Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/702

 yards, verandahs, and every attention paid by the constructors to dryness, ventilation, and whatever else a Parliamentary inspector of the most practical type could desire. Thus much is done for the immigrants; but except to amass money, with an occasional whiff at the hookak between times, from morning to night, the "mild Hindoo" is not inclined to do much for himself. His garden, ill-planted and ill-cared for, is a sorry sight; his dwelling, for what concerns the interior, is a cross between a gypsy-hut and a rag-shop, and a pinched, stingy meanness characterizes his every belonging no less than himself. That he may also excel in "grace, ease, courtesy, self-restraint, dignity, sweetness, and light," I am ready, of course, with all believers in "At Last," to admit. But I do it on faith, the evidence of things not seen either in the West Indies or the East. Low-caste Hindoos in their own land are, to all ordinary apprehension, slovenly, dirty, ungraceful, generally unacceptable in person and surroundings; and the coolies of Voorburg may have been low-caste, very likely. Yet offensive as is the low-caste Indian, were I estate-owner, or colonial governor, I had rather see the lowest parias of the low, than a single trim, smooth-faced, smooth-wayed, clever, high-caste Hindoo on my lands or in my colony.

But for the untidiness, I might say shiftlessness of the Surinam-planted coolies some allowance must be made. They are new comers in a land, among what are to them new races, and if it takes some time even for the European under such like circumstances to pluck up heart and be a-doing, the process of adaptation is yet slower for the Asiatic. In Demerara, where they have now dwelt for years with Europeans to stimulate and direct them, and negroes to teach them gardening without doors and tidiness within, the coolies certainly make a better show, and so do their dwellings. But they have much as yet to learn in Surinam.

Passing a dyke or two, we come next on the Chinese cottages, in construction and outward arrangement identical with those of the coolies, or nearly so. The gardens here show a decided improvement, not indeed in the shape of flowers, or of any of the pretty graceful things of the soil, for of such there are none here; but there are useful vegetables and potherbs in plenty; spade and hoe, manure and water, care and forethought, have done their work and are receiving their reward. But the inside of a Chinese dwelling—guarda e passa. Well, Chinamen are fond of pigs, and if they have a fancy themselves to live in pigstyes, it is all in character.

A dyke or two more has to be crossed, and we enter the creole village. Here regulation has done less, and individual will and fancy more. But the negroes are Dutch-trained, and have an idea of straight lines and orderly rows, by no means African; though in, the English-like preference given to isolated dwellings in which each household can live apart over conjoint ones, they do but follow the custom of their ancestral birthplace. Their gardens' are well-stocked, not with fruit and vegetables only, with plantains, mangoes, bananas, yams, sweet-potatoes, peas, and the like things good for food, but also with whatever is pleasant to the eye; with gay flowers, twining creepers, bright berries, scarlet and black; in fine, with the brilliant colours and strong contrasts that befit African taste. Inside their dwellings are comfortable, and in most instances clean, neatly arranged, too, though the space is very often overcrowded with furniture, the tables covered with cheap glass and crockery, more for show than use, and the walls hung round with a confused medley of gaudy prints. These creoles evidently know how to enjoy life, and have resolved to make the best of it; the wisest resolution, it may be, for us mortals in our little day.



From The Cornhill Magazine. SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-ESTIMATION.

persons, one supposes, have with more or less distinct consciousness framed a notion of their own value, if not to the world generally, at least to themselves. And this notion, however undefined it may be, is held to with a singular tenacity of belief. The greater part of mankind indeed seem never to entertain the question whether they really possess points of excellence. They assume it as a matter perfectly self-evident, and appear to believe in their vaguely conceived worth on the same immediate testimony of consciousness on which they assure themselves of their personal existence. Indeed the conviction of personal consequence may be said to be a constant factor in most men's consciousness. However restrained by the rules of polite intercourse, it betrays its existence and its energy in innumerable ways. It displays 