CHAPTER I_Fil and Filippa: Story of Child Life in the Philippines

Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

produced from images generously made available by The

Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Fil and Filippa

Story of Child Life

in the Philippines

John Stuart Thomson

Author of

"China Revolutionized"

"The Chinese"

"Bud and Bamboo" Etc.

Illustrations by

Maud and Miska Petersham

The Macmillan Company, Publishers

New York MCMXXIX

By the Macmillan Company.

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1917.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEDICATED TO MY LITTLE FRIEND

FRANCIS DORIS

BY THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS

Chapter

I. Names.

II. Climate, Typhoons, Volcano

III. At Worship

IV. Houses

V. Cocoa and Coffee

VI. Hemp and Sugar

VII. The Coconut

VIII. Indigo; Mango; Guava; Durian

IX. The Forest

X. Minerals

XI. Water Buffalo

XII. Bats; Cattle; Horses; Cats; Monkeys

XIII. Flying Ants; Locusts

XIV. Boats and Fish

XV. Saw Mill; Mudsleighs; Wooden Plows

XVI. Umbrellas; Chairs; Milk-bottle; Milkman

XVII. Home Life

XVIII. Dress

XIX. The "Adios" Feast

PERSONS

Fil, a Filipino boy.

Filippa, his sister.

Favra, her playmate.

Moro, Fil's playmate, a Mohammedan.

Fil's Father.

Fil's Mother.

The Padre-priest.

The Guest.

Driver of the Water Buffalo Cart.

FIL AND FILIPPA

CHAPTER I

NAMES

It took me over a month and a half to reach the summer islands that

I sought. In three weeks I had gone through the Panama Canal and

had reached San Francisco, and in four weeks more I had crossed the

world's widest, most peaceful, and bluest ocean, the Pacific.

There, like a string of pearls hanging from the golden Equator,

I found thousands of wonderful islands of all sizes, but only two

of them are very large. I found also my new and kind young friends:

Fil; his sister Filippa; Fil's boy playmate named Moro, who came

from the large southern island; their parents and friends; and the

good Padre. Each one of them was shorter and darker than I. Yet they

said to me: "The Stars and Stripes, now our flag also, makes us all

American brothers, which we will be always."

"But how is it that you are called Filipinos, and live in the

Philippine Islands?" I asked.

Fil smiled and said: "Though I believe you know without asking me,

I shall tell you to show that I know our romantic and interesting

history.

"Hundreds of years ago, many years before America became a nation,

the roving Spaniards discovered these islands, and named them the

Philip-pines, in honor of their king Philip. When the American Admiral

Dewey won these islands from Spain, our name was not changed.

"And our Christian names of Fil and Filippa have the same sound,

and almost the same meaning, as Philippines," added Filippa, her

eyes smiling from under her cloud of beautiful hair,--hair longer and

richer than an American girl's hair,--and eyes darker and deeper than

an American girl's eyes. Perhaps her brows were a little bit flatter,

and her nose was a little bit shorter and wider, than ours; but still

she was pretty, especially when she smiled, for she had beautiful

white teeth.

Then I turned to Fil's playmate, Moro, and asked him what his rolling

name could mean. Moro was even more eager and darker than Fil. He

replied, as he bravely touched his toy sword:

"I, too, am of the Malay race, but of a different religion from Fil. I

am a Mohammedan; that is, I reverence the same prophets whom the Turks

worship. I come from the southern islands of the Philippines. There we

spend most of our time roving in boats, and hunting over the hills. The

first white man who met us saw that we were as dark, and had the same

religion, as the tribes of Morocco in Africa. That perhaps is why I am

called Moro, the Mohammedan, whose father fears no man; nor shall I,

when I grow up."

"But we are all friends now under a new, friendly flag; and we preach

and practice love, instead of fear and fighting," I replied.

Filippa looked upon me with very happy eyes, when I said this; for a

girl seems to know wiser ways of settling quarrels than do boys. A boy

becomes excited; a girl thinks longer and acts more slowly. Certainly,

Filippa's gentle ways and the expression in her wonderfully deep eyes

had more power with Fil and Moro than would strife and force.

"Every name seems to have a pretty meaning in your Edenlike

Philippines," I remarked to Filippa's playmate, Favra.

"Yes," she replied, "the Padre (pa'drai), our pastor or cleric,

who knows so much, tells me that my name means the friendly one who

does favors."