ring for their toes.
Squatting right in the way of all passers is a Chinese travelling restaurant that
looks like two flour barrels, one filled with drawers, the other containing a small
charcoal fire. The old cookee, with his queue tied neatly up about his shaven
head, takes a variety of mixtures from the drawers,—bits of dried fish, seaweed,
a handful of spaghetti, possibly a piece of shark’s fin, or better still a lump of
bird’s nest, places them in the kettle, as he yells from time to time, “Machen,
machen” (eating, eating).
Next to the Arab booth is a Chinese lamp shop, then a European dry-goods store,
an Armenian law office, a Japanese bazaar, a foreign consulate.
A babble of strange sounds and a jargon of languages salute the astonished boy’s
ears.
In the broad well-paved streets about him a Malay syce, or driver, is trying to
urge his spotted Deli pony, which is not larger than a Newfoundland dog, in
between a big, lumbering two-wheeled bullock-cart, laden with oozing bags of
vile-smelling gambier, and a great patient water buffalo that stands sleepily
whipping the gnats from its black, almost hairless hide, while its naked driver is
seated under the trees in the square quarrelling and gambling by turns.
The gharry, which resembles a dry-goods box on wheels, set in with latticed
windows, smashes up against the ponderous hubs of the bullock-cart. The meek-
eyed bullocks close their eyes and chew their cuds, regardless of the fierce
screams of the Malay or the frenzied objurgations of their driver.
But no one pays any attention to the momentary confusion. A party of Jews
dressed in robes of purple and red that sweep the street pass by, without giving a
glance at the wild plunging of the half-wild pony. A Singhalese jeweller is
showing his rubies and cat’s-eyes to a party of Eurasian, or half-caste clerks, that
are taking advantage of their master’s absence from the godown to come out into
the court to smoke a Manila cigarette and gossip. The mottled tortoise-shell
comb in the vender’s black hair, and his womanish draperies, give him a
feminine aspect.
An Indian chitty, or money-lender, stands talking to a brother, supremely