Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/166

 asked if she would not like to wear a hat or a bonnet. She smiled, and modestly cast down her eyes as she replied a little wistfully :

'I should like it much, madam. I have often wished to wear a bonnet like a European.'

'Then you shall have one at once.'

Her brow clouded with disappointment as she answered,

'I am afraid I cannot wear it, madam. My neighbours would say I was making myself too glorious.'

And so with a hypersensitiveness to public opinion the coveted bonnet was refused.

Their expressions are often quaint, and their English is spoken with the foreign accent of the native. They have the same rapid enunciation. A debased Portuguese was formerly the lingua franca between Europeans, Eurasians, and Asiatics. It was in common use at all the ports of Ceylon as well as of India, and it served the traders equally well in Bombay and Calcutta as in Colombo and Madras. It has gradually fallen out of use and given place to English. Clive owed his life to his knowledge of it on one occasion, when he accidentally found himself alone and surrounded by sepoys in the service of the French. Hearing the familiar Portuguese, they took him for an officer belonging to their own army, and permitted him to pass on.

The faults of the poor Eurasian are the immediate causes of his poverty : unconquerable laziness, innate untruthfulness, and an inherent dishonesty under temptation. Never was there a class more lacking in principle without actually being criminal. It is these traits that weigh down the pauper Eurasian and render him a standing disgrace to the community. It is a pity that this particular class cannot be known by some other name. 'Poor Eurasian' instead of 'poor white' would