We entered a stone-flagged lower hall where several shrouded carriages would have betrayed the use to which it was put had not a stable odor first betrayed it.  Thence we passed up a staircase, broad and shallow, which at the top entered a long, high-ceiled room, evidently a salon in days past.  It had fallen to baser uses, however, and now served as dining-room.  One side gave on the court, and another on an azotea where were tropical plants and a monkey.  It was a bare, cheerless apartment, hot in the unshaded light of a tropical noonday.  The tables were not alluring.  The waiters were American negroes.  A Filipino youth, dressed in a white suit, and wearing his black hair in a pompadour, was beating out “rag time” at a cracked old piano.

“Easy is the descent into Avernus!” But there was consolation in the monkey and the azotea, though we could neither pet the one nor walk on the other.  However, we were the sort of people not easily disconcerted by trifles, and we sat down still expectant.

The vegetables were canned, the milk was canned, the butter was canned, and the inference was plain that it had made the trip from Holland in a sailing vessel going around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope.  As for the fruits, there was but one fruit, a little acid banana full of tiny black seeds.  With guava jelly it was served for dessert.  Our landlord, an enterprising American, had been so far influenced by local custom that he had come to regard these two delicacies as a never inappropriate dessert.  So long as we continued to “chow” with him, so long appeared the acid, flavorless banana and the gummy, sticky jelly.

In justice to Manila it must be said, however, that such conditions have long since been outlived.  Good food and well-served American tables are plentiful enough in Manila to-day.  The cold-storage depots provide meats and butter at prices as good as those of the home land, if not better.  Manila is no longer congested with the population, both native and American, which centred there in war times.  There is not the variety of fruits to be found in the United States, but there is no lack of wholesome, appetizing food.

We returned to the Escuela Municipal, and, after a nap, dressed and went out for a walk.  The narrow streets with overhanging second stories; the open windows with gayly dressed girls leaning out to talk with amorous swains on the pavement below; the swarming vehicles with coachmen shouting “Ta-beh”; and the frailes (friars)—­tall, thin, bearded frailes in brown garments and sandals, or rosy, clean-shaven, plump frailes in flapping white robes—­all made a novel scene to our untravelled eyes.  Mounting a flight of moss-grown steps, we found ourselves on top of the wall, whence we could look across the moat to the beautiful avenue, called, on the maps of Manila, the Paseo de Las Aguadas, but familiarly known as the Bagumbayan.  West India rain-trees spread their broad branches over it, and all Manila seemed to be walking, riding, or driving upon it.  It was the hour when everybody turns his face Luneta-ward.  Seized with the longing, we too sent for a carriage.