ates, should they see him among the people of his adoption,
but the aching solitude beats down one and all of these things; and,
like that eminently sensible man, the Prophet Muhammad, he gets him to
the Mountain, since it is immovable and will not come to him.

Then begins a new life. He must start by learning the language of his
fellows, as perfectly as it is given to a stranger to learn it. That is
but the first step in a long and often a weary march. Next, he must
study, with the eagerness of Browning's Grammarian, every native custom,
every native conventionality, every one of the ten thousand ceremonial
observances to which natives attach so vast an importance. He must grow
to understand each one of the hints and _doubles ententes_, of which
Malays make such frequent use, every little mannerism, sign and token,
and, most difficult of all, every motion of the hearts, and every turn
of thought, of those whom he is beginning to call his own people. He
must become conscious of native Public Opinion, which is often
diametrically opposed to the opinion of his race-mates on one and the
same subject. He must be able to unerringly predict how the slightest of
his actions will be regarded by the natives, and he must shape his
course accordingly, if he is to maintain his influence with them, and to
win their sympathy and their confidence. He must be able to place
himself in imagination in all manner of unlikely places, and thence to
instinctively feel the native Point of View. That is really the whole
secret of governing natives. A quick perception of their Point of View,
under all conceivable circumstances, a rapid process by which a European
places himself in the position of the native, with whom he is dealing,
an instinctive and instantaneous apprehension of the precise manner in
which he will be affected, and a clear vision of the man, his feelings,
his surroundings, his hopes, his desires, and his sorrows,--these, and
these alone, mean that complete sympathy, without which the white man
among Malays, is but as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal.

It does not all come at once. Months, perhaps years, pass before the
exile begins to feel that he is getting any grip upon the natives, and
even when he thinks that he knows as much about them as is good for any
man, the oriental soul shakes itself in its brown casing, and comes out
in some totally unexpected and unlooked-for place, to his no small
mortification and disc