Bakuko's life was all wet auspices always wrong

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Bakuko's life was all wet auspices always wrong
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 8 (Issue No. 6) June 1928
Year: 1928
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Fulltext: 20 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL June, 1928 detriment, hurt, damage, disservice, ill turn, grievance, prejudice, loss, mischief, disadvantage, drawback, trouble, annoyance, nuisance, moles tation, oppression, persecution, plague, corrupGood, an adverb: aright, well, favorably, in behalf of, in favor of. Suppose you were conjuring up the opposite of good turn, some of these would be apposite: blow, bruise, scratch, wound, mutilation, out rage, spoliation, plunder, pillage, rapine, de struction, dilapidation, havoc, ravage, devasta tion, inroad, sweep, sack, foray, desolation. Next, capability of producing good: goodness, excellence, value, worth, preciousness, estima tion, rareness, exquisiteness, (good qualities), superexcellence, superiority, supereminence, transcendence, perfection.—To be good, etc.; to be superior, etc., to excel, transcend, top, vie, emulate, etc.—To produce good, benefit, etc., to avail, to profit, to benefit, to be beneficial, etc., to confer a benefit, etc., to improve. Now all that should do lots of good, but there is yet more. Goodness, virtue, righteousness, morality, morals, rectitude, correctness, dutifulness, con scientiousness, integrity, probity, uprightness, nobleness.—Merit, worth, worthiness, desert, excellence, credit, self-control, self-conquest, self-government.—Well doing, good actions, good behavior, the discharge (of obligations), fulfillment, or performance of duty; a wellspent life. Roget does not necessarily group synonyms together, indeed he hardly recognizes the syno nym, which may be said hardly to exist in the language. He proffers a thesaurus, a language treasury, and therefore groups words suggesting related ideas. His aim is to display the soughtfor idea in all its colors and shadings, allowing the customer to choose the particular word or phrase precisely matching the thought he has in mind. Roget’s thesaurus,—others which may be equally helpful are essentially copies,—was the work of fifty years, during most of which time he was secretary of the Royal Society. By 1805, he had the work in definite outline; from then until 1852, the date of the first edition in England, it was a mere matter of accretions. But see the application of the scientific mind, for instance in the following luminous statement: "Disrespect is net merely the absence of respect; its signification trenches on the oppo site idea, namely, contempt. In like manner, untruth is not merely the negative of truth; it involves a degree of falsehood. Irreligion, which is properly the want of religion, is understood as being nearly synonymous with impiety." Yes, have a thesaurus; spend occasional half-hours with it. There is a written language and a spoken one. In speaking, fashion decrees such utter unpretentiousness as verges upon the colloquial. But in writing, sense demands lucidity: a command of a language implies reserves which may be instantly called upon. Eschew oratory, one finds no reserves there; it is all blurted out, in a thousand repetitious platitudes and trite phrases. Pursue, rather, descriptive writing, and sometimes practice it; and have at hand a dictionary and a thesaurus— not for vain or pompous style, but for clarity and simplicity. —W. R. LEADERS Men and Women of Taste and Discrimination Choose Hike Shoes when Buying Footwear Bakuko’s Life Was All Wet: Auspices Always Wrong Hike Shoe Factory 286 - San Marcelino - 286 Bakuko was a Sulu Moro who had simply an awful time with life because the auspices were hardly ever right: more often they were right for bad fortune than for good. Take the time when he was courting, for instance, that pretty Boholana. It is true that she was from another island, even that she was a Christian, and old Moro wives mumbled when they met to chew betel-nut and discuss the neighbors that no good would come of Bakuko’s love for Bohol ana; but then she was so je ne sais quoi that Bakuko couldn’t help loving her. And had he not, for her, the evil eye? Had he not dared look boldly at her as she bathed one well-remembered morning in the river? And had she not smiled, and dived into the stream with the yellow patadion flapping around her lissom ankles, and come up smiling again— sure proof that his evil eye had made her his? Why, certainly. All that must be admitted. But what did her willful parents do? They appealed to the auspices and forces of evil, that’s what. They put their opposition into writing, tied the writing around a stone, and threw the stone as far as they could throw it from the stoop of their house. They even made another writing, like the one around the stone, and hid it in a crotch of a balete tree. The natural result was that these writings freed Boholana from the spell of Bakuko’s evil eye, she didn’t love him any more. But he was equal to this. He performed palkasy to win' Boholana back again. He wrote favorite verses from the Koran, burned them and sprinkled the ashes in Boholana’s rice pot, so that it mingled with the rice she boiled and ate. And he got a lock of her hair, and recited verses over it, morning, noon, and night, always ending