[A Filipino theater.] When my ankle began to get better, my
first excursion was to Legaspi, where some Filipinos were giving
a theatrical performance. A Spanish political refugee directed
the entertainment. On each side of the stage, roofed in with palm
leaves, ran covered galleries for the dignitaries of the place; the
uncovered space between these was set apart for the common people. The
performers had chosen a play taken from Persian history. The language
was Spanish, and the dresses were, to say the least, eccentric. The
stage was erected hard by a public street, which itself formed part
of the auditorium, and the noise was so great that I could only catch
a word here and there. The actors stalked on, chattering their parts,
which not one of them understood, and moving their arms up and down;
and when they reached the edge of the stage, they tacked and went back
again like ships sailing against the wind. Their countenances were
entirely devoid of expression, and they spoke like automatons. If I
had understood the words, the contrast between their meaning and the
machine-like movements of the actors would probably have been droll
enough; but, as it was, the noise, the heat, and the smoke were so
great that we soon left the place.

[An indifferent performance.] Both the theatrical performance and
the whole festival bore the impress of laziness, indifference, and
mindless mimicry. When I compared the frank cheerfulness I had seen
radiating from every countenance at the religious holidays of Europe
with the expressionless and immobile faces of the natives, I found it
difficult to understand how the latter were persuaded to waste so much
time and money upon a matter they seemed so thoroughly indifferent to.

[Interest in festival.] Travellers have remarked the same want of
gaiety amongst the Indians of America; and some of them ascribe it