Even the best class of natives do not appreciate, or feel grateful for, or even seem to understand a spontaneous gift. Apparently, they only comprehend the favour when one yields to their asking. The lowest classes never give to each other, unsolicited, a cent's worth, outside the customary reciprocal feast-offerings. If a European makes _voluntary_ gratuities to the natives, he is considered a fool--they entertain a contempt for him, which develops into intolerable impertinence. If the native comes to borrow, lend him a little less than he asks for, after a verbose preamble; if one at once lent, or gave, the full value requested, he would continue to invent a host of pressing necessities, until one's patience was exhausted. He seldom restores the loan of anything voluntarily. On being remonstrated with for his remissness, after the date of repayment or return of the article has expired, he will coolly reply, "You did not ask me for it." An amusing case of native reasoning came within my experience just recently. I lent some articles to an educated Filipino, who had frequently been my guest, and, at the end of three months, I requested their return. Instead of thanking me for their use, he wrote a letter expressing his indignation at my reminder, saying that I "ought to know they were in very good hands!" A native considers it no degradation to borrow money: it gives him no recurrent feeling of humiliation or distress of mind. Thus, he will often give a costly feast to impress his neighbours with his wealth and maintain his local prestige, whilst on all sides he has debts innumerable. At most, with his looseness of morality, he regards debt as an inconvenience, not as a calamity. Before entering another (middle- or lower-class) native's house, he is very complimentary, and sometimes three minutes' polite excusatory dialogue is exchanged between the visitor and the native visited before the former passes the threshold. When the same class of native enters a European's house, he generally satisfies his curiosity by looking all around, and often pokes his head into a private room, asking permission to enter afterwards.