nity, kindly provides a simple
"tiffin" as an alternative to this Gargantuan repast. Afternoon tea is
served in the verandah, and at eight o'clock the Dutch contingent,
having slept off the effects of the rice table, prepares with renewed
energies to attack a heavy dinner. New Year's Eve is celebrated by a
very bombardment of fireworks from the Chinese _campong_, and crowds
hasten to the fine Roman Catholic church for Benediction, Te Deum, and
an eloquent, though to me incomprehensible, Dutch sermon. Crisp muslins
and uncovered heads for the women, and white linen garb for the men,
are the rule in church, for the slatternly undress of _sarong_ and
pyjamas is happily inadmissible within the walls of the sanctuary,
where the fair fresh faces and neat array compose a pleasing picture
which imagination would fail to evolve from the burlesque ugliness of
the slovenly deshabille wherewith the Dutch colonist disguises every
claim to beauty or grace. On alluding to the shock experienced by this
grotesque travesty of native garb, a Dutch officer asserts that there
are in reality but few Dutch ladies in Java of pure racial stock, for
one unhappy result of remoteness from European influence is shown by
the gradual merging of the Dutch colonists into the Malay race by
intermarriage. Exile to Java was made financially easy and attractive
by the Dutch Government, but it was for the most part a permanent
separation from the mother country, and a long term of years
necessarily elapsed before the colonial planter could even return for a
short visit to his native land. The overwhelming force of public
opinion against mixed marriages, and the consequent degeneration of
type, from a union which lowers one of the contracting parties without
raising the other, beats but faintly against these remote shores, cut
off from associations which mould and modify the crudities of
individual thought in regions swept by the full tide of contemporary
life. The idea of welding European and Asiatic elements into one race,
as a defence against external aggression, possesses a superficial
plausibility, but ages of historical experiment only confirm the
unalterable truth of the poetic dictum that

East is East, and West is West,
And never the two shall meet.
Until they stand on either hand,
At God's great Judgment Seat!

The sudden rise of an Oriental race to the position of a great
world-power, and the apprehensions of coming struggle