Mr. Biggs Is A Student Of Hymnology,
And We Were Soon In Full Swing On This Mutually Congenial Subject.
Mrs.
Biggs devotes her time and strength to the training and education of
young Portuguese girls.
I pass their open bungalow as I go to and from
the Governor's cottage, and it usually proves a trap.
Captain Shaw, who has been for many years Lieutenant-Governor of
Malacca, is a fine, hearty, frank, merry, manly, Irish naval officer,
well read and well informed, devoted to Malacca and its interests, and
withal a man of an especially unselfish, loving, and tender nature,
considerate to an unusual degree of the happiness and comfort of those
about him. Before I had been here many hours I saw that he was the
light of a loving home.* He can be firm and prompt when occasion
requires firmness, but his ordinary rule is of the gentlest and most
paternal description, so that from the Chinese he has won the name of
"Father," and among the Malays, the native population, English rule, as
administered by him, has come to be known as "the rule of the just."
The family, consisting of the Governor, his, wife, and two daughters
just grown up, is a very charming one, and their quiet, peaceful life
gives me the opportunity which so rarely falls to the lot of a traveler
of becoming really intimate with them.
[*I should not have reproduced this paragraph of my letter were Captain
Shaw still alive, but in five weeks after my happy visit he died almost
suddenly, to the indescribable grief of his family and of the people of
Malacca, by whom he was greatly beloved.]
The Government bungalow, in which I spend most of my time, is a
comfortable little cottage, with verandas larger than itself.
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