Page 235 - Malay sketches

WITH A CASTING-NET

rather that communion as of the members of an
old Scotch but and are
clan, respect courtesy
characteristic of the race, a prized legacy which it
is not yet considered a sign of either independence
or good manners to despise. People of the same
and children and
class, rajas chiefs, parents,
brothers and sisters, speak to each other with
studied deference and never forget the little distinc-
tions that mark fine shades of rank or age. Boys
and girls are as careful in the observance of these
courtesies as are their elders.
Education and contact with Europeans will alter
all this, and in the next century there will be more
equality and probably less politeness and fraternity.
But then also there will be no royal preserves, no
class privileges, and no State junketings where
noble and meet in
peasant generous rivalry of skill
with a single desire to snatch from the toil, the
disappointments, and the sorrows of life one week
of pleasure wherein individual joy may grow
greater in the knowledge that it is shared by many.
Future possibilities do not disturb our friends,
"
whose guiding principle is rather insufficient
for the day is the pleasure thereof." They have
attacks of hatred and gloom, and then they kill,
if the desire is strong enough, but these fits
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