Hence, exclusive of some of the civil and military officers of government, the agents of the Company, and a few respectable merchants and priests, the remainder are but little qualified for select society, and there exists amongst them a want of moral discrimination, a toleration of publicly known vicious characters of both sexes, that is not a little embarrassing to the stranger. This is more particularly the case with the female part of society, with many of whom "era tentada la pobrecita por el demonio!" [i.e., "The poor woman was tempted by the devil"] appears to be a salvo, both at confession and in society, for failings which in Europe inevitably and justly entail expulsion from it. Such is the society of Manila, and such its manners: from them the general character of those who compose it may be easily imagined; they are polite in offering every thing--but do but little or nothing:--they affect great decency of manners and a religious deportment in all their actions; but any thing but this is to be found in the conduct of the generality; and a common remark amongst themselves, "Esta no es tierra para un hombre de bien," [137] is worth a chapter on the subject. This may be thought an exaggerated, or at least a highly coloured picture, and it is natural that it should be so. A recital of a well-known custom may add an evidence to these assertions, premising that it is not the only, though the most prominent one that attracts the notice of the stranger: I allude to that of promiscuous bathing. This shamefully indecent custom could exist in no country where the common decencies of life were held in due consideration. Imagine the members of a large family, the father, mother, children, young and old, any visitors who may be in the house and often part of another family, all assembled in a large bath, built out on the river with bamboos, the women with only a petticoat and a gauze chemise, and the men with a thin pair of drawers, and this continuing for one or two hours. This is a Manila bath, to which it is no uncommon thing for an acquaintance to be asked, and in which 4/5ths of all the families in Manila indulge. It may be said in extenuation, that from its frequency no evil arises from it: this may be the case, but it is not the less indecent on that account.