[Gutenberg 13392] • A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

On a warm July day Mary Fee set out from Folsom Dock, San Francisco. She was on the transport Buford. A group of old and young women were headed out to educate the children of the Philippines. The Thomasites was a group of about five hundred pioneer American teachers sent by the U.S. government to the Philippines in August 1901. The story begins, "We passed the Golden Gate just as our own luncheon gong sounded, and the Buford was rolling to the heave of the outside sea as we sat down to our meal. At our own particular table we were eight-eight nice old (and young) maid schoolteachers. Some of us were plump and some were woefully thin. One was built on heroic lines of bone, and those sinners from Radcliffe were pretty. Toward the end of luncheon the Buford began to roll and pitch and otherwise behave herself most unbecoming, and my room-mate, declining to finish her luncheon, fled to the deck, where the air was fresher. Feeling no qualms myself, and secretly triumphing in her disillusion, I followed with her golf cape and rug, of which she had been too engrossed to think. "