anda and pink
hibiscus bushes, the clump of Eucharist lilies, the great trailing
masses of orchids that hung among the red flowers of the stately
flamboyant tree by the green hedge, joined to make me forget the
midwinter date on the calendar. The time seemed in my half-dream July
in New York or August in Washington.

Ah Minga, the "boy" in flowing pantalets and stiffly starched blouse,
came silently along the wide veranda, with a cup of tea and a plate
of opened mangosteens. I roused myself, and the dreams of sleighbells
and ice on window-panes, that had been fleeting through my mind at
the first mention of New Year's Day by the syce, vanished.

Ah Minga, too, mentioned, as he placed the cool, pellucid globes
before me, "To-mollow New Year Dlay, Tuan!"

On Christmas Day, Ah Minga had presented the mistress with the gilded
counterfeit presentment of a Joss. The servants, one and all, from Zim,
the cookee, to the wretched Kling dhobie (wash-man), had brought some
little remembrance of their Christian master's great holiday.

In respecting our customs, they had taken occasion to establish one of
their own. They had adopted New Year's as the day when their masters
should return their presents and good will in solid cash.

At midnight we were awakened by a regular Fourth of July
pandemonium. Whistles from the factories, salvos from Fort Canning,
bells from the churches, Chinese tom-toms, Malay horns, rent the
air from that hour until dawn with all the discords of the Orient
and a few from Europe. By daylight the thousands of natives from all
quarters of the peninsula and neighboring islands had gathered along
the broad Ocean Esplanade of Singapore in front of the Cricket Club
House, to take part in or watch the native sports by land and sea.

The inevitable Chinaman was there, the Kling, the Madrasman, the Sikh,
the Arab, the Jew, the Chitty, or Indian money-lender,--they were all
there, many times multiplied, unconsciously furnishing a background
of extraordinary variety and picturesqueness.

At ten o'clock the favored representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race
took their place on the great veranda of the Cricket Club, and gave
the signal that we would condescend to be amused for ten hours. Then
the show commenced. There were not over two hundred white people to
represent law and civilization amid the teeming native population.

In the centre of the beautiful esplanade or playground rose the heroic
statue of Sir Stamf