rty nights in which the Lord fasted in the wilds. It
would be injustice to the _Buford's_ well-filled larder, however,
to intimate that we fasted. Our food was good, barring the ice cream,
which the chef had a weakness for flavoring with rose water.

The first launch that came out after the doctor's brought a messenger
from the Educational Department with orders to us teachers to
remain aboard till next day, when a special launch would be sent
for us. So all day we watched our friends go down over the side,
and waved farewells to them, and made engagements to meet on the
Luneta. The launches and lighters and _cascos_ swarmed round us, the
cargo derricks groaned and screeched, the soldiers gathered up knapsack
and canteen and marched solemnly down the ladder. Vessels steamed past
us or anchored near us, while we hung over the rail, gazing at Manila,
so near and yet so far. After dinner we betook ourselves to the empty
afterdeck and stared down the long promenade--alas! resembling the
piazza of a very empty hotel!--and peopled it with the ghosts of
those who late had sat there. They had gone out of our lives after
a few brief days of idleness, but they would take up, as we should,
the work of building a nation in a strange land and out of a reluctant
people. Some were fated to die of wounds, and some were stricken with
the pestilence. Most of them are still living, moving from army post
to army post. Some are still toiling in the remotenesses of mountain
villages; others are dashing about Manila in the midst of its feverish
society. Some have gone to swell the American colonies in Asiatic
coast towns. A few have shaken the dust of the Philippines forever
from their feet, and are seeking fame in the home land and wooing
fortune in the traffic of great cities or in peaceful rural life. Some,
perhaps, may read these lines, and, reading, pause to give a tender
thought to the land which most Americans revile while they are in it,
but which they sentimentally regret when they have left it.

Eight long years have slipped by since that night, and in that time a
passing-bell has tolled for the Philippines which we found then. Who
shall say for many a year whether the change be for better or for
worse? But the change has come, and for the sake of a glamour which
overlay the quaint and moribund civilization of the Philippines of
that day I have chronicled in this volume my singularly unadventurous
experiences.

The afterdeck was