After one of these evening parties, as Datu Isa and her satellites were sitting talking to me in my room, I suggested that we should all learn to read and write Malay, which language is written in Arabic characters. I asked Datu Isa how we had best set to work, for I thought it would be good for the Malay women and myself to be able to read and write Malay for ourselves. “No,” said Datu Isa; “that would never do. Writing amongst women is a bad habit, a pernicious custom. Malay girls would be writing love letters to clandestine lovers, and undesirable men might come into contact with the daughters of our house. I do not agree, Rajah Ranee, with the idea, and I hope it will never come to pass.” This was rather crushing, because Datu Isa was a tremendous force in our social life in Kuching, but I was not altogether dismayed, and being anxious for this additional pleasure to come into my friends’ lives, I pondered on the subject. A good many months went by before I could put my suggestion into execution. Meanwhile I began to study on my own account, and sent for Inchi Sawal, a celebrity in the Kuching circles of those days. He was called a “Guru” (master of arts). He knew Arabic, was a good Malay scholar, and had taught a great many of the Rajah’s officers in the intricacies of the language. Formerly he had been Malay writer to the late Rajah. Malay is easy enough to talk ungrammatically, and one can make oneself understood by stringing together nouns and adjectives, regardless of verbs, prepositions, etc. The natives of Sarawak, although learning the language by ear, speak very good Malay, but it was deplorable, in those days, to hear it spoken by some of the English people residing in Kuching. The Rajah, however, is one of the best Malay scholars in Malaya, and it is a real pleasure to hear his Malay speeches to his people.