opens from each house, with frequently no more than a few betel-nuts
on sale. The front is decorated with the faded strips of cloth or
paper lamps left over from the last _fiesta_, while the skeleton of
a lamented monkey fixed above the door acts as a charm to keep away
bad luck. A parrakeet swings in the window on a bamboo perch, and
in another window hangs an orchid growing from the dried husk of a
cocoanut. Under the house the loom is situated, where the women weave
fine cloth from _pina_ and banana fibers--and the wooden mortar used
for pounding rice. After the harvest season it is one of the Visayan
customs to inaugurate rice-pounding bees. Relays of young men, stripped
for work, surround the mortar, and, to the accompaniment of guitars,
deliver blows in quick succession and with gradually increasing speed,
according to the measure of the music.

In the cool shade of the _ylang-ylang_ tree a native barber is
intent upon his customer. The customer sits on his haunches while
the operation is performed. When it is finished, all the hair above
the ears and neck will be shaved close, while that in front will be
as long as ever. The beard will not need shaving, as the Filipino
chin at best is hardly more aculeated than a strawberry. The hair,
however, even of the smallest boys grows for some distance down the
cheeks. The Filipino, when he does shave, takes it very seriously,
and attacks the bristles individually rather than collectively.

You will not remain long in a Filipino town without the chance of
witnessing a native funeral. A service of the first class costs
about three hundred _pesos_; but for twenty _pesos_ Padre Pedro will
conduct a funeral of less magnificence. The padre, going to the house
of mourning where the band, the singers, and the candle-bearers are
assembled, engineers the pageant to the church. The dim interior
will be illuminated by flickering candles burned in memory of the
departed soul. Before the altar solemn mass is held, intensified by
the deep tolling of a bell. Led by three acolytes in red and white,
with silver crosses, the procession moves on to the cemetery on
the outskirts of the town. The padre sheltered by a white umbrella,
reads the Latin prayers aloud. A small boy swings the smoking censer,
and the singers undertake a melancholy dirge. The withered body, with
the hands crossed on the breast, clothed all in black, is borne aloft
upon a bamboo litter, mounted with a black box paint