By half-past nine the local band, or one of them—­for most Filipino towns rejoice in half a dozen—­came round to escort us to the hall.  This attention was, as President Harper always declared of the many donations to the University of Chicago, “utterly unsolicited on our part,” and was the result of a hope of largesse, and of a high Filipino conception of doing honor to the stranger.  Preceded by the band and surrounded by a motley assembly of several hundred people, the children dragging their transparencies with them, we strolled up the quarter of a mile of street intervening between the Lieutenant and Mrs. C——­’s house and the Filipino mansion where the ball was held.  When we entered, the guests all rose to do us honor, and shortly thereafter the rigadon was called.

The ball differed little in its essential features from other balls, save that, owing to its being Christmas Eve, the Filipino men, in accordance with some local tradition, discarded the usual black evening dress, and wore white trousers, high-colored undershirts, and camisas, or outside Chino shirts, of gauzy pina or sinamay.  This is the ordinary garb of a workingman, and corresponds to the national or peasant costume of European countries; and its use signifies a tribute to nationality.

At midnight the church bells began to toll, and the three or four hundred ball guests adjourned en masse to the church.  This building is larger than any I can remember in America, except the churches of Chicago and New York, and was packed with a dense throng.  It was lighted with perhaps two thousand candles, and was decked from lantern to chapel with newly made paper flowers.  The high altar had a front of solid silver, and the great silver candlesticks were glistening in the light.

The usual choir of men had given place to the waits with their tambourines, though the pipe organ was occasionally used.  The mass was long and tedious, and I was chiefly interested in what I think was intended to represent the Star of Bethlehem.  This was a great five-pointed star of red and yellow tissue paper, with a tail like a comet.  It was ingeniously fastened to a pulley on a wire which extended from a niche directly behind the high altar to the organ loft at the rear of the church.  The star made schedule trips between the altar and the loft, running over our heads with a dolorous rattle.  The gentleman who moved the mechanism was a sacristan in red cotton drawers and a lace cassock, who sat in full view in the niche behind the high altar.  There seemed to be a spirited rivalry between him and the tambourine artists as to which could contribute the most noise, and I think a fair judge would have granted it a drawn battle.