ELLY Klissmas!" It was a mod

est little voice with a fascinatingly bad pronunciation that awoke me with a reminder that there could be such a thing as a "Melly Klissmas" amid the spiced breezes and under the burnished dome of the equatorial sky.

I rubbed my eyes: "Merry Christmas, Ah Minga! Bring tea and fruit."

Then I opened the net door of my mosquito-house and went to the window. My thermometer registered eighty degrees in the shade. A great, wide-spreading, flamboyant tree just outside the window dazzled my eyes with its gorReprinted in part trom the Youth's Companion.

geous, flame-colored burden of flowers, and effectually brought me back to a sense that I was to spend a Christmas amid fruits and flowers, green grass and lotus-covered streams.

All the strangeness and newness of the Asiatic scenes about me, which had somewhat lost their edge during the last year, came back to me as I reflected on the far different scenes of my former Christmas days. I experienced a renewal of the mingled bewilderment and delight that I felt when I gazed for the first time from the deck of the great Peninsula and Oriental steamship on the long, stone-bound Bund, that enclosed a harbor crowded with the strange shipping of China and India. It had a background of massed tropical foliage that but half-hid the towering mina

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rets of a Mohammedan mosque, the slender spire of an English cathedral, the gilded dome of a Brahmin temple. These rose from the wilderness of buildings and streets thronged with 'rickshas and bullock-carts, Chinese coolies and Hindoo merchants that constitute the great mart of Singapore, once the home of the fierce Malayan pirate.

Another timid knock at the door. I responded crossly in the lingua Franca of the East, 66 Apa lu mau?" (What do you want?)

Ah Minga, who despised Malay, and would only speak it to the servants, answered, "Kling man bottomside hase got many Klissmas."

I knew this curious pigeon-English phrase meant that there was a Hindoo down-stairs who had brought me many Christmas presents.

I pulled on a suit of white linen and descended to find Mohammed Sinupula standing in front of an array of baskets containing a strange mélange of offerings. One held a leg of Shanghai mutton; another, a peck of mangoes fresh from Bangkok; another, pisangs, or bananas, and pomeloes; another, a box of Manilla. cigars; and another, mandarin oranges.

The mistress had not been forgotten, for Mohammed had brought her two bottles of Florida water from our own country, a big English almond cake, and a tin box of sweets. He bowed to the earth and prayed that "the heaven-born will accept these little gifts from his most humble servant Sinupula, son of Mohammed, as a Christmas greeting." Then he prayed that "the fare of the great American sahib may be as odorous as sandalwood." He salaamed again and walked with a stately tread off the veranda.

His tall, graceful form, his kindly, bronzed face, his mild black eyes, his strange, flowing garments, his plaited,

conical grass hat and red sandals, imprinted a picture on my memory that will stand unique among other Christmas scenes that are treasured there.

Closely following Sinupula, came others to whom I had been kind, or who were in my employ. They bore fruits, homemade candies, and cakes. They were all dressed in their own peculiar Oriental costume; the Malay with his sarong tied loosely about his waist and falling like a skirt about his legs; the Tamil wrapped in a half-dozen yards of pure white gauze, with his nose and ears filled with brass studs; the Chinaman looking cool and clean in his voluminous white pantalettes and stiffly-starched jacket; the Ceylon lace merchant with his long, jet-black hair held primly back in place by a circular tortoise-shell comb.

They one and all accepted the fact, without murmur or questioning, that December the twenty-fifth of each year is a time of giving presents to their masters. To them it is probably a heathen custom; but they bow gracefully to it, and put their masters to shame by the punctiliousness with which they observe it.

We went to church at half-past ten. The weather was intensely hot, and yet we drove to the great English cathedral on the Esplanade, and braved the blinding glare of the Malayan sun, just to try and keep up a simulation of the Christmas we observe in distant homes. The usual hours for worship are half-past six in the morning and half-past five in the evening.

Our ordinary garb of pure white linen and cool cork helmets we had discarded for suits of woolen and black derbys,so hard did we try to delude ourselves into familiar Christmas feeling. The night before, on Christmas Eve, I saw a hundred or more men-rich ship-owners, high officials- try to do the same thing.

