On the following morning two of the padres from the _convento_ returned our call, and evinced the most satisfying interest in all that was shown them aboard ship. Everything delighted them, and they even gathered up the long skirts of their cassocks, and grasped their birettas firmly in one hand, preparatory to descending into the noisome cable-tanks, should it be demanded of them. When the ship had been inspected, we all returned to the quarter-deck, where refreshments were served, the while we showed our guests some photographs of America.
As Manila had heretofore represented to these native priests the apotheosis of urban magnitude, it may well be imagined how delighted they were with their first glimpse of our larger cities. How excitedly they talked and gesticulated over the elevated railways and cable-cars; the height of the buildings; the suspension bridges; the magnificent private residences, which at first it was hard to convince them were not in reality hotels; the theatres, parks, and churches, though they shook their heads sadly at so many of Protestant denomination. When, however, they were told how many Catholic churches were in New York alone, they regained their lost interest, and grew more enthusiastic than ever, while the English-speaking padre, in his excitement, fairly screamed his uncertain vocabulary in our direction, though when he addressed his confrères in Spanish his voice was of normal register.
A few days later, as an evidence of their enjoyment aboard ship, the padres sent each of us a silver medal of the Santo Niño and a history of the image written in Spanish, _con superior permiso_; a lithographic picture of the Holy Child in its shrine, giving but a faint idea of its appearance; and a queer stone jar, the shape, if not the size of those in which the forty thieves were hidden. These jars were full of those delicious pastry cakes already mentioned, _ojaldres_, they are called, made by the sisters of the Convento Maria Natividad de Albero. Rich the cookies were, and crisp, fairly melting on the tongue, but each one, wrapped in its protecting bit of tissue-paper, was "a gastronomic delusion and a dyspeptic snare," to be treated as were the forty thieves themselves by the implacable Ali Baba.