I said mournfully to the Professor. He was looking at Mrs. ----, or some one so like her that it came to the same thing. "Am I travelling round the world to discover _these_ people?" said he. "I've seen 'em all before. There's Captain Such-an-one and Colonel Such-another and Miss What's-its-name as large as life and twice as pale." The Professor had hit it. That was the difference. People in Singapur are dead-white--as white as Naaman--and the veins on the backs of their hands are painted in indigo. It is as though the Rains were just over, and none of the womenfolk had been allowed to go to the hills. Yet no one talks about the unhealthiness of Singapur. A man lives well and happily until he begins to feel unwell. Then he feels worse because the climate allows him no chance of pulling himself together--and then he dies. Typhoid fever appears to be one gate of death, as it is in India; also liver. The nicest thing in the civil station which lies, of course, far from the native town, and boasts pretty little bungalows--is Thomas--dear, white-robed, swaggering, smoking, swearing Thomas Atkins the unchangeable, who listens to the band and wanders down the bazaars, and slings the unmentionable adjective about the palm trees exactly as though he were in Mian Mir. The 58th (Northamptonshire) live in these parts; so Singapur is quite safe, you see. Nobody would speak to me in the gardens, though I felt that they ought to have invited me to drink, and I crept back to my hotel to eat six different fresh chutnies with one curry. * * * * *