In my first encounter with this peculiarity of my environment I thought there was a large party going on in my cochero’s quarters; and an indiscriminate sort of party it seemed to be. There were old men and old women, young men and young women, many small children and a few babes in arms. We had only Chinese servants in the house, but the stables were in charge of Filipinos and, as I soon discovered, the “party” was made up entirely of our stablemen’s parientes .

I had a pair of ponies and a Victoria; Mr. Taft had his two little brown horses and a Victoria; besides which there was an extra horse to be used in case of accident to one of the others, as well as a pony and calesa for the children. This rather formidable array was necessary because we found it impossible to take a horse out more than twice a day, and usually not more than once, on account of the sun. My ponies were taken out only in the early morning or the late evening, and those of Mr. Taft had all they could do to take him to the office and bring him home twice a day. Distances were long and there were no street cars which ran where anybody wanted to go.