less outside their own
pot-bound provinces. Here was a labour outlet, a door to full dinners,
through which men--yellow men with pigtails--were pouring by the ten
thousand, while in Bengal the cultured native editor was shrieking over
"atrocities" committed in moving a few hundred souls a few hundred miles
into Assam.

No. VI

OF THE WELL-DRESSED ISLANDERS OF SINGAPUR AND THEIR DIVERSIONS; PROVING
THAT ALL STATIONS ARE EXACTLY ALIKE. SHOWS HOW ONE CHICAGO JEW AND AN
AMERICAN CHILD CAN POISON THE PUREST MIND.

"We are not divided,
All one body we--
One in hope and doctrine,
One in Charity."

When one comes to a new station the first thing to do is to call on the
inhabitants. This duty I had neglected, preferring to consort with
Chinese till the Sabbath, when I learnt that Singapur went to the
Botanical Gardens and listened to secular music.

All the Englishmen in the island congregated there. The Botanical
Gardens would have been lovely at Kew, but here, where one knew that
they were the only place of recreation open to the inhabitants, they
were not pleasant. All the plants of all the tropics grew there
together, and the orchid-house was roofed with thin battens of
wood--just enough to keep off the direct rays of the sun. It held
waxy-white splendours from Manila, the Philippines, and tropical
Africa--plants that were half-slugs, drawing nourishment apparently from
their own wooden labels; but there was no difference between the
temperature of the orchid-house and the open air; both were heavy,
dank, and steaming. I would have given a month's pay--but I have no
month's pay--for a clear breath of stifling hot wind from the sands of
Sirsa, for the darkness of a Punjab dust-storm, in exchange for the
perspiring plants, and the tree-fern that sweated audibly.

Just when I was most impressed with my measureless distance from India,
my carriage advanced to the sound of slow music, and I found myself in
the middle of an Indian station--not quite as big as Allahabad, and
infinitely prettier than Lucknow. It overlooked the gardens that sloped
in ridge and hollow below; and the barracks were set in much greenery,
and there was a mess-house that suggested long and cooling drinks, and
there walked round about a British band. It was just We Our Noble
Selves. In the centre was the pretty _Memsahib_ with light hair and
fascinating manners, and the plump little _Memsahib_ that talks to
everybody and is