File:Recollections of full years (1914) (14766436485).jpg

Identifier: recollectionsoff00taft (find matches)
Title: Recollections of full years
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Taft, Helen Herron, 1861-1943
Subjects: White House (Washington, D.C.) Philippines -- Description and travel Washington (D.C.) -- Social life and customs
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead & Company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
nana habit—putting everything off until to-morrow—is, perhaps, toAmericans, the most annoying of all the costumbres del paisin the Philippines, but it yields to pressure much morereadily than do many others, among which is the custom ofaccumulating parientes; that is, giving shelter on a masterspremises to every kind and degree of relative who has noother place to live. This is, I suppose, a survival of an oldpatriarchal arrangement whereby everybody with the re-motest or vaguest claim upon a master of a household gath-ered upon that masters doorstep, so to speak, and campedthere for life. In my first encounter with this peculiarity of my environ-ment I thought there was a large party going on in mycocheros quarters; and an indiscriminate sort of party itseemed to be. There were old men and old women, youngmen and young women, many small children and a few babesin arms. We had only Chinese servants in the house, butthe stables were in charge of Filipinos and, as I soon discov- 118
Text Appearing After Image:
(LEFT TO RIGHT) GENERAL WRIGHT, MR. TAFT AND JUDGE IDE AS PHILIPPINE COMMISSIONERS RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS ered, the party was made up entirely of our stablemensparientes. I had a pair of ponies and a Victoria; Mr. Taft had histwo little brown horses and a Victoria; besides which therewas an extra horse to be used in case of accident to one ofthe others, as well as a pony and calesa for the children.This rather formidable array was necessary because we foundit impossible to take a horse out more than twice a day, andusually not more than once, on account of the sun. Myponies were taken out only in the early morning or the lateevening, and those of Mr. Taft had all they could do to takehim to the office and bring him home twice a day. Dis-tances were long and there were no street-cars which ranwhere anybody wanted to go. This number of conveyances made a good many stable-men necessary and all of them, with their families, lived inquarters attached to the stables. These families con

Note About Images