the holy incantation with the exclamation palkasy, palkasy! That should have been enough to bring her to him in spite of parental opposition. And it would have been, only the old woman sent to clip a lock of Boholana’s hair had been afraid to go up into the house and snip it off, so she had brought back some carabao’s hair instead—grossly and wickedly deceiving Bakuko. Therefore, when the palkasy worked, Boholana did not come stealthily tripping to Bakuko’s house under the forest shade, but a carabao lumbered up and poked its ugly face through Bakuko’s bedroom window! Bakuko would have taken revenge for this, but the faithless auspices were not right. The old woman who brought him the hair lived a little way down the-coast, and when Bakuko put out in his vinta to go there and thresh her within an inch of her miserable life, lo a half rainbow, bangao pokol, shown athwart the prow, and the punitive expedition had forthwith to be abandoned. If it had been a whole rain bow, or if even the half-rainbow had been at the stern of the vinta, this would have meant that Allah approved of a good whipping for deceitful crones, and Bakuko could have gone ahead. Now he had to turn back, because behind the menacing bangao pokol was storm enough to sink a dozen vintas. “Red Line” ___ “Aristo” Motor Oils Best All Ways A Quality Oil For Every Purpose Manufactured by the Union Oil Co. of California and distributed through the Oil Department of PARSONS HARDWARE CO., Inc. I 517 Ongpin SOLE AGENTS Manila, P. I. MANILA, P. I. They had even turned Allah against him, these evil auspices. Anyway, from Boholana’s parents he would have the dowry back. Since there would be no wedding, was he not justly entitled to the return of the dowry? They might keep the pair of goats and the sack of Saigon rice if they wanted them; he would be generous still on account of Boholana. But he should have back the fifteen silver pesos and the bolts of silk for bright new dresses. He certainly should, and he finally did even better, but he had a hard time doing it. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL June, 1928 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 21 The way to Boholana’s house led through the forest, but Bakuko was unafraid; he had his warrior’s weapons with him, kris and kampilan; and he had hadjumuts, appropriate verses from the Koran, embroidered on his garments to secure him from ambush and other lurking dangers of the trail. He had hadjimut hyrannabowat, more precious verses, sown to a piece of cloth hung round his neck, so that if he had the luck to see Boholana, she would love him again and there might be a wedding after all. Finally, he had hadjimut sulaeman, a monitory verse from the Koran, under his tongue, so that in talking with Boholana’s parents he would speak only the Koranic truth and his enthusiasm would not lead him into temptation. He was, in short, all prepared to be delivered from evil; and so he began his journey. But he had hardly got well into the forest when a gruesome old crow croaked ahead of him. It was the auspices again, Bakuko simply had to turn back for that day, which he spent read ing the Koran. But next day he essayed the journey again, and had hardly got to where the crow had turned him back the first day, when a snake rustled out of the undergrowth and wriggled across his path. But, though a worse omen than the croaking crow, Bakuko would have gone on in defiance of the snake if a deer had not now scampered across the path in the opposite direction. The path being thus crisscrossed with evil auspices, again Bakuko turned back. He could confront man, but this obviously supernatural power was too much for him. He waited a few days, started again, and had better luck at last. Along his path the gay kingfisher called, and presently a wild sow and her litter squealed and grunted by. These were the best of auspices. Arrived at Boholana’s house, Bakuko had but to mention the sow and pigs to make the old folks understand that this time he meant business; and so, as they wished to keep the silver pesos and didn’t really mind seeing their daughter decked out in bright Moro silks, they readily consented to the ceremony, and even agreed that it might be a Moham medan one. Bakuko was much pleased, even the hadji hyrannabowat had worked and Boholana again loved him dearly. The chattering old women of the tribe were confounded, their predictions of no good coming of his affair with the pretty Christian were all wrong, all buisit! Of course the old women wouldn’t give in, but what cared Bakuko? Nothing.... until. As he was sleeping contentedly by Boholana on their matrimonio sleeping mat one night, something awoke Bakuko at a most unfortunate moment. Boholana’s pretty head had left her body, and was floating around the room. Ba kuko, transfixed with horror, watched the spectral head until, after an excursion into the moonlight beyond the window, though the window was tight shut, it came back and settled on Boholana’s shoulders again. It all seemed very unreal and impossible, but presently Bo holana was faintly snoring: Bakuko had cer tainly seen the head away from the body, and - • now it was certainly on the body again. There could be no doubt, or hope—not any more. Boholana, sweet and pretty as she was, and apparently gentle docility itself, was never theless a bababula, the most malevolent kind of witches‘in all Sulu, witches