When the mist was on the rice-fields, and the sun was droopin’ low, She’d get her little banjo and she’d sing the coola la lo. With her arm upon my shoulder, and her cheek against my cheek We used to watch the hathis, and the elephants pilen teak; Elephants a pilen teak in the smudgy sludgy creek, Where the silence hung so heavy, you was half afraid to speak. On the road to Mandalay, where the flyin’ fishes play, And the dawn comes up like thunder out a China ’cross the bay. The last occasion on which I saw her was on the eve of my departure for the United States. In a “victoria” accompanied by two University classmates, she called at my quarters in Ft. William McKinley, where I joined them for a ride to the haunts of my old marine days, in the village of San Ruki, near Cavite. Among old friends and the ever-predominant harp and guitar, I enjoyed the fascinations of their quaint moonlight “fiesta.” The drive homeward to Manila under the shades of night, through the “barrios” of Bacoor, Paranacque, and Pasay, with the wavelets of the sombre bay breaking on the sandy beach, was one of imposing grandeur that will ever remain vivid when my mind reverts to tropical sublimity. At a dinner party on the roof-garden of the Hotel “Oriente” this night, I bade Señorita Lemaire farewell. XIII. Cock-Fighting, the National Sport of the Philippines Training of the Birds――Mains by Electric Light――Aristocracy Patrons of the Arena――Chinese “Book-makers”――Filipino Touts――Flower Girls――The “Pit”――The Strike of the Game Birds――The Crucial Moment――Game to the Last――Honest Sport. The national sport of the natives of the Philippine Islands is cock-fighting. From infancy the Filipino takes to this line of sport, as a duck takes to water, and he early acquires the art of heeling and training the bird which is sooner or later to increase his wealth or perhaps send him back to the drudgery of the rice-fields, where he must eke out an existence and little by little accumulate sufficient to back another favorite chanticleer in his efforts to recover from his sorrowful state of depression, as a Filipino will bet all on his favorite game-bird. The enthusiasm these people manifest around the pit during a main is akin to that of the Spaniards and Mexicans during a bull-fight. For weeks before a battle the bird is dieted, his claws and beak are manicured, feathers cropped, and plume trimmed. Its weight requires either increasing or diminishing, as the case may be, and it is handled with the care of the tots in a baby incubator.