ame in and adorned each table with a potted rose
geranium, stuck all over with the halves of empty egg-shells to give
it the appearance of flowering, I felt that it was time to assert
myself. The egg-shells went promptly into the garbage box, and the
chairs and tables were pulled about to achieve the unpremeditated
effect of our own rooms. Then I went out for a walk, and returning
found that Romoldo had restored things to his own taste. Again I
broke up his formation, so the next time he tried a new device. He
put one table at the top of the room and one at the bottom, with the
chairs arranged in a circle around each one. This gave the pleasing
impression to one entering the room that a card game was ready to
begin. Again Romoldo's efforts were treated with contempt.

For at least two weeks a deadly combat went on between Romoldo and me,
in which I finally came off victor. At the end of that time he seemed
to have accustomed himself to our ideas of decoration. He had, in our
week's deluging, cleaned up the lamps of the chandeliers, brushed
down the cobwebs, and removed some half-dozen baskets of faded and
dust-laden paper flowers. He administered the ironical consolation
meanwhile that their destruction did not matter, since my admiring
pupils would see that the supply was renewed. To my eternal sorrow he
was a true prophet, and I had to contemplate green chrysanthemums and
blue roses, and a particularly offensive hand-painted basket made of
plates of split shell. However, the potted palms and ferns with which
I ornamented the eleven pedestals made atonement; and when I came in
after a hard day's work and saw the unreal, golden-tinted light of
afternoon filling the dignified old room, I found it home-like and
lovely in spite of the paper flowers and the shell basket.

My bedroom was half as large as the sala, with a small room adjoining
it which I used for a dining-room, and at the back there were a
kitchen, a bathroom, closets, and a bamboo porch. For this shelter,
furnished as it was, I paid the munificent sum of twenty-five pesos
Mexican currency, or twelve and one-half dollars gold per month.

As my house was located over the second saloon in town--one of the
regular, innocent, grocery-looking Filipino breed--and as it commanded
a fine view of the plaza, guard mount, retreat, and Sunday morning
church procession, I had at least all the excitement that was going
in Capiz. The American soldiers swore picturesquely o