If it is el costumbre del pais it has to be done and there is nothing more to be said about it. The manaña habit⁠—putting everything off until tomorrow⁠—is, perhaps, to Americans, the most annoying of all the costumbres del pais in the Philippines, but it yields to pressure much more readily than do many others, among which is the custom of accumulating parientes ; that is, giving shelter on a master’s premises to every kind and degree of relative who has no other place to live. This is, I suppose, a survival of an old patriarchal arrangement whereby everybody with the remotest or vaguest claim upon a master of a household gathered upon that master’s doorstep, so to speak, and camped there for life.