who feast only upon human vitals and count babies their dain tiest morsels. Well, much as he loved her, there would now be one less witch. Bakuko steeled himself to Spartan action. When Boholana’s head went marauding in the little neighborhood again, he filled her neck up with sea shells so that the head couldn’t reattach itself to the body. That did for poor Boholana, and Bakuko buried her with brief lamentation. But he, too, was through with life. He girded himself with rattan thongs, twisted them tighter and tighter, getting a maddening high blood pressure by this means, while he appealed to Allah and swore himself by Islamic oaths to sell his life in the annihilation of Christians. To make the auspices right, now that he was a juramentado, he acquired a manik soliman, making him invulnerable to bullets and bayonets. He was The Power That Moves Them All: The Bank! The roar of industry—steel-boned sky scrapers—powerful locomotives—luxurious ocean - liners — long, sinewy bridges — all forged at the golden anvil of the Bank Let this Bank be your Bank! Peoples Bank and Trust Company "Your Bank” N. E. MULLEN, President by way of becoming the leader of a notorious band of Sulu juramentados against the Ameri canos; except that in the first encounter the manik soliman and his faith in it made him take an exposed position and dare the soldiers in khaki to do their worst, whereupon a sharp shooter simply took one shot and finished Ba Seven Per Cent “Foreigns” Take Fifteen Billions Of American Cash Since 1915: Still Going Strong Up to the period of the Great War foreigners bought American bonds, now the process is re versed and Americans are buying foreign securities with their usual immoderateness about every thing, since they have heaps and heaps more money than they can use at home. The movement is interesting, and the Journal reproduces Charles F. Speare’s account of it from the April Atlantic, pp 76-78, inviting attention to two significant facts: first, seven per cent is a withering rate for money, but lower than prevailing rates in the Philippines; second, Holland borrowed freely from the United States at this rate to develop East-India Holland, but is now financing herself, and Czechoslovakia is retiring a 7-1 '2-per-cent loan from the United States with a 5-per-cent domestic loan, 13 years ahead of time. The Journal doesn’t know anything about it, but it suspects that the tax levies governments now make upon every chap’s investments are reflected in interest rates, and that seven per cent is not the enormity it was of old; while it is evident that when a people does get the use of money at this astounding rate, and buckles down to work with it, domestic resources soon make retirement of the costly loan feasible.—ED. AMERICANS IN THE FOREIGN MARKET By CHARLES F. SPEARE The American investor, adventuring for the first time on a large scale in the foreign bond market, is no longer a pioneer in a field of capital risks and of unknown values. He has not yet, however, advanced beyond the stage of an investing dilettante in his pursuit of safety and 7 per cent in the securities of European and South American countries. The episodes in the chapter of American financial history that has to do with present holdings of nearly SI5,000,000,000 of dollar credits of one kind or another are four in number. They cover a period of twelve years, the first dating from October 1915, when the AngloFrench 5-per-cent external loan for $500,000,000 was timidly offered in the United States. Quickly following this issue were three loans, aggregating S800,000,000, made to Great Britain and secured by collateral in the form of inter national investments. Within fifteen months American capital absorbed $1,300,000,000 of French and English obligations at a fair rate of interest and with prompt payment plus a small profit on the day of maturity, the last of these notes falling due in 1921. kuko off forever, relieving him from any further anxiety about the auspices, which had always given him a bad break. But Allah no doubt gave Bakuko his reward. So it is written in the Koran. The above story embraces the principal Sulu superstitions.—Eil. The second of the episodes concerned Russia, in 1916 a wavering ally of France and England and in need of funds. It was brief and unpleas ant. The record of it is in the files of many banks and in those of the State Department. It cost the American investor fully S100.000.000 —some say much more. Episode number three was the strangest and most expensive of all—a study in investment, or, rather, speculative psychology. The mass of quick-and-liberal-profit-requiring American investors moved on Germany and gorged them selves on German mark securities. The pre-war loans that had ranked with British consols and French rentes as premier investments, munic ipal obligations, and even German currency were purchased at a daily rate that determined the fluctuations of the foreign exchanges. In the debacle that came at the end of a three-year spree Americans found themselves with reams of paper and a loss of ,$500,000,000 to charge off in their income-tax reports. The fourth episode, and the one with which we are most concerned, occurred in the autumn of 1924. It was the sequel to the Dawes Plan, which had been promulgated a few weeks earlier. Its central feature was a loan of $110,000,000 at IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL