Some of the ponies were splendid-looking little "critters" and made almost as fast time as their larger brethren, the horses. During race-afternoons, business in the city was entirely suspended, and everyone who had a dollar took it to the race-course to gain other dollars. As the currency system is all metal, bets were paid in hard coin, and if you happened to buy a lucky ticket in that gambling machine, the "totalizator," you would perhaps have a whole hatful of heavy silver cart-wheels shoved at you on presenting the winning pasteboard. And it was no uncommon sight at the close of the races to see some of the thinly clad natives whom fortune had favored go trudging home across the rice-fields, carrying a load of dollars in a straw hat or a bright bandana. One by one the vessels are dropping away from their anchorage in the bay, and by Saturday our Vigilant will heave up anchor and start on her twenty-thousand-mile journey to Boston via the Cape, with her big cargo of hemp. Thanks to our attentions to the captains, they have seemed willing to take home for us any amount of souvenirs and curios, and I have sent along quite an assortment of stuffed bats, lizards, and snake-skin canes, which I feel sure will cause somebody to creep on their arrival. Manila's best cigar, made of a special, selected tobacco, wrapped in the neatest of silverfoil and packed in rosewood boxes tied with Spanish ribbon, costs about five cents and is considered a rare delicacy. One scarcely ever sees these cigars, the "Incomparables," outside of the city itself, and the brand is so choice that but few smokers are acquainted with it. The foreigner in Manila thinks he is paying dear for his weed at $20 per thousand, and some of our professional smokers limit themselves to those favorite "Bouquets" which correspond to our "two-for-a-quarter" variety but sell here for $1.80 a hundred. Below these upper grades come a various assortment of cheaper varieties, including the cheroots, big at one end and small at the other, and the $3-a-thousand cigars which are made of the first thing that comes handy, to be sold to the crews of deep-water merchantmen. A native of the Philippines wants his cigarette, and gets it. Packages of thirty are sold on almost every corner for a couple of coppers, and to my mind the Manila cigarette is far superior to the variety found in Cuba. Smoking is, of course, encouraged by prices such as these, and one finds it perfectly good form to borrow a cigarette, as well as a light, from his neighbor in the tram-car or on the plaza. Even on the toll-bridge which spans the Pasig you pay your copper for crossing, and get in change a box of matches; and if you are queer enough not to want the matches, the man will give you instead a ticket that avails for the return trip.