Manila, on the whole, is waking up, and besides the opera we now have the marionette troupe, something entirely new to the average citizen. It seems there are four sisters travelling around the world with their little collection of string-pulled puppets, giving exhibitions in all the larger centres. Their fame had preceded them, and so the other night when the doors of the Teatro Filipino were thrown open, a huge crowd assembled to see the performance. The stage was a fairly large one, but so arranged optically that it made the figures appear larger than they really were. The actors (puppets) were remarkable for their lifelikeness, and if one had not seen the strings stretching upward he would have taken them to be animate beings. Their costumes were complete and elaborate in every particular. First came a tight-rope walker, then an acrobat balancing a pair of chairs, and then Old Mother Hubbard, out of whose voluminous petticoats jumped half a dozen little men and women, all of whom danced and cut up as if they were really reasoning bipeds instead of material, loose jointed, wax-faced dolls. Old Mamma was especially good, and as she stirred up her little children with a long staff, looked at first this one and then that, shook her head, pointed her finger, and danced with the others, she brought down the house with applause. Later on came a minstrel troupe, with two end-men, a leader who waved a baton, a harpist, and two other musicians. They all played, and the end-men cracked jokes. Next came a clog-dance between two darkies, and it was difficult to believe that they were not alive. Further on came a bulldog, which grabbed a policeman by the nether breeches and pulled a huge piece out of them; a bull, who chased a farmer and threw him over a rail fence (this took wonderfully well, for the Spaniards go crazy over anything with a bull in it); then a boarding-house scene, with a folding-bed that shut up its occupants inside; next, a balloon ascension, in which a man on the ground was suddenly caught up into the air by an anchor thrown out from the balloon; then the death of the two aëronauts, who fall from a dizzy height; next, a ride in a donkey-cart by two lovers, who find themselves run away with and get snarled up on the wagon, to be kicked black and blue by the donkey. Finally came a very complete little play of "Bluebeard," with complete scenery, costumes, and ballet. All of the scenery was of the lightning-change sort, and the Spaniards, mestizos, and natives in the audience sat and looked on with open-mouthed wonder, too astonished to laugh, too senseless to cry, and able but to clothe their faces with expressions of wonder.