•and station. A rich mandarin, however, loves and
marries her. Her young lover is the most dutiful of
sons, and a good spirit helps him on ; while at the same
time a bad one causes the mandarin heavy losses by sea
and land. The undutiful daughter has her parents driven
from her husband’s gates, where they had come to beg,
while her former lover succours them, and they ultimately
die, blessing him. Eventually the mandarin is degraded,
and the dutiful youth is elevated to his place for some
service he has rendered to one of the emperor’s favourite
ministers. He then makes a speech, telling how good
and clever he has been, and ultimately marries the tiny-
footed daughter of the minister who has befriended him.
Nor does the play finish until his “ poor, but honest
parents ” and the audience are convinced by ocular proof
that a son and heir has been born of the union, a piece
of good fortune for which the rich but wicked mandarin
before him had hoped in vain. The character of the
youth was excellently played throughout by a young
Chinese lady from Hong Kong, and I do not remember
to have seen a male part acted much better by a female
•actress anywhere. So that the Lottie Yenns and Rate
Vaughans of our own stage must look to their laurels, as
-ere long they may possibly have to compete with the
"“ cheap Chinese labour ” of the Eastern mimes.
It was late that night as we drove back to our hotel,
••and such a night as one can see only in the tropics, where
the moonlight is bright enough to read by, and streams
down like a gloriously brilliant bridal veil over sweet-
scented blossoms wet with dew, and the most elegant of
palm-trees, over the gorgeous floral treasures of eastern
gardens, and over the homes of thousands of dusky
brides. The sounds heard during the otherwise still
hours of evening or night are peculiar, the clucking
sound of a lizard in the tree overhead is quite bird-like,
you hear some frog-like croaking in the wet ditch beside
the road, the subdued humming of distant tomtoms
reaches you from the hut of a Hindoo Syce, and the
“ KAYU KUTOH.”
almost mournful cadences of a Javanese prayer chanted
by a party of labourers in a garden-house or field-hut
reach you on the cool breeze. Then comes the boom of
the “ Kayu Kutoh,” * or wooden gong on which the
Malay “ mata mata,” literally “ man with eyes, or
watchman, beats the hour at one of the outlying police-
* This last instrument closely resembles the “ teponaztli, an instrument
still in use by the Indians in the Cordilleras of Mexico, the deep
thudding sound of which may be heard a distance of several miles.