But with my shoes I was not so fortunate. I woke up suddenly to hear something being dragged across the floor. Thinking it was only a rat making off with a boot-jack with which to line his nest, I refrained from tempting Providence by leaving the protection of the mosquito-netting. Next morning I found that one of these rodents had pulled a pair of my patent-leather shoes off a low shelf beneath the bed, dragged them out into the hallway behind a hat-rack, and eaten up the most savory portions of the bindings. Complimentary to the prowess of the rat or to the lightness of my shoes--which? I keep them now as articles on which the patent has run out--worthless, but curiosities. Otherwise things have run smoothly, and each evening we lie in the long chairs on the broad veranda, watching the Southern Cross come up over the hills, or the score of brush-fires of dried rice-stalks that illuminate the darkness away off toward the mountains. The music from our piano seems to give much delight to the members of the servants' hall, now nine in number, besides several puppies and game-cocks. The other night, although in the midst of the hot season, we had a prodigious cold snap again, when the thermometer went down to sixty, after being ninety-five during the day, and two blankets were not at all uncomfortable. I see by the papers that there are at least two cases of small-pox in Boston, that everybody is alarmed and hundreds are getting vaccinated. Curious state of affairs--isn't it?--when every day out here you see small children running around in the streets, covered with evidences of this disease. Nobody thinks anything about small-pox in Manila, and one ceases to notice it if a Philippine mamma sits opposite you in the tram-car, holding in her lap a scantily clothed child whose swarthy hide is illuminated with those unmistakable markings. Some weeks ago there were even four hundred deaths a week in Manila from this disease alone; and from the way in which the afflicted mix with the hale and hearty, you can only wonder that there were not four thousand. But small-pox flourishes best in the cool, dry days of our winter months, and is now being stamped out by the warmer weather. An effort is being made to have everybody vaccinated, and the steamers from Japan have brought down whole cargoes of lymph, but the natives do not see any reason why they should undergo this experiment, and would much prefer to have the small-pox than to be vaccinated. And this being the case, it is no wonder that almost seventy-five per cent. of them bear those uncomplimentary marks of the disease's attention.