Note 1 — To my Muse

On Sundays Rizal fenced at Juan Luna’s house with his distinguished artist-countryman, or, while the latter was engaged with Ventura, watched their play. It was on one of these afternoons that the Tagalog story of “The Monkey and the Tortoise”1 was hastily sketched as a joke to fill the remaining pages of Mrs. Luna’s autograph album, in which she had been insisting Rizal must write before all its space was used up. A comparison of the Tagalog version with a Japanese counterpart was published by Rizal in English, in Trübner’s Magazine, suggesting that the two people may have had a common origin. This study received considerable attention from other ethnologists, and was among the topics at an ethnological conference.