,
with the same warning as he gave the fly,--that he was coming back
to collect the price of the meat. His third customer was himself, or
his reflection. Warm, tired, and thirsty from his wanderings, he came
to a well, where he thought he would take a drink. On looking down,
however, he saw a man in the bottom of the well. When Juan shouted
to him and made gestures, the man--or his reflection and the echo of
his own voice--returned some sort of inarticulate sound, and made
the same gestures as Juan. For the third time this sufficed for a
"Yes." So Juan threw the rest of his pork down the well, and said he
would come back for his money.

Now comes the collection, which he found to be quite easy. He
entered a dry-goods store, where he saw a fly on the hand of the
shop-keeper. Juan talked to the fly and demanded his money. It
did not answer: so he began chasing it around the room, sometimes
striking at it when it was on some customer's hand. At last, tired
of the disturbance, the shop-keeper paid him off to get rid of
him. Next Juan came to a garden where there was a pig. With the pig
he encountered the same obstinate silence. He began to chase the pig,
and he beat it whenever he was near enough to hit it. When the owner
of the animal saw what he was doing, and realized that he was crazy,
he paid him off, too. Now, as to his third customer. The reflection
in the pool simply mocked him and made him disgusted. So Juan got a
long pole and stirred the bottom of the well. When he found that this
treatment simply made his customer disappear, he began shouting at the
top of his voice. Finally the owner of the well came; and, to avoid
further disturbance, he also paid him off, for every one could easily
see that the vender was crazy (loco) from the way he talked and acted.

So Juan went home in ecstasy. He received much praise from his father,
who promised to let him sell meat every day; and the poor fellow
gloried in being thus praised.

For other noodle stories of the Filipinos, see our No. 9 and JAFL
20 : 104-106.

TALE 50

JUAN AND HIS PAINTED HAT.

Narrated by Adolfo Scheerer, a Tagalog from Manila, who heard the
story from their native servant some fifteen years ago.

There once lived a man by the name of Juan, who did nothing but fool
people all the time. Once, when he had only seventy pesos left in his
pockets, he determined to resort to the following scheme: he bought
a balangut hat (a very cheap straw