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

UNOFFICIAL LETTERS OF

pleasure. The entrance was at the back of the
house, where a square platform was reached by a
steep bamboo ladder. The platform, adorned with
terra-cotta water jars and potted plants, opened into
a small apartment which served as dining room and
kitchen. The rather cramped quarters were filled
with smiling Pampangans, natives of Apalit, neighbors of the doctor, who had come in to help cook
and serve the dinner. They were not of the serving
class by any means, but citizens of consideration
and means who had brought their best china and
napkins and their silver forks and spoons to eke
out the slender stock of our host. They greeted us
with perfect ease and gracious cordiality and then
proceeded with their self-appointed tasks. The
stove for which I vainly looked and from whence
came the appetizing odors that filled the air was
nowhere to be seen, but on one side of the room
on a bamboo table was ranged a number of terra
cotta charcoal pots, over each charcoal pot stood an
earthenware olla, or kettle. In this primitive manner an elaborate dinner was being prepared. The
legs of the dining table were standing in kerosene
oil tins to keep away ants and incidentally to prevent it from falling through the bamboo floor,
which was laid in such a way that it was very much
like lattice work, and we could look directly through
it into the chicken, pig, and goat pen.
As we sat down to dinner we were greeted by
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