The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-07
TEACHES CHILDREN TO WALK.
Ingenious Device With Which All Tag
 alog Huts are Equipped.

alog Huts are Equipped.
 It is somewhat remarkable that the shrewd and dolIar-hunting American, who is now setting up in business in the Philippine Islands, and from there branching out into other quarters of the Malay archipelago has thus far failed to make application for a patent on the Malay device for teaching children to walk. As in all tropical countries, where there is an abundance of insects and reptiles. both large and small, and where the chief aim of those erecting houses is to render them as cool as pos sible, the people of the Malay archipel- ago build their bamboo habitations on posts, or piles, at some distance above the ground, in order to insure free cir culation of air under the buildings, and to. as far as possible, prevent pestifer- ous insects and reptiles from entering their houses from the grounr,
 Inasmuch also as the greater portion of these people are rice farmers and fishermen and inhabiting the lowlands, they have, in time, come to build little dpONC SLOAllh hlidlt IAiS NhSC among most tropical peoples.
 When the Filipino sets out to build Q house there is one thing that he never omits, that is, to erect the apparatus by means of which all his children will learn to walk. This is done by cutting a hole in the floor of his high and dry dwelling, through which he passes a long hardwood pole. sharpened at one end, which he drives into the ground below, until the part in the house stands about nineteen or twenty inches above the floor.
 He then makes that part of the hard wood pole in the house firm and solid by driving wedges into the interstices formed by the passage of the stake through the split bamboo floor, and, when all this is done, his next care is to secure section of bamboo about half a foot longer than the length of the hardwood stake from it's top to where it enters the floor and double the circum- ference of the latter.
 This section of bamboo is of course, hollow, and fits over the hardwood stake like 8 glove. The apparatus is now about finished, and lacks only two things in order to be ready for business. This MT. Filipino soon attends to. First he bores hole through the two oppo- site walls of the bamboo sheath, at the top, where it extends upward about half foot taller than the stake, and into these two holes he inserts a long, hardwood handle which extends at right angles to the upright stake and bamboo case, thus completing the appa- ratus for teaching children to walk.
 The manner in which this curious ar- engagement is operated is very simple. When the mother of a family thinks that it is time for one of her youngsters to learn to walk she simply places the child on it's feet, and, with it's hands grasping the bar or handle of wood ex- tending out from the bamboo cylinder. Sometimes the child is tied by the waist to the handle, which the youngster grasps with that peculiar tirmness char acteristic of all children and especially those of savage tribes, and which, the evolutionists say, is legacy from our simian forefathers, who lived in trees and who were obliged to hold fast and firm to the limbs or fall. And the nin- ute that baby Tagalo does so the pres sure of his body on the handle starts the bamboo cylinder to revolving around the hardwood core, so that baby, fearing lest he fall, clings to the rod with grim perseverance, squalling for his mother and trying hard to support himself by the handle, which continues slowly moving off and away from him. Thus, in an endeavor to keep from fall ing, and at the same time to keep pace with the slowly revolving cylinder, the child learns in short time, to walk Washinoton Pnst