eable in the last hours of life? You are right:
I do dream! Our young men think of nothing but loves and pleasures;
our men of riper years have no activity but in vice, serve only to
corrupt youth with their example; youth spends its best years without
ideal, and childhood wakes to life in rust and darkness. It is well
to die. Claudite jam rivos, pueri."

"Is it time for your medicine?" asked Don Filipo, seeing the cloud
on the old man's face.

"The parting have no need of medicine, but those who stay. In a few
days I shall be gone. The Philippines are in the shadows."

XLIV.

LA GALLERA.

To keep holy the afternoon of Sunday in Spain, one goes ordinarily to
the plaza de toros; in the Philippines, to the gallera. Cock-fights,
introduced in the country about a century ago, are to-day one of the
vices of the people. The Chinese can more easily deprive themselves
of opium than the Filipinos of this bloody sport.

The poor, wishing to get money without work, risks here the little
he has; the rich seeks a distraction at the price of whatever loose
coin feasts and masses leave him. The education of their cocks costs
both much pains, often more than that of their sons.

Since the Government permits and almost recommends it, let us take
our part in the sport, sure of meeting friends.

The gallera of San Diego, like most others, is divided into three
courts. In the entry is taken the sa pintu, that is, the price of
admission. Of this price the Government has a share, and its revenues
from this source are some hundred thousand pesos a year. It is said
this license fee of vice serves to build schools, open roads, span
rivers, and establish prizes for the encouragement of industry. Blessed
be vice when it produces so happy results! In this entry are found
girls selling buyo, cigars, and cakes. Here gather numerous children,
brought by their fathers or uncles, whose duty it is to initiate them
into the ways of life.

In the second court are most of the cocks. Here the contracts are made,
amid recriminations, oaths, and peals of laughter. One caresses his
cock, while another counts the scales on the feet of his, and extends
the wings. See this fellow, rage in his face and heart, carrying by
the legs his cock, deplumed and dead. The animal which for months has
been tended night and day, on which such brilliant hopes were built,
will bring a peseta and make a stew. Sic transit gloria mundi! The
ruined man goes hom