But lest the little pig who stays at home may really starve to death, the world sometimes indulges him a little by letting the market go to him, and never have I seen a market more picturesque and more self-possessed than one of this sort that visited our steamer as she lay anchored in the harbor of Manila.
All about us during the night had crept Filipino lighters, their gunwales capped with low-arched mats. They hugged the steamer like a brood of younglings waiting for their food. They were to receive the cargo of boxes and canned goods from New York and other markets of the world.
It was still cool. A native Filipino woman squatted on the ridge of a lighter top between two men. She was enjoying her morning cigarette. As she caught my gaze her face beamed flirtatiously. Then and there I tried my tongue for the first time in the real use of Spanish, and failed. As the morning advanced, children crept from the darkness of the covered lighters; charcoal pails were fanned into a glow like that of the dawn; and roosters, tied to the boats by one leg with a string, crowed, their contempt, protest, or indifference to a gluttonous and unjust world.
As the hour of breakfast's needs arrived, a thin, long canoe came up, insinuating its way among the many more capacious crafts, quietly, slowly, like a thing just stirring with the new day. On its narrow bottom flopped dozens of little fish in agony, dying of too much air. They looked like so many bars of silver when they lay dead. A basket of bananas and a few simple vegetables comprised the rest of the stock of these aquatic tradespeople, this man and his woman. She squatted comfortably, looking from side to side for customers, while he pushed the canoe along with easy strokes. They did not cry their wares, and handed their stores out as though known to all for fair dealing and fearless of competition. Thus with the freshness of morning air they stimulated this little world to action.
By noon that day I was slipping through narrow streets, avoiding the moldy shops of the main street, seeking out the men and women who make life interesting. The coolness of the morning was gone, crowded out by steaming noon. The casual, gift-like manners of those two aquatic traders was now a thing not even to expect, for I was in the midst of civilized trade. Unexpectedly, I came upon the public market.
What a different world! The hand of the law was in evidence. Here, despite the general confused appearance, the concrete drains and stone tables gave an assurance of at least periodical cleansing. Here the laws of barter held men tied to fair dealing, as the roosters were tied to those lighters. Venders make a mad dash for freedom through cheating, but were jerked back to honesty by the bargain-hunter who watches the scales and knows the laws. Values are measured by the size of the pupil or the intensity of the gaze; if eagerness is manifest, up goes the price.
A Buddhist, looking upon a market like this, if he were unaccustomed to pagan ways, would shrink from the sight as we would at a cannibal feast. Here the world was calmly cruel. All the things we eat lay in their naked ghastliness,—the thin streams of blood, the bulging eyes of little creatures, the stiff inflexibility of limbs once quick and supple. And the men and women were unconsciously affected by the scene.
For nothing stimulates the snarling quarrelsomeness of human beings more than the sight of food or the fear of imposition. The appeals of the sellers were mingled with the bargainings and bickerings of the buyers, a competition among both to best one another. Two women stood over a fish-bin engaged in a matching of wits that might well have been envied by filibustering senators. The debate was over a tray of tiny fish.
FIJIAN VILLAGE
One is content with its peaceful aspects