pall from repetition, and is otherwise liable to be driven into the ground. He will
ask for the same story, or the same jest time after time; prefers that it should be
told in the same manner, and in the same words; and will laugh in the same
place, with equal zest, at each repetition, just as do little children among
ourselves. A similar failure to appreciate the eternal fitness of things, causes a
Malay Râja, when civilised, to hang seven copies of the same unlovely
photograph around the walls of his sitting-room.
Meanwhile, the women-folk had come from far and near, to help to prepare the
feast, and the men, having previously done the heavy work of carrying the water,
hewing the firewood, jointing the meat, and crushing the curry stuff, they were
all busily engaged in the back premises of the house, cooking as only Malay
women can cook, and keeping up a constant babble of shrill trebles, varied by an
occasional excited scream of direction from one of the more senior women
among them. The younger and prettier girls had carried their work to the door of
the house, and thence were engaging at long range in the game of 'eye play,'—as
the Malays call it,—with the youths of the village, little heeding the havoc they
were making in susceptible male breasts, whose wounds, however, they would
be ready enough to heal, as occasion offered, with a limitless generosity.
The bride, of course, having being dressed in her best, and loaded with gold
ornaments, borrowed from many miles around, which had served to deck every
bride in the district ever since any one could remember, was left seated on the
gĕta, or raised sleeping platform, in the dimly lighted inner apartments, there to
await the ordeal known to Malay cruelty as sanding. The ceremony that bears
this name, is the one at which the bride and bridegroom are brought together for
the first time. They are officially supposed never to have seen one another
before, though no Malay who respects himself ever allows his fiancée to be
finally selected, until he has crept under her house, in the night time, and
watched her through the bamboo flooring, or through the chinks in the wattled
walls. They are led forth by their respective relations, and placed side by side
upon a dais, prepared for the purpose, where they remain seated for hours, while
the guests eat a feast in their presence, and thereafter chant verses from the
Kurân. During this ordeal they must sit motionless, no matter how their cramped
legs may ache and throb, and their eyes must remain downcast, and fixed upon
their hands, which, scarlet with henna, lie motionless one on each knee. Malays,
who have experienced this, tell me that it is very trying, and I can well believe it,
the more so, since it is a point of honour for the man to try to catch an occasional
glimpse of his fiancée out of the corner of his eyes, without turning his head a