_Pascua_, or Christmas week, is a great holiday, but
it is very different from the Christmas that we know. The children
going to the convent school are taught to sing the Spanish Christmas
carols, and on Christmas eve they go outdoors and sing them on the
streets in the bright starlight. Their voices, although untrained,
are very delicate and sweet. The native music, which they often sing,
like all the music of the southern isles, is very melancholy, often
rising to a hopeless wail. On the last day of school the padre will
distribute raisins, nuts, and figs, which are the only Christmas
presents that the boys and girls receive. At the parochial schools
they are taught to do their studying aloud, and always to commit the
text to memory. If memory should fail them in a crisis, they would
be extremely liable to have their ears pulled by the priest, or to be
made to kneel upon the floor with outstretched arms, thus making the
recitation somewhat of a tragedy; but there are also prizes for the
meritorious. One book includes the whole curriculum--religion, table
manners, grammar, "numbers," and geography--arranged in catechisms of
convenient length. The boys are separated from the girls in school
and church, and I have very seldom seen them play together in their
homes. During the long vacation they must spend most of their time at
work out in the rice-fields under the hot sun. So they would rather
go to school than have vacation.

With the new schools and the American schoolteachers a great
opportunity has come to the young people of the Philippines. New
books with beautiful illustrations have been introduced, new songs,
and a new way of studying. It would amuse you if you were to hear
them read. "I do not see the pretty bird" they would pronounce,
"Ee doa noat say day freety brud." The roll-call also sounds a
good deal different from that in our own schools, where we have our
Williams, Johns, and Henrys; but the Filipino names are very pretty
(mostly names of Spanish saints), Juan, Mariano, Maximo, Benito, and
Torribio for boys; Carnation, Bernarda, and Adela for the girls. The
boys especially are very bright, and they are learning rapidly,
not only grammar and arithmetic, but how to play baseball and tag
and other games that make the child-life of America so pleasant.

Chapter X.

Christmas in Filipinia.

While you are in a land of starlight, frost, and sleighbells, here the
cool wind brushes through the pal