The washing-bill, again, is far from commensurate with the fulness of one's clothes-hamper, and for two gold dollars per month I can turn over to my laundry-man--who comes in from the country once a week--as much or as little as I please. Two full suits of white sheeting clothes a day for thirty days make one item of no mean dimensions, and yet the lavandero turns up each week with his basketful, perfectly satisfied with his remuneration. Then, too, he washes well, and although, when I see him standing knee-deep in the river whanging my trousers from over his head down onto a flat stone, I fear for seams and buttons, nothing appears to suffer. And although he builds a small bonfire in a brass flat-iron that looks like a warming-pan and runs it over my white coats all blazing as it is, the result is excellent, and one's linen seems better laundered than in the mills that grind away at home. As servants, these boys of ours could teach much to some of their more civilized brethren from Ireland or Nova Scotia now holding sway in American families. They take bossing well, and actually expect to have their heads punched if things go wrong. They don't put their arms akimbo and march out of the house if we mildly suggest that the quality of ants in the cake or the water-pitcher is not up to standard, and actually make one feel at liberty to require anything of them. And speaking of ants, these little creatures are everywhere ready to eat your house or your dinner right from under you. The legs of the dining-table, the ice-chest, and the sideboard must be islanded in cups of kerosene, and even the feet to one's bed must undergo the same treatment, in order that the occupant may awake in the morning to find something of himself left. Cockroaches are almost equally fierce and, endowed with wings, these creatures, sometimes four inches long, go sailing out the window as you close your eyes and try to step on them. They prowl around at night, with a sort of clicking sound, seeking something to devour, and are apparently just as satisfied to eat the glue out of a book-cover as they are to feed on the rims to one's cuffs or shirt-collars, moist with perspiration. What the ants don't swarm over the cockroaches examine, and what they reject seems to be taken in charge by the heavy green mould that beards one's shoes, valise, and tweed suits at the slightest suggestion of wet weather. V Visit of the Sagamore--Another Mountain Excursion--The Caves of Montalvan--A Hundred-mile View--A Village School--A "Fiesta" at Obando--The Manila Fire-tree--A Move to the Seashore--A Waterspout--Captain Tayler's Dilemma--A Trip Southward--The Lake of Taal and its Volcano--Seven Hours of Poling--A Night's Sleep in a Hen-coop. May 9, 1894.