Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1899-08-16
MANILA woMENs cHURcHoolNo
Dress in Their Best and Take Their Big
cest Cigar.

Dress in Their Best and Take Their Big
gest Cigar.
When a Filipino woman goes to
church, as she does every Sunday, rain
or shine, she dresses in her best and
takes her biggest cigar. In fact, il
size has far to 60 she takes two cigars.
Her children are dressed in their clean
clothes, and all go along behaving as
they should. They keep on the shady
side of the street, and where there are
crossings and ouly the shadow of the
telephone wires the mother raises her
parasol, which is about the size of a
good umbrella.
The typical Filipino woman takes
great pride in her hair. In fact she
spends great deal of her time in
combing and washing it. When she
dresses for any occasion she lets her
hair fall down her back, and it gener-
ally reaches to her waist. So it is on
Sunday as she shuffles away to mass.
Her brown shoulders are bare and her
Eton-like jacket seems about to fall
off over one arm or tile other-but it
is not quite big enough for that.
Under this jacket she wears q lace
bodice, usually of ecru colored linen
and very we'll laundered. Her skirt
is of linen material, or, if she can af-
ford it, of silk, but always either
black or brown. One side of the bot
tom of the skirt is caught up under
her belt and this takes up its fullness.
Now if she is very well to do she p,
on stockings, but that is not neces-
sary. Her toes are showed into pair
of heelless slippers with wooden sides.
Her children are dressed ms she is if
they are girls. If a boy is trotting
along at her side he wears pair of
white trousers coming we'll down on
the ankles and his feet are stuffed in
to pair of slippers. Over his shoul-
ders and fal ing down like China
mans is a gauze shirt, plain OF Gov
cred with spangles, according to the
financial standing of his father or the
pride of his mother.
So they go down the street, the
children hand in hand. Ahead OF
them the mother is scuttling along,
putting at large cigar, the nshes oil
which she ficks off from time to time
with all the skill of one to the manner
born. If by any chance sue has to re-
light the weed she carries matches in
the pocket of her dress for that pur'
pose, and she is successful in the art
of making matches burn in the stiffest
wind.
At the church door she pauses to
chat with one of her neighbors and
perhaps to gossip bit. If she is on
the way out she lights her cigar, looks
at the fire end of it to see if the "light"
is good and then turns to do her talk
ing. And she can talk when the oc-
casion demands. The language seems
to he fitted to rapid work and the way
it slides out by the side of the cigar
demonstrates thorough understand
ing of the mother tongue. When her
gossipingis done she hoists her parasol
and walks out into the sun. No mat
ter how rapid her talk was back there
in the cool arches of the church, her
pace is never fast down the street.
She passes with majestic sweep the
women who are coming along with
baskets on their heads and smoking
cigarettes. Perhaps the peddler WON,
an has her hair done up in knot and
is otherwise beneath notice, but if the
well-dressed woman happens to need
Eight" she asks for it with some
hauteur and gets it with plenty OF
comradeship.
When this woman reaches home it
is supposed she goes about her house.
hold duties and gets dinner, into
which she puts an extra amount OF
cocoanut oil. But later in the after
noon she takes her place on what does
duty for veranda and there she
smokes and chats with her neighbors
or scolds her children. Harry A.
Armstrong, iu Chicago Record.