Arizona republican., 1903-12-28
VIRTUE OF PHILIPPINITIS
A Disease That Has a Tendency to
 Prolong Life.

T noticed in The Republican the other morning that some army officer has made a song about something he calls Phillipinitis." said a man who is more or less experienced through life in the far east, I'd like to hear it. for I spent two years in Ma nila, and contracted the disease in its most virulept form. Everybody in Ma nila contracts 1t sooner or later. It isn't painful complaint by any means. In fact it's an absence of complaint oi all kinds. It's a sort of chronic lotus, eating, absence of mind. When you have Philipinitis you don't think, and you can't remember. You just eat and sleep and bask in the prevailing gen eral atmosphere of content Everybody in Manila is a congenial member of the Don't Worry Club. Life out there is never within d thousand miles of being strenuous. There's something in the air that gets into ones blood. and once you've contracted Philipinitis you can never be quite content again away from those blessed isles. Americans will tell you they loathe Manila and would sell their very souls to get away from the place, but they wouldn't. and they know it. I venture to say there isn a man above the rank of private in the army who has served q year in Manila, and doesn't in the bottom of his heart long to go back. As for bus mess men Philipinitis is incura ble, and if l didn't have a family dependent upon me. I'd rather have six hundred year and a berth in Manila than ten thousand in the states. After you've once had touch of Philipinitis, you know what Kipling's soldier meant when he said when you've heard the east a-calling you won't never heed aught else.''
 Everybody in Manila" went on the same nan, takes a siesta in the af- ternOon, and unless a servant hap pens to remember to rouse you before diEIer time, you're not likely to keep any engagements for the rest of the day. 4 Philippip- servant has his own ideas about waking one. Nothing could induce him to bang on your door. or ring a bell in your ear. If he re- members to call you at all. he does it gently and quietly He has the theory that the moment a man falls asleep his soul climbs out of the body and goes off to amuse itself in the uttermost parts of the universe. It takes the sCul little time to get back. and if you rouse man suddenly you are like ly to wake him up before his soul can return to it's tenement, and he may be obliged to go about for years and years before his soul can manage tc make connections again The Filipino servant doesn't want to run any such risk as that. fer a living body without q soul in it is the most dangerous and malevolent of devils. So when your servant in Ianila comes to end ycur siesta. he slips in noiselessly and scratches like mouse on the footboard of your bed. He wouldn't yell at you if the house were on fire. and he gives ycur soul all tho time it needs to get home before you open your eyes. think there's a great deal in the idea. fer l never Yet saw. a man whose dreams had been disturbed by an alarm clock or an electric bell. who didn't speak and act as if a thousand fiends possessed him. I anl confident that thousands Of American souls are lost through the agency of alarm clocks, and if I could introduce this Philippine system in American hotels. l should be public benefactor."