I didn't understand Tagalog very well then, but I was, soon confessing the women, and we understood one another and they came to like me so well that three years later, when I was transferred to another and larger town, made vacant by the death of the native curate, all fell to weeping, they heaped gifts upon me, they escorted me with music--" "But that only goes to show--" "Wait, wait! Don't be so hasty! My successor remained a shorter time, and when he left he had more attendance, more tears, and more music.

Yet he had been more given to whipping and had raised the fees in the parish to almost double." "But you will allow me--" "But that isn't all.

I stayed in the town of San Diego twenty years and it has been only a few months since I left it." Here he showed signs of chagrin.
"Twenty years, no one can deny, are more than sufficient to get acquainted with a town.

San Diego has a population of six thousand souls and I knew every inhabitant as well as if I had been his mother and wet-nurse.

I knew in which foot this one was lame, where the shoe pinched that one, who was courting that girl, what affairs she had had and with whom, who was the real father of the child, and so on--for I was the confessor of every last one, and they took care not to fail in their duty.