The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1900-07-14

OIL my hands and knees, SWIM
ming mountain torrents on the back of a.
caraboo and shooting Papaicios and being
shot In return. l was living on mud
crested bareback and bacon, drinking
water from caraboo wallows and Sleep
Ing in any old place. 1 looked like a
tramp and felt like &. devil NY feet were
covered with mud sores, and I was bla ck
and blue all over. And now I paut on a
fresh white duck uniform every morning.
wear tan shoes, starched white shirts
and collars, carry a silver-headed cane
ana my buttons are so bright thatt even
the Ch1nos take them for gold. I eat
Sght or ten-coursc dinners drink wine
seer and cognac, and sleep in a fonr-post-
En- L average three balls to a week and
wear the Papaicios colors, red and black.
on my straw hat
You see, 1 am now one Of the advance
/ guards of civilization. About five weeks
ago was relieved from duty as a soldier
there Is no more fghting-and made
q teacher OF English in the Isabella public
y SCHOOLS. The men amuse themselves by
4 calling me the superintendent of public
obstruction The natives salute me with
mats off and address me as the maestro
About five weeks ago GEN Smith, mill
tary governor Of the island, issued an Or
der that competent soldier should be
detailed in each pueblo to teach English
TO the native children. A New York
man named Driscol, who filibustered
In Cuba and understands Spanish, was
detailed as teacher at Binalbogan and I
caught the job here. I made consid-
cradle progress with Spanish and some
headway with the native dialect. That
pulled the scales in my favor.
When I first tackled the job, I figured
That l had snap I had an English
Spanish Ollendorf and expected to go at
a gallop But ran up against,a snag the
first day. Out of nearly 300 pupils, no
more than ten understood Spanish beyond
the ordinary salutations like Good day.
and Good night ] discovered this the
first day and went off by myself and fig
u1ed some more. I estimated that there
were about 600 Visayan words in daily
use and that I should be able to master
them in thirty days, especially as T had
found that all the Visayan verbs were
regular. I had no Visayan books and
there was none in the pueblo. In fact
there are few In existence. So I picked
out a few of the brightest boys some
of whom knew little Spanish and one
little Latin, and started in to construct
Visayan-English grammar. For the
- first week I devoted all my time to this
select class and let the others 60. We
made great Roadway. The Visayan verb
proved to be regular pie. II co. was
"Aco maya lacat." II shall co. was
"Aco maya lacat." II went was "Acc
nag lacat," and will you go" was "Icae
rio thar
shooting papaicios. Present time 'naga'
future time "maga," pasttme nag
the imperative "pag' and the interroga.
tive "alujag mag" the verb itself never
changing. And every verb corrugated
alike In a week I was singing Visayar
around like a native. Alas! Great pride
cometh before long swim in the soup.
The first day that I opened up before
the school in general I ran up against
the native schoolmaster. 1 hadn't spouted
ten words of Visayan in exploration OF
an English word when he began tc
nudge me and whisper vehemently, NAL
vim Visayan," or bad Visayan." Then
he explained to me that the kind of Wis
ayan I had crammed myself with was
the kind the people talked all RICH:
enough, but that it would be beneath the
dignity of a maestro to use it. He ex
planned that all civilized lang uages, and
also Latin, which was especially entitled
to respect because 1t was dead, contained
many irregular verbs. Consequently a;
some period in the past the leading school
teachers of Negroes had come together
and had constructed a revised and i'm
proved Visayan, sbristling with irregular
verbs. He admitted that if went into
cocoanut grove and tried to bargain
for shell of tuba in that language, the
native wouldn't know what was trying
to get at. That, he said, was one of the
advantages of the revised Visayan. 1t
was so intricate that no one but the macs
tros could understand it, and that hoisted
the maestros away up on the ladder of
public esteem. The unrevised Visayan
was so simple that the children actually
learned it from their parents, and school
masters had been at discount.
This was a poser. But after due con-
sideration I announced my determination
to go right ahead with the unrevised
Visayan.. The native maestro was hor-
r1hed. 1t was evident that he considered
me an anarchist and traitor to my pro-
fession. He was so excited that he &C
tually talked every day Visayan He fl
nally induced me to go with him for a
consultation with another native maestro,
the teacher of select school. went
and took my brightest boy with me- The
select teacher sided with the public teach
er. A language that common people used
and understood, he maintained, was nee
essary vulgar and not worth teaching.
asserted that "Aco maya lacat" was cor
rect Visayan for II co. because every
body but the maestros said it and wrote
1T that way. The public schoolmaster
nearly had apoplexy. The way to say
II go" in Visayan, he said was ''Macadto
ca At this the select teacher fell upon
him tooth and nail. 'Macadto ca he
asserted, was the rottenest kind of Visa
yam, and the correct expression was
Sang Is a macadto." took my bright
est boy and went back to the school. The
last I saw of the maestros they looked
like pair of windmills in hurricane.
My English-Visayan grammar is now in
the hands of all the public school pupils,
nut the maestros cross themselves and
say prayer whenever they sight me.
my little booklet may not be entirely
correct dramatically from either an
Engl1sh or Visayan standpoint, but the
boys and girls in this pueblo are begin.
ming to speak colloquial English quite
f1uently. 81
There are two public schools here, one
for the boys and one for the girls.
soon found that these schools wee
patronized by the full-blooded Filipino:
only The mestizos considered it beneath
their dignity to send their children to the
public schools and referred to them a.
the poor schools. However, I foune
many of the boys and a few of the girls
very apt. q found that in the past The