of the race, and the isolation and the general ignorance of the country, make praise a dangerous weapon in the hands of a teacher; for a child is apt to educe a positive and not a relative meaning from the compliment.  Filipino children have not attained the mental state of being able to qualify in innumerable degrees.  If a teacher hands back a composition to an American boy with the words “Well done,” the child understands perfectly that his instructor means well as compared with the work of his classmates.  The Filipino is inclined to think that she means positively well done—­above the average for all the world.  I once complimented a class in Capiz on the ease with which they sang four-part music, and said, what I truly feel, that the Filipinos are a people of unusual musical ability.  They managed to extract from the compliment the idea that the musical development of the Filipinos is far in advance of that of the Americans.

Middle-class Filipinos have a very inadequate conception of the tremendous wealth of artistic, literary, and musical talent interwoven with the world’s development, and are especially inclined to pride themselves upon their racial excellence in these lines, where, in truth, they have achieved almost no development whatever in spite of the possession of undoubted talent.  They do not understand the value of long training, and are inclined to assume that the mere possession of a creative instinct is final evidence of excellence in any art.

It will be some time before what real talent they have will make itself felt in any line, because it will take a great deal of tactful handling to make them reveal their natural artistic trend instead of falling into imitation of Europe and America.  It is strange that a people so tenacious of its opinions with regard to matters of fact should be so willing to surrender its ideal with regard to the thing of which a nation has most reason to be tenacious, its natural expression.  But the whole race is so morbidly sensitive to the sneer that everything Filipino is necessarily crude that the young art student or the young musical student feels that his only hope of winning commendation is in painting or playing or composing after European models; while as for the populace at large it has its own standards in which other motives than artistic excellence play the largest part.

I had a friend, a young Filipino girl, who has been one of the most diligent among the pupils of the American schools.  She was staying with me two or three years ago when my publisher sent me a copy of a primer intended for use in the Philippines, and which had just been gotten out in the United States.  The publisher had spared no expense in his illustrations, and we were tremendously proud of the artistic side of the book.  This Filipino girl had heard me use the expression “poor white trash,” and I had explained to her how the Southern negroes use the words as a term of derision of those who fail to