Well, we didn't lay out to stay long in Manila, but we did stay long enough so Dorothy and Miss Meechim and Robert Strong went round and see the different islands. They went to Illollo and wuz gone for three days, Aronette stayin' with me at the tarven, and Dorothy told me when she got back how beautiful the journey wuz. The water wuz like glass, the sunrise and sunset marvellous, thickly wooded shores on either side filled with oncounted wealth. Great forests of sandal-wood, enough to build houses of, and how we treasure little snips on't in fan sticks. Mahogany trees enough to build barns and cow stables on, and how we gloat over a old clock case or lamp stand made on't. She said that Illollo wuz like most old Spanish towns, dretful old lookin' and kinder run down. The natives dressed like others she had seen, but spoke a different language. They went to the American general's headquarters some two milds off. A hundred varieties of palm trees grow along the road and every sort of tropical tree. The natives wuz all dark complected, but some good lookin', most all bareheaded or else with a gay turban and knives stuck in the sashes of their gay tunics. One day whilst the party wuz gone Tommy and I wuz takin' a little walk; Josiah couldn't go, he had got hold of a New York paper of three weeks before, and was readin' it through from title page to Lost and Found column. We wandered into a little cross street lined on each side with little shops with the shopkeepers squattin' in the door, and outside the native wives and children. Everything under the sun almost wuz to be found in these shops, and we had wandered along for quite a good ways lookin' at the curious things, and still more curious people, when we met Aronette and Lucia, accompanied by the two young men I had seen with 'em on the boat; they wuz on the stoop of one of the old business buildin's, gigglin' and laughin' like a bevy of swallers round the eaves of a Jonesville barn. But, as I said before, I didn't like the looks of the young men, and on Aronette's return I told her so, feelin' I wuz in a measure responsible for her safety whilst her mistress wuz away. Aronette wuz combin' Tommy's hair and curlin' it over her finger as I talked to her, which made me feel some mean to attact her whilst in my service, but Duty's apron string fluttered down before me and I stiddied myself on it as I spoke real good warnin' words to her. Sez I, "My dear, I didn't like the looks of the young men I saw you walkin' with to-night." Sez I, "I saw them two young men coming out of a saloon not a half hour before, and" sez I, "they look to me dissipated and mean. They drink; I know by their looks they do."