But in connection with such gifts there were always more laughs than sighs. We invited to luncheon one day a dashing Filipino named Tomaso del Rosario. Señor Rosario, a man of wealth and prominence who had a fine Spanish education and was well dressed in the high-collared, patent-leathered and immaculate-linened Spanish style, was quite self-confident and enjoyed himself very much. He seemed attracted to Maria and she, being linguistic, was able to talk to him in a mixture of many languages. The next day she received from Señor Rosario, not a floral offering, but a basket filled with nuts, a canned plum-pudding, some canned chocolates and preserved fruits. This attention did not seem so remarkable, however, when we learned, to our amusement, that he had sent exactly the same present to Alice Worcester, then five years old.

Our life, on the whole, was intensely interesting in its unusual atmosphere and curious complications, but throughout everything we were made to feel the deep significance of our presence in the Islands; and the work of the Commission was first, last and always to us the subject of the greatest moment. Even in our daily round of social affairs we dealt with tremendous problems whose correct solution meant the restoration of peace and prosperity to what then should have been, and what we knew could be made, a great country. That for which the American flag had always stood began to assume, for many of us, a broader and a finer meaning; and being so much a part of our flag’s mission in a strange field a certain zest was added to our patriotism which we had never felt before. I believe, and I think all those who know the truth believe, that Americanism, in its highest conception, has never been more finely demonstrated than in the work done by the United States in the Philippine Islands; work, the broad foundation for which the Commission was engaged in constructing during the period of which I write.