Three years having elapsed since my departure from the little railway station in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania, for New Orleans, the vicissitudes of destiny found me enjoying the balmy zephyrs and moonlight evenings of the tropics. My career in the navy had taken me into every port of importance on the Asiatic station, and my ship, the _New York_, had recently slipped into the harbor of Manila, and lay anchored off the break-water. Having gone ashore this particular afternoon for the purpose of attending the races at Pasay, I had engaged a “victoria” and with some friends attended the scenes at the track, called at the “Hefting House” overlooking Manila Bay, had dined in the old walled city, and driven to the “Lopez” road-house at Caloocan. The sun had set back of the hills of Olongapo, ere I discharged the cochero on the Plaza de Goiti and entered the Hotel Metropole. “Hello, boys,” said old Maulini, the proprietor; “I am glad to see you, you’re just in time to sample some fresh ice-cold hoff-brau; it just arrived to-day on the _Kronprince_ from Germany.” Drawing the rustic hardwood chairs around the square tables, we sat in the delightful breeze of the electric fans as large fantastic steins of cool hoff-brau were served. Through the short swinging screen doors of the café could be seen the cosmopolitan procession wending its way on business and pleasure; army and naval officers in “victorias,” Red-Cross nurses natilly attired in pure white lawn, friars in black habit and broad-brimmed hats, mestizos of Chinese, Spanish, and French extraction, East Indian, Malay, and Japanese merchants, and American soldiers, all stalking along the plaza.