An old ‘bastaard’ woman, married to the Malay tailor here, explained to me my popularity with the coloured people, as set forth by ‘dat Malay boy’, my driver. He told them he was sure I was a ‘very great Missis’, because of my ‘plenty good behaviour’; that I spoke to him just as to a white gentleman, and did not ‘laugh and talk nonsense talk’. ‘Never say “Here, you black fellow”, dat Misses.’ The English, when they mean to be good-natured, are generally offensively familiar, and ‘talk nonsense talk’, i.e. imitate the Dutch English of the Malays and blacks; the latter feel it the greatest compliment to be treated _au sérieux_, and spoken to in good English. Choslullah’s theory was that I must be related to the Queen, in consequence of my not ‘knowing bad behaviour’. The Malays, who are intelligent and proud, of course feel the annoyance of vulgar familiarity more than the blacks, who are rather awe-struck by civility, though they like and admire it. Mrs. D— tells me that the coloured servant-girls, with all their faults, are immaculately honest in these parts; and, indeed, as every door and window is always left open, even when every soul is out, and nothing locked up, there must be no thieves. Captain D— told me he had been in remote Dutch farmhouses, where rouleaux of gold were ranged under the thatch on the top of the low wall, the doors being always left open; and everywhere the Dutch boers keep their money by them, in coin. _Jan._ 3_d._—We have had tremendous festivities here—a ball on New Year’s-eve, and another on the 1st of January—and the shooting for Prince Alfred’s rifle yesterday. The difficulty of music for the ball was solved by the arrival of two Malay bricklayers to build the new parsonage, and I heard with my own ears the proof of what I had been told as to their extraordinary musical gifts. When I went into the hall, a Dutchman was _screeching_ a concertina hideously. Presently in walked a yellow Malay, with a blue cotton handkerchief on his head, and a half-bred of negro blood (very dark brown), with a red handkerchief, and holding a rough tambourine. The handsome yellow man took the concertina which seemed so discordant, and the touch of his dainty fingers transformed it to harmony. He played dances with a precision and feeling quite unequalled, except by Strauss’s band, and a variety which seemed endless. I asked him if he could read music, at which he laughed heartily, and said, music came into the ears, not the eyes. He had picked it all up from the bands in Capetown, or elsewhere.