Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/173

Rh paper man. The Manila newspaper man is a singular genus. Always he has talent; sometimes more than that. But of course there's always something the matter. This something is what makes him so interesting. And it leads, also, to a certain conventionality in intercourse with him. For instance, to a Manila newspaper man you never mention the Past. There is no past. He is supposed to have sprung like Venus from the sea, full-panoplied—with his education, his talent, his gentle scepticism—right on the Escolta. That's the rule.

I knew the rule; so if I broke it, it shows merely that my awakened curiosity was too much for my savoir faire. I wanted to know, that's all. I searched for and found his haunt.

Every evening, after his work, he crossed over to the Metropole. He had a queer, apologetic way of progressing, with his right side ahead of his left, as if ceaselessly jostled by an imaginary crowd. Gently, with that sideways motion, he shuffled into the big room and made for a table in the corner of the veranda. He was always very cleanly dressed in white, unstarched, which I suspected was the result of his own industry in his little back room; but his shoes were down by the heels, which added greatly to the general humility of his appearance. Carefully he placed his chair at a certain distance, known of