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

AN OFFICIAL'S WIFE

kong in vegetables, which are imported in large
quantities. When the Hongkong people cabled that
cholera had broken out, the quarantine authorities
condemned and threw five thousand dollars' worth
of fresh vegetables into the bay. There is no doubt
that the disease existed before it was made public,
and it was started here by some one eating the condemned vegetables.
Since I wrote the preceding lines the doctor has
come home to luncheon, and reported three new
cases since eight o'clock this morning, and an outbreak in Bulacan, a town on the railroad north of
Manila. It will be more difficult to deal with the
cholera in the provinces, because there are few
Americans to work in the sanitary departments. It
was fine of the doctor, who was on his way home,
to give up his trip to Japan, and stay here just because they needed him.
MANILA, April 4, 1902.
A S we are going to Benguet to-morrow morning,
and as the mails from there are uncertain, I'll
write a few lines now to send on the Peru tomorrow.
We are still fighting the cholera, but, as the
natives persist in hiding the sick, the number of
cases is increasing. The Board of Health is burning whole districts where the shacks are in a filthy
condition. It is hard for the natives; they are be225