If in place of the more systematic narratives of description, the more serious presentations of statistics, or the more exciting accounts of the bloody months of the revolution and the wonderful victory of our gallant fleet, which are to be looked for from other sources, the reader cares to get some idea of casual life in Manila, by accepting the rather colloquial chronicle of an ex-resident that follows, I shall have made some little return to islands that robbed me of little else than two years of a more hurried existence in State Street or Broadway. YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES I Leaving "God's Country"--Hong Kong--Crossing to Luzon--Manila Bay--First View of the City--Earthquake Precautions--Balconies and Window-Gratings--The River Pasig--Promenade of the Malecon--The Old City--The Puente de España--Population--A Philippine Bed--The English Club--The Luneta--A Christmas Dinner at the Club. "I wouldn't give much for your chances of coming back unboxed," said the Captain to me, as the China steamed out from the Golden Gate on the twenty-five day voyage to Hong Kong via Honolulu and Yokohama. "That's God's country we're leaving behind, sure enough," said he, "and you'll find it out after a week or two in the Philippines. There's Howe came back with us last trip from there; almost shuffled off on the way. Spent half a year in Manila with small-pox, fever, snakes, typhoons, and earthquakes, and had to be carried aboard ship at Hong Kong and off at 'Frisco. Guess he's about done for all right." And as Howe happened to be the unfortunate whose place in Manila I was going to take, you know, I heeded the skipper's advice and looked with more fervor on God's country than I had for some days. For it was a dusty trip across country from Boston on the Pacific express; and because babies are my pet aversion every mother's son of them aboard the train was quartered in my car--three families moving West to grow up with the country, and all of them occupying the three sections nearest mine. I got so weary of the five cooing, coughing, crying "clouds-of-glory-trailers," that it seemed a relief at San Francisco to wash off the dust of the Middle West and get aboard the P. M. S. Company's steamer China bound for the far East. But the Captain, like the whistle, was somewhat of a blower, and liked to make me and the missionaries aboard feel we were leaving behind all that was desirable. And how he bothered the twoscore or more of them bound for the up-river ports of Middle China! When, after leaving the Sandwich Islands, the voyage had proceeded far enough for everybody on the passenger-list to get fairly well acquainted with his neighbors, these spreaders of the gospel followed the custom established by their predecessors and made plans for a Sunday missionary service. Without so much as asking leave of the skipper, they posted in the companion-way the following notice: Service in the Saloon,