If you should be invited in to dinner by a Filipino family, you would expect to eat boiled rice and chicken. They would place a cuspidor on one side of your chair to catch the chicken bones, which you would spit out from your mouth. The food would be cooked in dishes placed on stones over an open fire. The cook and the _muchachos_ never wash their hands. They wash the dishes only by pouring some cold water on them and letting them dry gradually. The cook will rinse the glasses with his hand. How would you like to eat a chicken boiled with its pin-feathers on, or find a colony of red ants in your soup? The poorer families seldom go through the formality of serving meals. As soon as the rice and _guinimos_ are cooked, the children and their parents squat around the bowl and help themselves, holding a lump of salt in one hand, and using the other for a fork or spoon. The women do what little marketing needs to be done, and though the Filipino acts in most things lavishly, the women can drive close bargains, and will scold like ale-wives if they find the measure short even by so much as a single _guinimo_. The _guinimo_ is probably the smallest creature with a vertebra known to the world of science--a small fish--and it strikes one as amusing when the people count them out so jealously. But all their marketing is done on retail lines. Potatoes, eggs, and fruit sell for so much apiece. A single fish will be chopped up so as to go around among the customers, while the measures used in selling rice and salt are so small that you can not take them seriously. The transaction reminds you of your childhood days when you were playing "keep store" with a nickel's worth of candy on the ironing-board. At Easter-time, or during the celebration of the "Santa Cruz," an enterprising family will get up a singing bee. Perhaps a wheezy organ will be brought to light, and the musician then officiates behind the instrument. His bare feet work the pedals vigorously, and his body sways in rhythm with the strains. As the performance is continuous, arriving or departing guests do not disturb the ceremony. There seems to be a special song for this occasion, the words of which must be repeated over and over as the music falls and rises in a dismal wail. Refreshments of Holland gin and _tuba_ keep the party going until long after midnight. As you walk down the long dusty street at evening, you will be half suffocated by the smoke and the rank odor of the burning cocoanut-husks over which the supper is being cooked. Then you remember how the broiling beefsteak used to smell "back home," and even dream about grandmother's kitchen on a baking day. And as you pass by the poor _nipa_ shacks, you hear the murmur of the evening prayer pronounced by those within. It is a prayer from those who have but little and desire no more. Chapter XII. Leaves from a Note-book. I. Skim Organizes the Constabulary.