s found on his
knees before a picture from an American comic paper that represented
President Cleveland attired as a monk and wearing a tin halo. Both
of these pictures had been placed on altars, and candles were burned
before them.

Another statue of great power is in the church at Majajay. It was sent
there from Spain in charge of the friars, and is especially besought
by invalids, for it is a general belief that whosoever will reach the
church with breath enough remaining in him to recite certain prayers
before this image shall have fresh lease of life; yea, though he were
at his last gasp.

Some of the attacks made on the friars in the Philippines have been
construed into attacks on the Church, but this is wrong. For the good
of the Church, no less than of the people, it is desired to purge the
islands of these ancient offenders. They have used religion as a cloak
for evil, have encouraged, in private, vices they preached against
in public, have availed themselves of famines and other distresses
to force money from the poor, and have fathered as many half-castes
as the Spanish soldiers have. As to their offspring, Filipino wives
have quieted jealous husbands by assuring them that the appearance of a
European complexion in a hitherto brown family was a special favor from
St. Peter,--a miracle ordered by the keeper of heaven as a reward for
piety and good works. Hence, one hears much of St. Peter's children
in the Philippines. Some of the white inhabitants have nevertheless
been conspicuous for virtue. Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, for example,
the first ruler of the islands, was so good that for years after his
death his body, now in the St. Augustine Monastery, Manila, underwent
no decay or change, but was like that of a man in sleep.

Alitagtag, north of Bauan, became in 1595 a resort of ghosts and
devils that congregated about a spring near the village, so that
the people were afraid to go there for water. A native headman took
wood from a deserted house, made a cross of it, and set it up near
the spring to spell away the fiends. As the people still feared,
a woman of courage ventured near the place to find that a stream of
cold, pure water was flowing from one of the arms of the cross. To
further assure the people that the evil spirits had been mastered the
cross arose from the earth and stalked about the fields, surrounded by
bright lights. Thereupon the clergy ordered that it should be adored,
and from that time