es we were soaked to the skin, and dripping
streams of water. The artesian wells along the way were but dribbling
springs compared with us.

The storm came out of a clear, star-lit sky. Storms come that way in the
Philippines. Only a few minutes before I had been looking up at the
Southern Cross admiring its beauty. I looked again and there was no
Southern Cross. A few great drops of rain fell and then came the deluge.

Candle lights flickered in innumerable thatched houses where brown and
naked women fluttered about dodging the rain, looking strangely like
great paintings in the night. At the edge of each side porch a Bamboo
ladder reached up from the ground. A fire burned against the rain. This
fire leapt up for two feet.

One could easily imagine on this stormy night, with every road a river,
every field a flood, and every vacant space a sea, that the thatched
houses raised on Bamboo poles were boats, afloat in a great ocean. The
fires on the back porches looked for all the world like the fires that I
have seen flaring against the night from Japanese fishing boats.

We had been warm, personal friends since college days, this driver and
I. He had chosen the harder way of the mission fields to spend his life.

"After all," said he, "that was a dream worth dreaming!"

"What do you mean?" I asked him, a bit startled.

"Why the American occupation of these islands; the dream that McKinley
had, of teaching them to govern themselves; and then giving them their
independence; an Imperial Dream such as the world never heard of before;
a dream that, if it has done nothing else, has won for America the
undying friendship of the intelligent Filipino."

"Right you are, man! But why such a thought at this ungodly hour? I
should think rather that you would be sending out an S. O. S."

"Dunno! Just flashed over me that that was a dream worth dreaming; and,
by gad, boy, we're seeing it come to pass. Look at those contented
people living in peace and security; their home fires lighted; their
children in school; plenty to eat; not afraid that to-morrow morning
some Friar will sell their home from under them. No wonder they have
given their undying friendship to America!"

He continued as we sped through the rain.

"England and Germany sneered at America's dream. Such a dream of
friendship through serving its colony had never been born in any other
national soul from the Genesis of colonization up to this day, save in
the sou