largely from the "better" families, the daughters of judges, teachers, senators, or wealthy men. Hugh Wilson Hall has become an important center for the Filipino young women of Manila.

Hugh Wilson girls know how to be both social and religious. Every morning they attend prayers at 6.15. This and the Sunday Bible classes are supplemented by constant personal interviews. "I have sought to arouse hunger in the hearts of the girls for God," says the matron. "I have felt God's presence from the first. One Sunday the lesson was about Nicodemus. God was working in many hearts that day. The loveliest girl in the dormitory, with tears running down her cheeks, said, 'I have been seeking God for a long time, but I do not have that wonderful assurance that you told us about.' The sacred hour that followed can hardly be described, but she left my room with the wonderful assurance in her heart."

Three girls were expelled from the Normal Hall for bad behavior. The dean of the Normal School called upon Miss Charles and asked if she could not take them into Hugh Wilson Hall. They were received; in three months they were converted and were taken into the church, entirely changed through the love of Christ. Every Sunday afternoon a number of consecrated girls go from the dormitory to Bilibid and sing, pray, and speak with the female prisoners; another group goes to the General Hospital. When, at last, school days are over, and they return to their homes, many a girl feels, as one wrote, that "it is hard to live outside the dormitory. Above all I miss the morning chapel service." "I can always tell when one of my teachers came from your dormitory," wrote a superintendent of public schools, "for they have the welfare of the pupils so much at heart."

The Methodist Mission has another small dormitory in San Fernando, where about twenty girls find a home. Often with small numbers like this better results appear than where there are a hundred or more students. During a recent Passion Week in San Fernando a special study was made of the life of Jesus. "One of the subjects was 'What shall we

do with Jesus?' and at the end of that service every girl quietly signified her intention to make Jesus Christ the King of her life."

The most intimate cooperation exists between the Baptist dormitories in Iloilo and the public schools. The mission compound is directly across the street from the high school and the normal, and has succeeded in becoming the true social center for these public institutions. Trained specialists in instrumental and vocal music attract the students into choruses and orchestras. The wholesome moral atmosphere created by the Mission gives it the enthusiastic support of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Dr. R. C. Thomas is nothing short of a genius in personal working among students. Young men and women crowd into his chapel and hundreds profess Christ each year. The Baptists in Iloilo seem to have achieved the ideal toward which all dormitories are striving. This success is based upon three things-close proximity of the dormitories to the public schools, extraordinarily well trained missionaries, and a finely equipped plant. The notable success of the Laoag Girls' Dormitory in influencing the life of the high school is due to exactly the same factors.

The boys' and girls' dormitories in Cebu have contributed a large part of the congregation and a larger part of the officers of the church and Sunday school. The quadrangle formed by two dormitories, two missionary residences, and the church in the center, forms one of the most picturesque spots in Cebu.

Mrs. Hibbard of Silliman has given us one of the most delightful little glimpses into dormitory life, and she must be quoted at risk of giving Silliman undue prominence.

"In Spanish times girls had been shielded from the light of the sun, and what was thought more deadly, the sight of man, by stone walls several feet thick, eight to twelve feet high, topped with a broad layer of broken glass as a 'safety first' precaution. With the coming of the public school in every town and village, the old prejudices were thrust aside and the Filipina girl clamored for the same education as that of her brother. The new dormitory was built simply be

cause parents insisted on their daughters having an equal education with their sons.

"Our Board Secretary was impressed with the refined, unspoiled bearing of our first young lady, whose Spanish name was significantly Miss Pure White (Pura Blanco) among such a mob of boys, and when he asked at the morning chapel how many boys had sisters or friends who would like to attend Silliman, the showing of hands was in the hundreds. This was convincing, and immediately plans were proposed for opening the doors to girls. Miss Rodgers, the first 'daughter of the Mission' who came back to her Island home, landed here, according to the New York version, as domestic science teacher. Within three months she added Senior English, chaperone, and matron to her college degree.

"It requires consummate womanly skill and delicate tact to take the place of a parent to seventy-five girls of varying ages and previous home environment; when they skip classes, the matron has to bring them to the President's office; when they are getting low grades it rests on her to warn and inspire them with a zeal for knowledge; when they have trachoma it is her function to see that they go to the hospital; when they wear velvet slippers and pink stockings to athletics, she must arrange for a lecture on proprieties of dress. But this is not the climax of duties at Oriental Hall; the tropics lend themselves to the sentimental, and the thirty-third degree in matronship is letter censor. It required an adamant heart to intercept and commit to the flames such choice sentiments as these from a love-imbued swain: 'She is the twinkling star whose ethereal beauty surpasses anything this side of heaven; without her, every social gathering would be like our sugarit very happily coincides with the arrival of cane without its sweetness or the parched earth without its heaven-sent rain. She treads the earth like a zephyr thru the sampaguita, and all who are privileged to see her, fall in love with her, especially the writer who once had that rare opportunity.'

"Last school year, every girl in the dormitory was baptized, except one who was prevented by the threat of her parents to place her in a convent this year.

"The women and girls of the Philippines occupy a very different position from their Oriental neighbors in China and India. Here they may take part in all church and social affairs and appear in public programs; they participate in Christian Endeavor and teach in the Sunday school, and go out in groups to the villages to hold open-air Sunday schools. It is the woman who dictates the religious beliefs in the home and for this reason she is in Silliman preparing for her future home life. During the brief years that she has shared the daily classes and Bible study with her brothers, not less than two hundred and twelve have gone in and out of the halls of Silliman, some remaining a year or two, others taking the complete course and graduating." 2

Under the head of dormitories should be placed the homes for mestiza children, whose fathers are white and whose mothers are Filipinas.

Mrs. David O. Lund of Zamboanga found a large number of these girls in need of education and a Christian home. She appealed to the American men of the province, and found them very willing to pay for the support of these children. She therefore collected about sixty mestiza girls into her own large home and kept them there for years, carrying them through the grammar grades, teaching them embroidery and sewing, so that the girls could help earn their own way, and so that they would be practical and useful women when they left the school. When the girls reached the high school grades it became necessary to find an assistant teacher, and as new children kept coming all the while, the higher girls were used to teach the lower grades. No work in the Philippines has been so successful on such poor support. Very little help has ever come from the American end of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

'Mrs. Laura Crooks Hibbard in The Philippine Presbyterian, October 1920.

CHAPTER XXVI

SOCIAL SERVICE

The final test of worthiness which Jesus gave in the twentyfifth chapter of Matthew is our treatment of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned. More is being done outside of the strictly church organizations for all of these unfortunate classes, than within the Church, though the great well-spring of inspiration for nearly every charitable movement may be traced back to it. Though many fine philanthropies have none of the patent labels which have so often tried to monopolize the spirit of Christ, they are none the less genuine. By their fruits ye shall know them.

ATHLETICS

By their fruits ye shall know that athletics in the Philippines are Christian. They are doing for the physical side of the Filipinos quite as much as schools are doing for their minds. The transformation which has taken place in the ideals regarding beauty and manhood is little short of miraculous. For this change the man who deserves more credit than any other single individual is Mr. Elmer Brown, who, while Physical Director of the Young Men's Christian Association, pioneered the movement for athletics for everybody, for international games, and for scientific training for playground teachers, physical directors, and other workers. It was he who organized the Far Eastern Athletic Association in 1913. This Association has stimulated the play movement, not of the Philippines alone, but also of China and Japan. Mr. Brown made such an international reputation that he was called by the United States Government to organize athletics among American soldiers during the World War.