The Englishman or German comes out here on a five-years' contract, and generally runs up a debit balance the first year that keeps him busy economizing the other four. At the end of his first season, he wishes he were at home. At the end of the second, he has exhausted all the novelties of the new situation. At the close of the third, he has settled down to humdrum life. At the end of the fourth, he has become completely divorced from home habits and modern ideals. And at the close of the fifth, he goes home a true Filipino, though thinking all the while he is glad to get away. He says he is never coming back, but wiser heads know better. He has heard about America, and goes home via the States, to see Niagara and New York. But his first laundry-bill in San Francisco so scatters those depreciated silver "Mexicans," which have lost half their value in being turned into gold, that he takes the fast express to the Atlantic coast, and leaves our shores by the first steamer. At home, his friends have all got married or had appendicitis, and the bustle of London, the raw rain-storms of the cold weather and the conventionality of life all bring up memories of the Philippines, which now seem to lie off there in the China Sea surrounded by a halo. And so, before a year is out, he renews his contract, and at the end of a twelvemonth goes sailing back Manilaward to take up the careless life where he left it, and grow old in the Escolta or the Luneta. In London he paid his penny and took the 'bus, he lived in a dingy room, and packed his own bag. But in Manila, with no more outlay, he owns his horse and carriage, he lives in a spacious bungalow with many rooms, and he lets his servants wait on him by inches. How do I know? Oh, because we've talked it all over, now that our turn for departure comes next.