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Show THE SINGHALESE. The Singhalese women are well made and good looking, often handsome; they dress very much the same as the men and are highly industrious. In fact, it may be said of them, as it used to be of the Peruvian women in contradistinction to the men of that nation, that "the mare is the better horse," for most of the family cares devolve upon her and she generally discharges them with great spirit and much loving kindness. In fact, if the Singhalese men were as smart and capable as the women, they would be a noble race. As it is, they are good husbands and fathers, and though hating work, are yet possessed of such remarkable acquisitiveness as generally results in their accumulating considerable property, or at least gaining a comfortable maintenance. To a certain extent they are scholarly and take great pride in devising intricate? philosophical abstractions. To this penchant I attribute much of their fondness for [unreadable line]. As hand craftsmen and artificers they possess considerable merit, but have not sufficient, patiently directed application to be really ingenious. Their greatest proficiency lies in the line of carpentry, jewelry and cabinet work, in which branches, if furnished with good ???, they perform very well. In a few instances the jewelry work from their own design is excellent, but generally not to be admired, as their taste is undesirably bad, they having no idea whatever of the harmonizing colors and vice versa; hence in dress, the very darkest of them will, to a certainty, don sky-blue, green or other ??? tinted raiment, and among their jewels, formerly it was not uncommon to find red, blue, green, yellow and colorless stones all mixed together in one setting. Their tortoise-shell work is very fine indeed, in fact it surpasses that of any other people I know, and is mostly real, the Singhalese not having yet well learned the ??? trick of manufacturing it from horn. Having thus unsparingly revealed the worse [worst] traits of these people's characters, I think I may now enumerate some of their virtues, beginning with cleanliness, which is said to be next to godliness. They are a cleanly people in their habits, and very particular about their food; their fondness for neat and comfortable homes is intense, and they are the only inter-tropical people I have seen who are fully capable of adopting a pure Western taste and style in furnishing their dwellings. In fact a stranger introduced, without notice of where he was going, into a wealthy Singhalese man's house would not mistrust, either from its exterior appearance or internal appointments?, that he was in any other than a European gentleman's dwelling, and when made ??? of the real facts by the appearance of the owner with his kindly self possessed manner, intelligent speech and graceful courtesy, he would have to admit that the personal style of the occupant was quite in keeping with the exquisite establishment. As a rule, they are also temperate in the use of spirituous drinks, and are endowed with a natural frugality which protects them from impecuniosity. Though not a gallant people, such things as love matches being almost unheard of among them, they generally observe such true allegiance to their marriage obligations as completely preserves their families from ???. And they are so almost ridiculously fond and inordinately proud of their children as to humble themselves to them, it being the rule, especially among the middle and lower classes, for children, when walking out, clothed in the finest rament procurable, to take precedence of their parents, who, in humbler garb, stride on in the rear of their ??? offspring. It may also be said to their credit that the children fully reciprocate the loving kindness of their parents, and seem always to pay a dutiful regard to their welfare and wishes. I should say, therefore, that, as a domestic people, the Singhalese take a high place in the human family; and although they do fail to some of the higher traits of civalization [civilization], nevertheless there are excuses for them, inasmuch as for centuries prior to European acquaintance, they were harassed and oppressed by pillaging hordes of greedy Malahar invaders, who made their very existence so precarious and burdensome, that it was only supportable by a system of ??? and chicanery; and the system naturally becomes so ingrained in the nature of their posterity as not to be easily eradicated, even by contact with Europeans, more especially those who, after all, are but quest adventurers themselves, and not the most likely people in the world to shed a purely elevating influence around them. -- Colombo (Ceylon) Our San Francisco Chronicle. |