to scrub the room with
soap and water. Nobody quitted school; nobody got the smallpox;
and the whole thing was only an incident.

Later I was destined to pass through the cholera epidemic of 1902-03,
and I realized how great a factor a daily paper is in creating public
hysteria. Part of the time I was in Manila, where the disease was under
much better control than it ever was in the provinces (where it was
not under control at all), and there was about five or six times as
much worry, talk, and excitement in Manila as ever prevailed outside,

I have lived in towns with newspapers and in towns without them,
and have come to believe with Gilbert Chesterton that the newspaper
is used chiefly for the suppression of truth, and am inclined to add,
on my own account, the propagation of hysteria.

CHAPTER XV

The Filipino's Christmas Festivities and His Religion

Autumn Weather--Winter Weather--A Christmas Tree for
Filipino Children--A Christmas Eve Ball--Early Mass on
Christmas--Visitors--Attitude of the Filipino to Religion--His Ideas
of the Fine Arts Formed by the Church--Joys and Sorrows Carried to
Church--Religion Not a Source of Party Animosity--Filipinos More
Likely to Become Rationalists than Protestants.

What with typhoons, earthquakes, talk of insurrection, the novelty
of military life about us, and the effort to comprehend the native,
the days sped quickly by at Capiz. October and November came and went
in alternate stages of storm and sunshine. For days at a time the
fine rain drove like a snow storm before a northeast wind, and it
was difficult to realize that the deluge was the remnant of a great
blizzard which, starting on the vast frozen plains of Siberia, had
swept southward, till crossing the China Sea it gathered up a warm
flood and inundated us with it. We spoke of its being autumn at home,
but we could not realize the fact. When clear days came, they were so
warm, so glinting with sunlight, that it seemed all the world must
be bathed in glory. It would rain steadily for a week or ten days,
and then there would come one of those clear days when every breath of
vapor was blown out of the sky, the heavens were a field of turquoise,
and the mountain chains were printed against them in softest purple.

With the month of December the weather changed, the rain ceased, and
the dry chill winter of the tropics set in. The nights were so cold
that one was glad to nestle into bed under a blanket. The n