The club-house is long, low, and rambling. The reading, writing, and music rooms front on the river, and the glossy hard-wood floors, hand-hewn out of solid trees, seem to suggest music and coolness. It is possible to reach the city by jumping into a native boat at the portico on the river bank, or to go by one of the two-wheel gigs, called carromatas, waiting at the front gate, or to walk a block and take the tram-car which jogs down through the busy highroad. It is very difficult to absorb the points of so large a place at one's first introduction, so I won't go further now than to speak of that far-famed seaside promenade called the Luneta, where society takes its airing after the heat of the day is over. Imagine an elliptical plaza, about a thousand feet long, situated just above the low beach which borders the Bay, and looking over toward the China Sea. Running around its edge is a broad roadway, bounded on one side by the sea-wall, and on the other by the green fields and bamboo-trees of the parade-grounds. In the centre of the raised ellipse is the band-stand, and on every afternoon, from six to eight, all Manila come here to feel the breeze, hear the music, and see their neighbors. Hundreds of carriages line the roadways, and mounted police keep them in proper file. The movement is from right to left, and only the Archbishop and the Governor-General are allowed to drive in the opposite direction. The gentler element, in order not to encourage a flow of perspiration that may melt off their complexions, take to carriages, but the sterner sex prefer to walk up and down, crowd around the band-stand, or sit along the edge of the curbing in chairs rented for a couple of coppers. Directly in front lies the great Bay, with the sun going down in the Boca Chica, between the hardly visible island of Corregidor and the main land, thirty miles away. To the rear stretches the parade-ground, backed up by clumps of bamboos and the distant mountains beyond. To the right lie the corner batteries and walls of Old Manila, and to the left the attractive suburb of Ermita, with the stretch of shore running along toward the naval station of Cavité, eleven miles away. To take a chair, watch the people walking to and fro, and see the endless stream of smart turn-outs passing in slow procession; to hear a band of fifty pieces render popular and classic music with the spirit of a Sousa or a Reeves, is to doubt that you are in a capital 8,000 miles from Paris and 11,000 miles from New York. Footmen with tall hats, in spotless white uniforms, grace the box-seats of the low-built victorias, while tastefully dressed Spanish women or wealthy half-castes recline against the soft cushions and take for granted the admiration of those walking up and down the mall.