Sports and Amusements
Dancing, Cock-fighting, Gambling, Theatricals--Sunday in
the Philippines--Lukewarmness of Protestant Christians in the
Philippines--How a Priest Led Astray the Baptist Missionary's
Congregation on Thanksgiving--Scarcity of Amusements in Provincial
Life--An Exhibition of Moving Pictures--Entertainments for the Poorer
Natives--The Tragedy of the Dovecot.
The Filipino's idea of a good time is a dance. Sometimes, in the
country, a dance will go on for forty-eight hours. People will slip
out and get a little sleep and come back again. Next to the dance,
the cock-fight is their chief joy. A cock-fight is, however, not a
prolonged or painful thing. Tiny knives, sharp as surgical instruments,
are fastened to each bird's heels, and the cock which gets in the
first blow generally settles his antagonist.
Gambling is the national vice. The men gamble at _monte_ and
_pangingue_, and over their domino games, their horses, and their
game-cocks. The women of both high and low class not infrequently
organize a little card game immediately after breakfast and keep at it
till lunch, after which they begin again and play till evening. Women
also attend the cock-fights, especially on Sunday. Often the cockpit
is in the rear of the church and the convento; and the padre derives
a revenue from it.
Manila, being the metropolis, has its theatres, cinematograph shows,
and music halls. Nearly every year there is a season of Italian opera,
in which the principals are very good, and the chorus, for obvious
reasons, small and poor. Most of the theatrical talent which wanders
in and out comes from Australia. One theatre, which American women
do not patronize, keeps a sort of music-hall programme going all
year. There are many smaller theatres, where plays in the Tagalog
language, the products of local talent, are presented. I cannot say
what is the trend of these at the present time, but seven years ago
the plots nearly all embraced bad Spanish frailes who were pursuing
innocent Filipino maidens, and who always came to an end worthy of
their evil deeds. The disposition to express racial and political
hatreds in those plays was so strong that a friend in asking me to go
naïvely pictured his conception of them in the invitation. He said,
"Let's go over to the Filipino theatre and see them kill priests."
Of course, there is no Puritan Sabbath in the Philippines. Theatres,
balls, and receptions are carried on without any observance of that
day. The Protestant churches make a valiant effort to keep a tight
rein over their flocks, but with little success. It cannot truthfully
be said that most Americans here are either fond of church-going or
fond of the church social, which, with its accompanying features of
songs, recitations, and short addresses by prominent citizens, who
were never designed by the Creator to speak in public, and its creature
comforts of home-made cake and ice cream, has leaped the Pacific.
During my third year in Capiz a Baptist missionary arrived and took up
his work. He seemed to feel that he had a claim upon all Americans
to rally to his support. But, alas! they did not come up to his
expectations. Some were Roman Catholics; others, of whom I was one,
had an affection for the more formal, punctilious service of the
Church of England; and even two or three nonconformist teachers
realized that a too open devotion to the missionary cause would
hopelessly endanger their usefulness as teachers.
So the missionary carried on his services for nearly a year, and no
single American appeared at them. His congregation, which was largely
recruited from the poorer classes, and which had been hoping for the
social advantage which would be derived from the American alliance,
naturally pressed the unfortunate missionary for a reason. The sorely
tried man spoke at last. He said briefly that the Americans in Capiz
were pagans.
On one occasion the missionary arranged a service for Thanksgiving
morning and invited us personally. Of course we all said that we
should be glad to go. But the astute padre of the Church Catholic
was not going to have any such object lesson as that paraded before
his flock. He arranged for the singing of a _Te Deum_ in honor of the
day at half-past nine, just half an hour before the time set for the
other service. Then he got the Filipino Governor to send out written
invitations from his office in such a way that the affair assumed
the complexion of a national courtesy offered by the Filipino to
the American. For us, as Government employees, to disregard this
was impossible. So we went _en masse_ to the Roman Catholic church,
where two rows of high-backed chairs were arranged facing each other
up the centre of the church for our high mightinesses.
