unpretending of men; and a visit gives them so much pleasure that
they do all in their power to make their guest's stay as agreeable as
possible. Life in a large convent has much resemblance to that of a
lord of the manor in Eastern Europe. Nothing can be more unconstrained,
more unconventional. A visitor lives as independently as in an hotel,
and many of the visitors behave themselves as if it were one. I have
seen a subaltern official arrive, summon the head servant, move into
a room, order his meal, and then inquire casually whether the padre,
who was an utter stranger to him, was at home.

The priests of the Philippines have often been reproached with gross
immorality. They are said to keep their convents full of bevies of
pretty girls, and to lead somewhat the same sort of life as the Grand
Turk. This may be true of the native padres; but I myself never saw,
in any of the households of the numerous Spanish priests I visited,
anything that could possibly cause the least breath of scandal. Their
servants were exclusively men, though perhaps I may have noticed
here and there an old woman or two. Ribadeneyra says:--"The natives,
who observe how careful the Franciscan monks are of their chastity,
have arrived at the conclusion that they are not really men, and
that, though the devil had often attempted to lead these holy men
astray, using the charms of some pretty Indian girl as a bait, yet,
to the confusion of both damsel and devil, the monks had always
come scathless out of the struggle." Ribadeneyra, however, is a very
unreliable author; and, if his physiological mistakes are as gross as
his geographical ones (he says somewhere that Luzon is another name
for the island of Cebu!), the monks are not perhaps as fireproof as
he supposes. At any rate, his description does not universally apply
nowadays. The younger priests pass their existence like the lords of
the soil of old; the young girls consider it an honor to be allowed to