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Would they aid me frankly in behalf of the education that contests with the conventos the wealth of the country? Can they not pretend friendship, make a show of protection, and yet underneath in the shadows fight it, undermine it, wound it in the heel, in order to weaken it quicker than by attacking it in front? Granted the previous actions which you surmise, anything may be expected!"
We jolted over the Bridge of Spain and through a masked gate into the walled city, with the wall on our left, and the high bricked boundaries of churches and conventos on the right, till we arrived at a low, square frame structure, with the words "Escuela Municipal" above its portals. In Spanish times it was the training-school for girls, and here temporary accommodation had been provided for us.
We had absolutism in Spain and you had absolutism here; the friars covered our soil with conventos, and conventos occupy a third part of Manila; in Spain the garrote prevails and here the garrote is the extreme punishment; we are Catholics and we have made you Catholics; we were scholastics and scholasticism sheds its light in your college halls; in short, gentlemen, we weep when you weep, we suffer when you suffer, we have the same altars, the same courts, the same punishments, and it is only just that we should give you our rights and our joys."
The place is chiefly interesting because it is the oldest town in the archipelago settled by Europeans, and one revels in its queer, moss-grown churches and conventos, each of them said to be the most ancient edifice in the Islands.
Often badly rendered for nowhere are voices more misused than in the Philippines, their music is nevertheless grand and inspiring. On the walls of churches and conventos too are found pictures in oil, often gloomy, full of tortures and death, as Spanish paintings incline to be, yet essentially true art pictures which it is to be hoped will survive the inundation of American commercial energy.
Little care was taken to preserve a properly decorous behavior, except when officiating in the church, when they read with an absurd assumption of dignity, without understanding a single word. The conventos are often full of girls and children, all of whom help themselves with their fingers out of a common dish.
"Compel the towns to construct them at their own expense," whereupon all laughed. "No, sir! No, sir!" cried the exasperated Don Custodio, turning very red. "The buildings are already constructed and only wait to be utilized. Hygienic, unsurpassable, spacious " The friars looked at one another uneasily. Would Don Custodio propose that the churches and conventos be converted into schoolhouses?
Nevertheless, this modern Epaminondas made use of the rattan in his choleric moments, and advised its use! At that time the conventos, fearful that he would render a decision favorable to the petition of the students, increased their gifts, so that on the afternoon when we see him he was more perplexed than ever, his reputation for energy was being compromised.
You can get anything you wish through the Customs boxes of lamps, iron, copper, glassware, Mexican pesos you furnish arms to the conventos, don't you?" The Chinese nodded affirmation, but remarked that he had to do a good deal of bribing. "I furnish the padres everything!" "Well, then," added Simoun in a low voice, "I need you to get in for me some boxes of rifles that arrived this evening.
Tio Quico threw back his head in his usual lively manner. "To the friars?" "Because you surely know," continued Camaroncocido, "that all this crowd was secured for them by the conventos." The fact was that the friars, headed by Padre Salvi, and some lay brethren captained by Don Custodio, had opposed such shows.
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