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

AN OFFICIAL'S WIFE

experience, although the captain of the post assured
me later that he had sent the mildest-mannered
mule driver in the post. However, I will say that
one of the mules, named Joe, was enough to make
even a mild-mannered mule driver swear. He regarded the highway with aversion and was continually trying to bolt into stone walls, nipa shacks,
and the river. The mule driver wore pistols and
beside him sat a guard with a rifle across his knees.
There are said to be ladrones in the neighborhood.
The town extends in one long street that follows
the river from Calumpit to the church and convent
of Apalit. The street passes through several barrios, each with its principal citizens who live in
stone and wooden houses flanked by the thatched
huts of numerous humble neighbors, sometimes referred to as " dependientes." As the ambulance
rattled along the highway, the doorways and windows filled with staring, black-eyed, round-faced,
dark-skinned natives; fowls flew cackling across the
road, pigs sought refuge with goats and small
children under the houses, while the parents and
elders crowded to the front windows to catch a
glimpse of the strange white women.
The chief manufactures of Apalit and the adjoining barrios, as we saw them along the road, were
straw and bamboo mats, bolos, which are sharp,
murderous-looking knives, and red pottery jars of
the useful domestic order, which stood by hundreds
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