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

AN OFFICIAL'S WIFE

fixed look, in contrast to the contented nerveless
faces of the Filipina girls.
No matter how friendly our intercourse with the
Filipinos, there is always the restraint natural to our
peculiar relations with them and the difference of
language. I find them reluctant to let me know just
what they think on a subject, say of political interest. This is natural, for they never seem to forget the fear of compromising themselves that three
hundred years of Spanish rule have impressed upon
them. Yet even on questions of no significance they
like you to express an opinion for them to agree
with. If one can get really intimate with them, as
I did with some well-educated girls, they will now
and then forget the ingrained secretiveness of their
race and give you a glimpse of opinions that are perhaps all the stronger for being suppressed. I remember one hot afternoon taking a siesta on a big
Filipino bed, with three or four placid-looking
plump girls lying on mats on the floor. We had
exhausted the characteristics of the other guests in
the house, and our conversation turned on the insurrection. Perhaps because they liked me, and possibly because they trusted me, they gave me the history of their experiences during the early days of the
uprising when their family was with the insurgents.
They talked as our own great-grandmothers might
have talked, when they were girls, about the War of
the Revolution. At the time of our conversation
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