Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine PatriotCraig, Austin
History
Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
Craig, Austin
Rizal, José, 1861-1896
The home of the Sisters had a private chapel, for which the teachers
were preparing an image of the Virgin. For the sake of economy the
head only was procured from abroad, the vestments concealing all
the rest of the figure except the feet, which rested upon a globe
encircled by a snake in whose mouth is an apple. The beauty of the
countenance, a real work of art, appealed to Rizal, and he modeled
the more prominent right foot, the apple and the serpent's head, while
the artist Sister assisted by doing the minor work. Both curtain and
image, twenty years after their making, are still in use.
On Sundays, Father Sanchez and Rizal conducted a school for the people
after mass. As part of this education it was intended to make raised
maps in the plaza of the chief city of the eight principal islands of
the Philippines, but on account of Father Sanchez's being called away,
only one. Mindanao, was completed; it has been restored with a concrete
sidewalk and balustrade about it, while the plaza is a national park.
Among Rizal's patients was a blind American named Taufer, fairly well
to do, who had been engineer of the pumping plant of the Hongkong Fire
Department. He was a man of bravery, for he held a diploma for helping
to rescue five Spaniards from a shipwreck in Hongkong harbor. And he
was not less kind-hearted, for he and his wife, a Portuguese, had
adopted and brought up as their own the infant daughter of a poor
Irish woman who had died in Hongkong, leaving a considerable family
to her husband, a corporal in the British Army on service there.
The little girl had been educated in the Italian convent after the
first Mrs. Taufer died, and upon Mr. Taufer's remarriage, to another
Portuguese, the adopted daughter and Mr. Taufer's own child were
equally sharers of his home.
This girl had known Rizal, "the Spanish doctor," as he was called
there, in Hongkong, and persuaded her adopted father that possibly
the Dapitan exile might restore his lost eyesight. So with the two
girls and his wife, Mr. Taufer set out for Mindanao. At Manila his
own daughter fell in love with a Filipino engineer, a Mr. Sunico,
now owner of a foundry in Manila, and, marrying, remained there. But
the party reached Dapitan with its original number, for they were
joined by a good-looking mestiza from the South who was unofficially
connected with one of the canons of the Manila cathedral.
Josefina Bracken, the Irish girl, was lively, capable and of congenial
temperament, and as there no longer existed any reason against his
marriage, for Rizal considered his political days over, they agreed
to become husband and wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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