01-033 [Family]
1882.08.25 Calamba
From: Paciano Rizal
To: José Rizal
Rizal’s allowance — Ravages of cholera — Closing of schools at Manila.
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Calamba, 25 August 1882
DEAR BROTHER,
As the curate and Antonino are writing you, I will take advantage of this opportunity to tell you something. Your last letter received here is dated at Barcelona; I don’t know if any letter is missing; it would therefore be desirable that henceforth you number them all. In that letter, among other things, you say that I contact some foreign firm or commercial house from which you can get your allowance regularly. This is good and I’ll do it, though not now, because I cannot go down to Manila on account of my work and other things; but, as soon as I can go there, I’ll try without fail to arrange with one. You who are there will know better what it costs to live there decently, so that I hope you will write the amount of allowance that I ought to send you.
I have many things to tell you but I shall reserve them for the next mail. The only thing I can tell you now is that Calamba, or better Biga, is a veritable Tower of Babel. All the students and non-students, college girls and not college girls are there and for three days and are under observation if they carry the plague on their bodies. Everybody is going home on account of the closing of educational establishment for both sexes. Every province is virtually isolated from the others. The cholera inspires such fear that the court, the civil guard, and the telegraph are very busy.
We are in good health.
Your brother,
PACIANO