Mass was over at one, and we went back to our ball, and the supper which was awaiting us.  I shall speak hereafter of feasts, so will give no time to this particular one.  Dancing was resumed by half-past two, and shortly afterwards I gave up and went home.  Sleep was about to visit my weary eyelids when that outrageous band swept by, welcoming the dawn by what it fancied was patriotic music—­“There’ll be a Hot Time,” “Just One Girl,” “After the Ball,” etc.  It passed, and I was once more yielding to slumber, when the church bells began, and some enterprising Chinese let off fire crackers.  I gave up the attempt to rest, and rose and dressed.  Then the sacristan from the church appeared in his scarlet trousers and cassock.  He carried a silver dish, which looked like a card receiver surmounted by a Maltese cross and a bell.  The sacristan rang this bell, which was most melodious, went down on one knee, and I deposited a peso in the dish.  He uttered a benediction and disappeared.  After him came the procession of common people, adults and children, shyly uttering their Buenas Pascuas.  We had, forewarned by the sagacious Romoldo, laid in a store of candy, cigarettes, cakes, and wine.  So to the children a sweet, and to the parents a cigarette and a drink of wine,—­thus was our Christmas cheer dispensed.  Later we ate our Christmas dinner with chicken in lieu of turkey, and cranberry sauce and plum pudding from the commissary.  The Filipinos honored the day by decorating their house-fronts with flags and bunting, and at night by illuminating them with candles in glass shades stuck along the window sills.

The church in the provinces is at once the place of worship, the theatre, the dispenser of music and art, the place where rich and poor meet, if not on the plane of equality, in relations that bridge the gulf of material prosperity with the dignity of their common faith.

So far as the provincial Filipino conceives of palaces and architectural triumphs, the conception takes the form of a church.  There are no art galleries, no palaces, no magnificent public buildings in the Philippines, but there are hundreds of beautiful churches, of Byzantine and Early Renaissance architecture.  You may find them in the coast towns and sometimes even in the mountainous interior, their simple and beautiful lines facing the plaza, their interiors rich with black and white tiling and with colored glass.  The silver facings of the altars and their melodious bell chimes are the most patent links which bind the Philippines to an older civilization.

As far as he has ever come in contact with beautiful music, the provincial Filipino has met it in the church.  Nearly every one boasts its pipe organ imported from Europe, and in the choir lofts you may find the great vellum-leaved folios of manuscript music, with their three-cornered, square, and diamond-shaped notes.  They know little of the masses of Mozart, Gounod, or more modern composers, but they know the Gregorian chants, and the later compositions of the Middle Ages.  Often badly rendered—­for nowhere are voices more misused than in the Philippines,—­their music is nevertheless grand and inspiring.