Page 22 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES

when he is hungry, has no toys, is never whipped,
and ever cries.
hardly
Until he is fifteen or sixteen, this atmosphere of
a better world remains about him. He is often
studious even, and duly learns to read the Koran
in a language he does not understand.
Then, well then, from sixteen to twenty-five or
later he is to be avoided. He takes his pleasure,
sows his wild oats like youths of a higher civilisa-
tion, is extravagant, open-handed, gambles, gets
runs with his and
into debt, away neighbour's wife,
asserts himself. Then follows a
generally period
when he either adopts this path and pursues it, or,
more commonly, he weans himself gradually from
an indulgence that has not altogether realized his
and under the advice of older
expectation, if, men,
he seeks and obtains a position of credit and use-
fulness in society from which he begins at last to
earn some profit, he will, from the age of forty,
probably develop into an intelligent man of miserly
and rather grasping habits with some one little pet
indulgence of no very expensive kind.
The Malay girl-child is not usually so attractive
in appearance as the boy, and less consideration is
shown to her. She runs wild till the time comes
her in a that is to when
for investing garment, say