Unofficial letters of an official's wife [by] Edith Moses.

UNOFFICIAL LETTERS OF

pony's neck and comes up dripping and shouting.
Not so do the small babies whose mothers take
them down for a morning bath and duck them mercilessly in the water and then set them in the sun to
dry while they have a little fun themselves regardless of their shrieking offspring, who, having recovered their suspended breath, rend the air with
their protests. The young girls bathe in bevies,
like red birds. They loosen their long hair and tie
their scarlet skirts below their arms. They are a
pretty sight.
We are within three minutes of the Luneta, the
celebrated Manila drive. A military band plays
there every evening, and the carriages pass slowly
around, all driving in one direction. In Spanish
times the Archbishop's equipage was the only one
permitted to pass in the opposite direction. There
is an extension of the drive along the shore, where
everyone whips up the ponies and races with his
neighbors. The walls of the city rise above the
moat at the left and above them can be seen the
pink walls of the Augustine Convent, the towers
of churches, and the roof of the cathedral. The
drive ends at Fort Santiago and the river, where
there is plenty of native life on the cascos to be
studied. I can understand why everyone goes to
the Luneta in the evening. There is always a breeze
and there are no mosquitoes; besides that, one meets
everyone he knows, and ladies visit in each other's
I8