the prayers which they are ready on all occasions to recite. The wag of the district was also present among them, for he is an inevitable feature of most Malayan gatherings, and is generally one of the local holy men. It is not always easy to understand how he acquired his reputation for humour, but once gained it has stood steady as a rock. His mere presence is held to be provocative of laughter, and as often as he opens his mouth the obsequious guffaw goes up, no matter what the words that issue from his lips. Most of his hearers, on the present occasion, had listened to his threadbare old jests any time these twenty years past, but the applause which greeted them, as each in turn was trotted out, was none the less hearty or genuine on that account. Among Malays novelty and surprise are not held to be essential elements of humour. They will ask for the same story, or laboriously angle for the same witticism, time after time; prefer that it should be told in the same way, and expressed as nearly as possible in the same words at each repetition; and They will invariably laugh with equal zest and in precisely the same place, in spite of the hoary antiquity of the thing, after the manner of a child. Similarly, it is this tolerance of, nay, delight in, reiteration that impels a Malayan râja, when civilized, to decorate his sitting-room walis with half a dozen replicas of the same unattractive photograph.
Meanwhile the womenfolk had come from far and near to help in the preparation of the feast, and the men of the family having previously done the heavy