We had agreed privately that after the _Te Deum_ we would go over
to the Protestant chapel, and not leave the poor missionary to feel
himself wholly deserted. But no opportunity came. The service was
prolonged till any hope of our appearing in the rival chapel was
effectually quashed. When we came out, we looked at one another and
burst out laughing. It was one more evidence that the American is no
match for the Filipino in _finesse_.
Naturally, unless one falls in with the Filipino devotion to dancing,
there are few sources of so-called amusement in provincial life. The
American women visit each other and give dinners, which, to the
men who live in helpless subjection to an ignorant native cook, are
less a social than a gastronomic joy. If we are near the seashore, we
make up picnics on the beach, swim, dig clams, and cook supper over a
fire of driftwood. If thirst overtakes us, we send a native up a tree
for green cocoanuts. He cuts a lip-shaped hole in the shell with two
strokes of his bolo, and there is water, crystal clear and fresh. The
men hunt snipe and wild ducks, and sometimes wild pigs and deer.
In default of travelling theatrical companies, the provincial natives
have their own organizations of local talent and present little
plays in either Spanish or the native tongue. If American troops are
stationed near a town, there will be one or two minstrel shows each
year. The Filipinos all go to these, but they don't understand them
very well and are not edified. I think they imagine that the cake
walk is a national dance with us, and that the President of the United
States leads out some important lady for this at inaugural balls.
Once in a while a travelling cinematograph outfit roams through the
provinces, and then for a tariff of twenty-five cents Mexican we throng
the little theatre night after night. I remember once a company of
"barn-stormers" from Australia were stranded in Iloilo. They had a
moving picture outfit, and a young lady attired in a pink _costume de
ballet_ stood plaintively at one side and sang, plaintively and very
nasally, a long account of the courting of some youthful Georgia
couple. The lovers embraced each other tenderly (as per view) in
an interior that had a "throw" over every picture corner, table,
and chair back. Some huge American soldier down in the pit said,
"That's the real thing; no doubt about it," but whether his words
had reference to the love-making or the room we could not tell.
The song went on, the lovers married and went North; but after awhile
the bride grew heartsick for the old home, so "We journeyed South a
spell." With this line the moving picture flung at us, head on, a great
passenger locomotive and its trailing cars. To the right there were
a country road, meadows, some distant hills, a stake and rider fence,
and a farmhouse. The scene was homely, simple, typically American, and
rustic, and it sent every drop of loyal American blood tingling. The
tears rushed to my eyes, and I couldn't forbear joining in the roar of
approbation that went up from the American contingent. An Englishman
who was with our party insisted that I opened my arms a yard and a
half to give strength to my applause. I said I didn't regret it. We
poor expatriated wanderers had been drifting about for months with no
other emotion than homesickness, but we had a lively one then. The
Filipino audience at first sat amazed at the outburst; but their
sympathies are quick and keen, and in an instant they realized what
it meant to the exiles, and the wave of feeling swept into them
too. The young lady in the pink costume grew perceptibly exalted,
and in the effort to be more pathetic achieved a degree of nasal
intonation which, combined with her Australian accent, made her unique.
The poorer natives have one source of enjoyment in a sort of open-air
play which they call _colloquio_. This is always in the hands of local
talent, and is probably of Spanish mediæval origin. The three actors
are a captive princess, a villain, and a true knight. The villain is
nearly always masked, and sometimes the princess and knight are masked
also. The costuming is European. The performance may take place in a
house if anybody is kind enough to offer one, but more frequently the
street is the scene. A ring is marked off, and the captive princess
stands in the middle, while knight and villain circle about her with
their wooden swords, countering, and apparently making up verses and
dialogue as they go along. When they get tired, the princess tells her
sorrowful tale. The people will stand for hours about a performance
of this sort, and for weeks afterwards the children will repeat it
in their play.