Their wives were at home in England

or Germany, recuperating after a long term in the Orient, or perchance some had gone home to die. Those that had not wives were younger sons and brothers. All had met at the club to spend Christmas Eve.

In the center of the room was a tree, a casuarina, decorated with candles, toys, candies, and penny balloons; just such a tree as they would have gone into raptures over in their childhood. At its foot were the presents.

An orchestra played outside under the wide-spreading arms of a great baniantree, and spotlessly-dressed Chinese "boys" circled about with refreshments. Songs were sung; every one laughed and cheered and slapped each other on the shoulder, and yet every one knew that it was a pitiful failure.

Between laughs faces grew grave, and far-away looks filled tired eyes. They were wondering what wives, mothers, and friends, were doing on that night in the blessed land of the snows.

The great English cathedral is but a copy of its sisters in London and New York; as unsuitable in its Gothic grandeur for the hot winds of the Torrid Zone as for the cold winds of the Arctic. Its great vaulted roof, ponderous pillars, and long, narrow chancel, protect you from nothing save a sight of the face of the kind old bishop of Singapore and Sarawak, or the sound of his pleasant voice.

The one innovation that has broken the cast-iron sameness of the Episcopalian temple is the great white punkahs which swished back and forth through the hot air above our heads. The punkah is the sign of the East, from Port Said to Yokohama.

The church was decorated with maidenhair ferns in abundance, great, pure eucharist lilies, and delicate dove orchids.

A brilliant green lizard with a long,

curving, pointed tail glided silently down the aisle and peered into and then crawled into the soft felt hat of his honor the chief justice. His honor only smiled. It paused but a moment and then departed on its journey among the worshipers.

No one felt any alarm. It stopped in front of a little English miss with golden hair and a great blue sash, and gazed at her from head to foot with its jeweled eyes. The little miss took no more notice of it than an American girl would of a fly. Then it wandered back and found a resting-place on the venerable archdeacon's prayer-book. Another lizard, with red and yellow stripes, came out and chased the green lizard into the organ-loft.

When we returned to our bungalow, we found many Christmas greetings awaiting us. They were covered with pictures of snow-angels and the aurora borealis. Outside a great ripe papaya dropped to the ground, and the luscious odor of its pink meat was wafted up amid our contemplation of the frigid cards.

A heavy rain came down without a moment's warning and lasted but for a few moments, for we were in the rainy season. The temperature was reduced a few degrees. I took up the Christmas Century and beguiled the hours until tiffin, reading, dreaming, and sleepily watching a pair of little jungle monkeys struggle with the over-ripe papaya.

That night thirty of us met to eat a Christmas dinner. There were no great arch fires or blazing Yule logs; no mistletoe, no snow beating against window panes, no passing sleigh-bells; none of the vigorous and bracing winter sounds with which we of the Northern Zone were familiar.

But there was an ethereally beautiful sky, studded with innumerable stars and jeweled with the Southern Cross. There were mild breezes, heavily laden with the intoxicating perfumes of the profuse

VOL. xxvi. 49.

Photo by Tyler & Co.

OR some time it has been dinned into our ears that we are rapidly approaching the horseless, age, when our four-legged friend is to be superseded by electric and cycling machines. It cannot be gainsaid that for many services in the way of transportation mechanical power has the advantage of horse power, but it is safe to say, on the other hand, that the man on horseback will for all time be able to go where no other combination, mechanical or otherwise, can follow. Mountain passes, rivers, and lesser natural obstacles, are not negoti

able by any other means at present available or likely to be devised, except in certain particular positions, where railroads and bridges may happen to have been constructed. Once we have to deviate from main routes, the saddle horse and carriage horse become indispensable for purposes of locomotion, while even for getting around the towns with comfort and expedition we shall still have to rely upon the horse. The steam organ and the music box have not superseded the harp, the violin, the piano, or the cornet, and so long as human skill and genius are important factors in contributing to perfection in musical performances they are never