it seem more remote than it is. We are really only sixty miles from
Malacca.

The drawing-room has a good piano, and many tasteful ornaments, books,
and china--gifts from loving friends and relations in the far off
home--and is as livable as a bachelor would be likely to make it. There
is a billiard table in the corridor. The dining-room, which is reached
by going out of doors, with its red-tiled floor and walls of dark,
unpolished wood, is very pretty. In the middle of the dinner table
there is a reflecting lake for "hot-house flowers;" and exquisite
crystal, menu cards with holders of Dresden china, four classical
statuettes in Parian, with pine-apples, granadillas, bananas,
pomegranates, and a durion blanda, are the "table decorations." The
cuisine is almost too elaborate for a traveler's palate, but plain meat
is rarely to be got, and even when procurable is unpalatable unless
disguised. Curry is at each meal, but it is not made with curry powder.
Its basis is grated cocoa-nut made into a paste with cocoa-nut milk,
and the spices are added fresh. Turtles when caught are kept in a pond
until they are needed, and we have turtle soup, stewed turtle, curried
turtle and turtle cutlets ad nauseam. Fowls are at every meal, but
never plain roasted or plain boiled. The first day there was broiled
and stewed elephant trunk, which tastes much like beef.

Babu, who is always en grand tenue, has taken command of everything and
saves our host all trouble. He carves at the sideboard, scolds the
servants in a stage whisper, and pushes them indignantly aside when
they attempt to offer anything to "his young ladies," reduces Captain
Murray's butler to a nonentity, and as far as he can turns the
Residency into Government House, waiting on us assiduously in our
rooms, and taking care of our clothes. The dinner bell is a bugle.