, her scanty raiment scarcely covering her
bony limbs, squatting upon the counter in the midst of _guinimos_,
bananas, and dried fish, and spitting a red pool of betel-juice,
will chatter the day long with the _senora_ in the booth across the
street. The purchaser should not feel delicate at seeing her bare
feet in contact with the spiced bread that he means to buy, nor at
the swarms of flies around the reeking mound of _guinimos_ scraped
up in dirty wooden bowls, and left in the direct rays of the sun.

Dogs, pigs, chickens, and children tumble in the dust. Dejected
Filipino ponies, tethered to the shacks, are waiting for their masters
to exhaust the _tuba_ market. Down the lane a panting carabao, with a
whole family clinging to its back, is slowly coming into town. Another,
covered with the dust of travel, laden with bananas, hemp, and _copra_
from a distant _barrio_, is being driven by a fellow in a _nipa_ hat,
straddling the heavy load. A mountain girl, bareheaded, carrying a
parasol, comes loping in to the _mercado_ on a skinny pony saddled
with a red, upholstered _silla_, with a rattan back and foot-rest,
cinched with twisted hemp.

At night the market-place is lighted up by tiny rush lights, burning
cocoanut-oil or _petrolia_. Here, on a pleasant evening, to the
lazy strumming of guitars, the village population promenades, young
men in white holding each other's hands, and blowing out a cloud of
cigarette smoke; _senoritas_, in their cheap red dresses, shuffling
hopelessly along the road. One of the local characters is entertaining
a street-corner audience with a droll song, while the town-crier,
with his escort of municipal police, announces by the beating of a
drum that a _bandilla_ from the _presidente_ is about to be pronounced.

Here you will find the Filipino in his natural and most playful mood,
as easily delighted as a child. A crowd was always gathered round
the _tuba_ depot at the head of the _mercado_, where the agile
climbers brought the beverage in wooden buckets from the tops of
_copra_-trees. A comical old fellow, Pedro Pocpotoc (a name derived
from chicken language), used to live here, and on moonlight nights,
planting his fat feet on the window-sill, like a droll caricature
of Nero, he would sing Visayan songs to the accompaniment of a cheap
violin. A talkative old baker lived a short way down the street with
his three daughters. They were always busy pounding rice in wooden
mortars with long