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Updated: June 20, 2025
Dick had not been able to see them since his first visit, being incessantly on duty. "I was so sorry I could not come up before," he explained; "but each of the officers has been up to have a look at the Residency; and as we may be attacked at any moment, Captain Peel expects them all to be on the spot with their men." "Shall we get away without being fired at?" Nelly asked.
In the character of the native Indians there are very many good points, although they have long had a bad name, from their characters and descriptions coming from the Spanish mouths, who are too indolent to investigate it beyond their households, or at the most beyond their city walls; as very few, indeed, of all the Spaniards I met with have ever been in the country any distance from Manilla, except those whose duty it has been to proceed to a distance, as an alcalde of the province, or as an officer of the troops scattered through the islands, very many of whom remain at home in the residency or in their quarters, smoking or drinking chocolate, and bewailing their hard fates, which have condemned them to live so far away from Manilla, from the theatre, and from society.
Though the octogenarian King Sisowath maintains a gorgeous court, a stable of elephants, upwards of two-hundred dancing-girls, and one of the most ornate palaces in Asia, he is permitted only a shadow of power, the real ruler of Cambodia being the French Resident-Superior, who governs the country from the great white Residency on the banks of the Mekong.
In the evening there was a dinner party at the Residency, to which Mrs Fraser very kindly invited us, and there was pleasant talk about Burmah and princely pageants, elephant kedar camps, and the right royal entertainments to be held at Mysore; and of how the twenty valets and the hundreds of guests are to be provided for; to quote the Tales of the Highlands, "there will be music in the place of hearing, meat in the place of eating, smooth drinks and rough drinks, and drinks for the laying down of slumber, mirth raised and lament laid down, and a right joyful hearty plying of the feast and Royal Company" but how it is all to be done is past my comprehension!
Would it be thought strange if their thoughts wandered, or if the portraits of the "French Popes" which hang about the Cathedral walls at Avignon, show more worldly preoccupation than is becoming to the successors of Saint Peter and Vicars of Christ? Little indeed in the days of their residency did the Popes add to Notre-Dame-des-Doms.
One evening Sir Charles was dining at the bungalow, and, having got over his nervous doubts, upon hearing Minnie express a desire to go up the river and see the fire-flies first, and the rising of the moon after, the Resident at once proposed to have his smaller boat prepared, with a couple of his most trusty native servants to pole it a short distance up the river, and then bring the Doctor and the two ladies back to supper at the Residency.
Under Miss Shafer also, the work in English Composition was placed on a new basis; elective courses were offered to seniors and juniors in the Bible Department; a course in Pedagogy, begun toward the end of Miss Freeman's residency, was encouraged and increased; the laboratory of Physiological Psychology, the first in a woman's college and one of the earliest in any college, was opened in 1891 with Professor Calkins at its head.
His house, a Gothic mansion of a rather gingerbread appearance, is situated in a well laid-out park-like enclosure, which forms the residency grounds, and which contains two or three neat substantial houses, the habitations of the two officers of the embassy. One of them kindly accompanied us in our search after sights, and directed our steps in the first instance to the temple of Pusputnath.
It was a very busy time for all, and after the "Startler" had been made what Dick the sailor called snug that is to say, firmly anchored head to stream, for they were now far above the reach of the tide a strong party of the blue-jackets were landed upon the pleasantly umbrageous island, along with the soldiers; for this island was to be the site of the residency, and it proved to have four good-sized buildings amidst the trees, which had been roughly prepared by Sultan Hamet's orders.
The Residency is a fine large building in an advanced stage of decomposition; the glorious vegetation around it cotton-trees, caoutchouc-figs, and magnificent oleanders making the pile look grimmer and grislier. And here we realised, to the fullest extent, how thoroughly ruined is the hapless settlement.
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