If one has thoughts of going out to the Philippines he should learn how to speak Spanish, and how to accept, “cum grano salis,” descriptions of the country, either too glowing or too gloomy. Some have gone to Manila and liked it, others have made their retreat homeward echo with tales of weary woe about this Malay capital. To each it seems to mean something different according as he kept his health or lost it, as he fell in with the life or didn’t, and as he was successful or unsuccessful in that for which he left the upper side of the globe. Before buying one’s ticket for the Far East one must not be moved by the suggestions of “thoughtful” persons, who say you are going to the ends of the earth and must therefore take all sorts of clothes, pianos, and means of subsistence. Accept their sympathy but not always their advice, and if Manila be your destination, be assured you are not bound for an altogether isolated village. They may do some things out there which are not down on the programme of a day’s routine in the United States. The fire-engines may be drawn by oxen, the [231]natives—contrary to Biblical suggestion—may build the roof to their shanties first and make arrangements for underpinning afterward; women may smoke cigars, and snakes may be more effective rat-catchers than cats or terriers. But there are shops in Manila, tailors, drug-stores, parks, tramways, churches, electric lights, schools, and theatres which are not altogether unlike those in the Western world.  
And, in times of peace, the capital is not an altogether bad sort of a place to live in, though I can’t say as much for some of the lesser towns. One may be susceptible to fever, in whi............