ed with the skull
and bones, and decked with candles. Women in black veils with candles
follow, mumbling prayers, the words of which they do not understand.

The cemetery is surrounded by a coral wall, commanded by a gate that
bears a Latin epigram. The graves, as indicated by the mounds of
dirt, are never very deep, and while a few are guarded by a wooden
cross, forlornly decorated by a withered bunch of flowers, most of
the graves receive no care at all. There may be one or two vaults
overgrown with grass and in a bad state of repair. Around the big
cross in the center is a ghastly heap of human bones and grinning
skulls--grinning because somebody else now occupies their former
grisly beds, the rent on which has long ago expired.

To the Visayan mind, death is a matter of bad luck. It is advisable
to hinder it with _anting-antings_ and medallions; but when it comes,
the Filipino fatalist will take it philosophically. To the boys and
girls a family death is the sensation of the year. It means to them
nine days of celebration, when old women gather at the house, and,
beating on the floor with hands and feet, put up a hopeless wail,
while dogs without howl dismally and sympathetically. And at the
end of the nine days, the soul then being out of purgatory, they
will have a feast. A pig and a goat will be killed, not to speak of
chickens--and the meat will be served up with calabash and rice; and
visitors will come and look on while the people eat at the first table;
and the second table and the third are finished, and the viands still
hold out. But these are placed upon the table down below, where _hoi
polloi_ and the lame, blind, and halt sit down and eat. And back of
all this superficiality lies the great superstitious dread by means
of which the Church of Rome holds such authority.

I got to know the little village very well--to join the people in their
foolish celebrations and their wedding feasts. I was among them when
the town was swept by cholera; when, in their ignorance, they built
a dozen little shrines--just _nipa_ shelters for the Holy Virgin,
decorated with red cloth and colored grass--and held processions
carrying the wooden saints and burning candles.

Then the locusts came, and settled on the rice-fields--a great cloud
of them, with whirring wings. They rattled on the _nipa_ roofs like
rain. The children took tin pans and drums and gave the enemy a noisy
welcome. But the rains fell in the night, and th