“What was I to do with only my meager salary, to collect which I have to get the curate’s approval and make a trip to the capital of the province—what could I do against him, the foremost religious and political power in the town, backed up by his order, feared by the Government, rich, powerful, sought after and listened to, always believed and heeded by everybody? Although he insulted me, I had to remain silent, for if I had replied he would have had me removed from my position, by which I should lose all hope in my chosen profession. Nor would the cause of education gain anything, but all to the contrary; for everybody would take the curate’s side, they would curse me and call me presumptuous, proud, vain, a bad Christian, uncultivated; and if not those things, then ‘anti-Spanish’ and ‘a filibuster.’ Of a schoolmaster neither learning nor zeal is expected; only resignation, humility, and inaction are demanded. May God pardon me if I have gone against my conscience and my judgment, but I was born in this country, I have to live, I have a mother; so I have abandoned myself to my fate like a corpse tossed about by the waves.” He has tried to abolish whipping in his school. “I endeavored to make study a thing of love and joy, I wished to make the primer not a black book bathed in the tears of childhood but a friend that was going to reveal wonderful secrets; of the school-room not a place of sorrows but a scene of intellectual refreshment. So, little by little, I abolished corporal punishment, taking the instruments of it entirely away from the school and replacing their stimulus with emulation and personal pride.” The innovation was regarded as sacrilege and heresy. “The curate sent for me, and, fearing another scene, I greeted him curtly in Tagalog. On this occasion he was very serious with me. He said that I was exposing the children to destruction, that I was wasting time, that I was not fulfilling my duties, that the father who spared the rod was spoiling the child—according to the Holy Ghost—that learning enters with the blood, [74] and so on. He quoted to me sayings of barbarous times as if it were enough that a thing had been said by the ancients to make it indisputable, according to which we ought to believe that there really existed those monsters which in past ages were imaged and sculptured in the palaces and temples. Finally, he charged me to be more careful and return to the old system, otherwise he would report me to the alcalde of the province.” So in despair he brought out the whips again, and sadness reigned in the school where he had introduced happiness and work. The number of his pupils was reduced to a fifth of the former attendance.