I have now been settled in Manila long enough to find out what it costs to live, and the general cheapness of existence is more appalling than I first thought. Our house is a good one, with all the comforts of home, and is surrounded by an acre or two of land. We have stables for our horses and outbuildings for the families of our servants. At the end of the month all expenditures for house-rent, food, wages, light, and sundries are posted together and divided by three, and with everything included my monthly share comes to twenty-nine gold dollars--less than one of our American cart-wheels--per diem. Where in the States could you rent a suburban house and lot, keep half a dozen servants, pay your meat bill, your drink bill, and your rent all for less than a single dollar a day! You can scarcely drive a dozen blocks in a hansom or buy a pound of Maillard's for that money at home and yet, in Manila, that one coin shelters you from the weather, ministers to the inner man, and keeps the parlor in order. Our cook, for instance, gets forty cents each morning to supply our table with dinner enough for four people, and for five cents extra he will decorate the cloth with orchids and put peas in the soup. To think of being able to get up a six-course dinner, including usually a whole chicken, besides a roast, with vegetables, salad, dessert, fruit, and coffee, for such a sum seems ridiculous in the extreme. The methods of marketing are almost as noteworthy as the low prices for "raw materials." All meat must be eaten on the same day it is killed, since here in the tropics even ice fails to preserve fish, flesh, or fowl. As a result, while the beef and mutton are killed in the early morning--a few hours before the market opens--the smaller fry, such as chickens and game, are sold alive. From six to ten on any morning the native and Chinese cooks from many families may be seen bargaining for the day's supply among the nest of stalls in the big market. After filling their baskets numbers of them mount the little tram-car for the return trips to their kitchens and proceed to pluck the feathers off the live chickens or birds as they jog along on the front or rear platform. By the time they have arrived home the poor creatures are stripped of foliage, and, keenly suffering, are pegged down to the floor of the kitchen to await their fate. Then, when the creaking of the front gate announces the return of the master, it is time enough to wring the necks of the unfortunates and shove them into the boiling-pot or roasting-pan that seems but to accentuate a certain toughness which fresh-killed meat possesses.