Once a _circo_, or group of acrobats, came to Capiz and played for over
a month to crowded houses. The low-class people and Chinese thronged
the nipa shack of the theatre night after night from nine P.M. till
two A.M. When a Filipino goes to the theatre, he expects to get his
money's worth. I myself did not attend the circo, but judging from
what I saw the children attempt to repeat, and one other incident,
I fancy it was quite educative.
The other incident has to do with my henchman, Basilio, previously
mentioned, who later arrived at the dignity of public school
janitor. Basilio had been a regular patron of the circo, so much so
that he came into my debt. One of the first things we had set ourselves
to do was the clearing up of all school grounds and premises by pupil
labor. Exactly in the middle of the back yard of the Provincial School
was a great dovecot, which spoiled the lawn for grass tennis courts. So
our industrial teacher decided to move the dovecot bodily to another
place. I doubted if it could be accomplished without somebody's getting
hurt, and Basilio, without offering any reason, vociferously echoed my
sentiments, and jeered openly at the idea of the industrial teacher's
getting that dovecot safe and sound to the other end of the yard.
I refused to risk the Provincial School boys on the task, so
the teacher borrowed a file of prisoners from the Provincial
jail. Basilio the incredulous was ordered to be on hand and to make
himself useful. He appeared in a pair of white duck trousers, the gift
probably of some departing American, and somebody's discarded bathing
shirt in cherry and black stripes. He had cut off the trousers legs at
the thighs, and, with bare arms and legs glistening, was as imposing
an acrobat as one could wish to see.
I had long wanted a swing put up in a great fire-tree which stood near
the dovecot, and while the prisoners were loosening the earth about
the four supporting posts, I sent Basilio to put it up. He finished
his work just as the prisoners were ready to heave up on the posts,
and, to express his entire glee in what was shortly to occur, he came
down the rope _à la circo_, and landed himself with a ballet dancer's
pirouette, kissing both hands toward the tugging men. Anything more
graceful and more comical than Basilio's antics, I have never seen.
The dovecot was supported, as I said, by four great posts sunk in
the ground. On top of these was a platform, and on the platform
rested the house. The American teacher had assumed that the platform
was securely fastened to the posts and that the house was nailed to
the platform. This was his great mistake. He had not been over very
long, and he couldn't make allowance for the Filipino aversion for
unnecessary labor. The dovecot would hold firm by its own weight, and
the builders had not seen the necessity of wasting nails and strength.
Basilio with outstretched arms continued to stand on his toes
while the prisoners grunted over the posts, which came up with
difficulty. They were shamelessly lazy and indifferent to the commands
of the industrial teacher, who had, however, the sagacity to get out of
range himself. They lifted unevenly, there was a tipping, a sliding,
and a smash, as by one impulse the prisoners jumped aside and let
house, platform, and posts come thundering to the ground. Feathers
drifted about like snow; there were wild flutterings of doves; and
squabs and eggs spattered the lawn.
When I saw that nobody was hurt, I joined in the cackles of the
prisoners, who were doubled up with joy at the discomfiture of the
American teacher. He was in a blind rage, which was not diminished by
the outcries and lamentations of the Governor and a horde of clerks,
who swarmed out to express their grief over the wanton destruction
of a landmark. Privately, I don't believe they cared a rap, but the
opportunity to reproach an American for bad judgment comes so seldom
to the Filipinos that they refuse to let it escape.
Basilio never moved a muscle when the crash came. He had stood
buoyantly expectant; he received it flamboyantly calm. A smile
of ineffable pleasure then seized upon his features, and with the
breaking forth of the chorus he rose to joyous action. He spun on his
heels like a dervish. He threw handsprings, he walked on his hands,
he exhausted, in short, all that he had been able to acquire in the
abandon of the previous weeks; and then gravely righting himself,
he went over and began to pick up squabs. These he offered to the
American with a perfectly wooden countenance, and with the simple
statement that they were very good eating. He acted as if he thought
the teacher had done it all for that purpose.