Note 4 — Chapter II · SCHOOL-DAYS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Those that like to go over the first records of great men in search of phenomena foreshadowing something unusual in after-life will never be disappointed here. José mastered his alphabet when he was three years old, and before he was five could read in a Spanish version of the Vulgate from which his mother had taught him at her knee.4 In other ways his debt to her was unusual; she turned his mind in his earliest years toward good literature, in which she had a discerning taste, being for her times and environment of rare learning and college bred in Manila.5 With other accomplishments she knew and loved good poetry, could make it herself, and early taught José to make it. He grew up thus with the advantage of a bilingual background. About him the common speech was Tagalog; his mother made Spanish fairly familiar to his ear.