a Nyonia, or what in Singapore is called a
"mem," told him that his lady had instructed him to discover whether X.
had many more of those silk sarongs for sale.

Lunch was perhaps the first real revelation of life in Java, since it
introduced the traveller to that which a majority of the people seem to
live for (and always sleep after)--the rice-table. This rice-table has
been so often described that it need not be done in detail here; but the
basis, as it were, of this rice-table is, as may be supposed, rice, and
with this foundation in your plate, innumerable dishes of eggs, fish,
meat, etc., are offered by a string of attendants, who expect you to put
some of each on the top of it. Probably this is only a literal and
exaggerated interpretation of a Malay curry, which is incomplete without
the countless little relishes which should accompany it. This particular
dish, or rather function, is seen in its fullest development in the
up-country places, visited later, and the one in Batavia was scarcely a
fair sample, as though X. was unaware of this at the time, its
proportions had evidently been toned down and diminished out of
deference to the cosmopolitan character of the guests, who, probably
like our traveller, had on former occasions given their ignorance away
by asking for more plates and taking each dish seriously, as though it
were a separate course, sent up before its time, at the risk of getting
cold. To a person accustomed to Singapore there was something novel and
cheering about the first meal in the vast dining-hall of this hotel. The
floor was of marble--scrupulously clean--and the Javanese waiters were
dressed in a uniform of white trimmed with red, presenting a pleasing
contrast to the slipshod dirty "boy" of an ordinary hotel, whose habit
it is to clatter round flapping your face and brushing your food with
his long, unclean, hanging sleeves. Though in the native states from
whence X. came it is no uncommon thing to see Malays wait at table, yet
in Singapore, with the exception of Indian servants, it is very seldom
that there are any attendants but Chinese.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the meal was the absence of bread.
This could be procured, when asked for, but was not provided, as it is
elsewhere, as a matter of course, and was regarded as an extra. An
excellent arrangement of this marble hall was that it was permitted to
smoke immediately after lunch. As, availing himself of this, X. smoked