Each study in this volume presents some idea, illustrated by a fact told without
artifice, but with an elective sureness of knowledge. The story of Tukang
Burok’s love, related in the old man’s own words, conveys the very breath of
Malay thought and speech. In “His Little Bill,” the coolie, Lim Teng Wah,
facing his debtor, stands very distinct before us, an insignificant and tragic
victim of fate with whom he had quarrelled to the death over a matter of seven
dollars and sixty-eight cents. The story of “The Schooner with a Past” may be
heard, from the Straits eastward, with many variations. Out in the Pacific the
schooner becomes a cutter, and the pearl-divers are replaced by the Black-birds
of the Labour Trade. But Mr. Hugh Clifford’s variation is very good. There is a
passage in it—a trifle—just the diver as seen coming up from the depths, that in
its dozen lines or so attains to distinct artistic value. And, scattered through the
book, there are many other passages of almost equal descriptive excellence.
Nevertheless, to apply artistic standards to this book would be a fundamental
error in appreciation. Like faith, enthusiasm, or heroism, art veils part of the
truth of life to make the rest appear more splendid, inspiring, or sinister. And
this book is only truth, interesting and futile, truth unadorned, simple and
straightforward. The Resident of Pahang has the devoted friendship of Ûmat,
the punkah-puller, he has an individual faculty of vision, a large sympathy, and
the scrupulous consciousness of the good and evil in his hands. He may as well
rest content with such gifts. One cannot expect to be, at the same time, a ruler of
men and an irreproachable player on the flute.
A HAPPY WANDERER—1910
Converts are interesting people. Most of us, if you will pardon me for betraying
the universal secret, have, at some time or other, discovered in ourselves a
readiness to stray far, ever so far, on the wrong road. And what did we do in our
pride and our cowardice? Casting fearful glances and waiting for a dark
moment, we buried our discovery discreetly, and kept on in the old direction, on
that old, beaten track we have not had courage enough to leave, and which we
perceive now more clearly than before to be but the arid way of the grave.
The convert, the man capable of grace (I am speaking here in a secular sense), is
not discreet. His pride is of another kind; he jumps gladly off the track—the
touch of grace is mostly sudden—and facing about in a new direction may even
attain the illusion of having turned his back on Death itself.