. The reading lesson was in the evening and by the
light of a coconut-oil lamp, and some mo