Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/154

134 used to speak of the buffalo country—"the south coast" and "out West," equally synonyms for all untamed, far-away wildness. Elephant-hunting must be enjoyed in Sumatra, since that animal has never existed in a wild state in Java.

With the younger people of the master's family, his young managers and assistants, fresh from Amsterdam schools and European universities, speaking English and several other languages, au courant with all the latest in the world's music, art, literature, and drama, plantation life and table-talk were full of interest and varied amusements. By a whir of the telephone, two of the assistants were bidden ride over from their far corner of the estate for dinner, and afterward a quartet of voices and instruments made the marble-floored music-room ring, while the elder men smoked meditatively, or clicked the billiard-balls in their deliberate, long-running tourney. The latest books and the familiar American magazines strewed boudoir and portico tables, and naturally there was talk of them.

"Ah, we like so much your American magazines—the 'Century' and the others. We admire so much the pictures. And then all those stories of the early Dutch colonists at Manhattan! We like, too, your great American novelists—Savage, Howells, Gunter—'The Rise of Silas Lapham,' 'Mr. Potter of Texas,' and all those. We read them so much."

They were undoubtedly disappointed that we did not speak Dutch, or at least read it, since all Hollanders know that Dutch is the language of the best families in New York, of the cultivated classes and all