him; while everything is open for
a Filipino. This is sometimes a fact, and has happened to me more
than once; but everything needs explanation, and one must not pass
judgment without hearing both sides. One must remember that there
are at present many vicious and abandoned swindlers in the islands,
especially of the class of creoles; and that such men very often form
the plan to go to travel through the provinces at the cost of the
curas, either to amuse themselves or to seek their fortunes. But,
for amusement, the silver spoons and other trifles of one [of the
curas] have been carried away. There are various others; especially
among the recently-arrived military men, who, brought up among
disturbances, and accustomed to insult the religious with impunity,
have no scruples about telling them what they call "the truths of
the coxswain." "Who could eat free soup [100] as you do, father,
without working?" "What matters to you the good or poor harvest, so
long as you have fools to impose upon?" "How is the stewardess?" "How
many children have you?"--and innumerable others of the same kind,
and even much worse. Anyone can recognize that it is very natural for
these things to happen, and I myself have been a witness of them. There
are more things--namely, that many of those persons who have been in
the convents take delight immediately in publishing the weaknesses
of the cura, abusing the confidence that the latter reposed in him,
and (what is worse) exaggerating, and even mentioning things that
never occurred. If the friar, carried away by the good humor born
of the company of a compatriot, drank a little and became jolly,
then he relates that the friar was drunk. If he saw a woman with a
child in her arms who had come to speak to the friar on any of the
innumerable matters that arise in the village, then he says that
he knew the sweetheart and a child of the friar. If some curas of
neighboring villages assembled, and engaged in playing _brisca_, or
"thirty-one," [101] in order to pass the time, then it is said that
they engaged in gambling. On that account the curas are so cautious of
giving the freedom of their houses and their friendship to transient
Spaniards, that they will now scarcely receive anyone who does not
bring a letter of recommendation; and, considering this sensibly, it
does not seem that they are to be censured for this caution toward
people whom they do not know, in consideration of the fact that in
Manil