Page 21 - Malay sketches

THE REAL MALAY

he is not a bigot ; indeed, his tolerance compares
favourably with that of the professing Christian,
when he thinks of these matters at he
and, all,
believes that the absence of hypocrisy is the begin-
ning of religion. He has a sublime faith in God,
the immortality of the soul, a heaven of ecstatic
and a hell of which
earthly delights, punishments,
individual is so confident will not be his own
every
that the idea of its existence no
portion presents
terrors.
Christian missionaries of all denominations have
apparently abandoned the hope of his conversion.
In his the is often beautiful, a
youth, Malay boy
thing of wonderful eyes, eyelashes, and eyebrows,
with a far-away expression of sadness and solemnity,
as though he had left some better place for a com-
pulsory exile on earth.
Those and
eyes, which are extraordinarily large
seem filled with a wonder at all they
clear, pained
see here, and they give the impression of a constant
effort to open ever wider and wider in search of
something they never find. Unlike the child of
Japan, this cherub never looks as if his nurse had
forgotten to wipe his nose. He is treated with
elaborate respect, sleeps when he wishes, and sits
up till any hour of the night if he so desires, eats
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