CHAPTER I

My Birth and Earliest Years in Kalamba

I was born on Wednesday, the nineteenth of June, 1861. It was a few

days before the full of the moon. I found myself in a village. I had

some slight notions of the morning sun and of my parents. That is as

much as I can recall of my baby days.

The training which I received from my earliest infancy is perhaps

what formed my habits. I can recall clearly my first gloomy nights,

passed on the azotea of our house. They seem as yesterday! They were

nights filled with the poetry of sadness and seem near now because

at present my days are so sad. On moonlight nights, I took my supper

on the azotea. My nurse, who was very fond of me, used to threaten

to leave me to a terrible but imaginary being like the bogey of the

Europeans if I did not eat.

I had nine sisters and a brother. Our father was a model parent. He

gave us the education which was suitable in a family neither rich

nor poor. He was thrifty. By careful saving, he was able to build

a stone house. He also bought another house; and he put up a nipa

cottage on our plot of irrigated ground. The cottage was shaded by

bananas and trees.

At nightfall, my mother had us all say our prayers together. Then

we would go to the azotea or to a window to enjoy the moonlight;

and my nurse would tell us stories. Sometimes sad and sometimes gay,

nurse's stories were always oriental in their imagination. In these

stories, dead people, gold, and plants on which diamonds grew were

all mixed together.

When I was four years of age, my little sister Concha died, and for

the first time I cried because of love and sorrow. Till then I had

shed tears only for my own faults, which my loving, prudent mother

well knew how to correct.

I learned to write in my own village. My father looked after my

education. He paid an old man, who had been his schoolmate, to teach

me the first steps in Latin. This teacher lived in our house till he

died, five months later. He had been in almost perfect health and it

was at the moment of death that he received extreme unction.

In June of 1868, I went to Manila with my father. That was just after

the birth of Trinidad, the third sister younger than myself. We went in

a casco which turned out to be a clumsy boat. I shall not try to tell

how happy I was at each new stop on the banks of the Pasig. Beside

this same river, a few years later, I was to be very sad. We went

to Cainta, Taytay, and Antipolo, and then to Manila. In Santa Ana I

visited my eldest sister, Saturnina, who at that time was a student

in La Concordia College. Then I returned to my village and remained

until 1870.