Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
Trevelyan, translating Greek or reading French for her benefit; and Scribe's comedies and Saint Simon's Memoirs beguiled the long languid leisure of the Calcutta afternoon, while the punkah swung overhead, and the air came heavy and scented through the moistened grass-matting which shrouded the windows.
After a cold bath, doubly enjoyable by its contrast with the lukewarm sea-water we had been accustomed to during the voyage, it was not long ere we were doing justice to an excellent breakfast under the cool swing of the punkah. Singapore is an island 27 miles long by 14 broad, and is divided from the main land, or Malay peninsula, by a narrow strait of three-quarters of a mile broad.
Lizards and mosquitoes are few, and in the marble-floored dining hall of cathedral proportions the absence of a punkah is generally unfelt, though the fact of a tropical climate is realised at the slightest exertion.
While we were at breakfast the crows were most amusing and impertinent. Every door and window was open, and they were perched on the top of the punkah, or on the iron crossbars supporting the roof, watching their opportunity to pounce down and carry off the bits left on our plates.
The officious chowkidar unearthed two punkah coolies for the occasion: and the planning of their future home, a picnic tea served on Eldred's writing-table, and practical considerations in respect of furniture and house linen though Quita had small inherent regard for either! helped, more or less, to obscure the thought of separation.
In pleasing contrast is a nice port, where people pull together, where good-fellowship and hospitality make one feel like the member of a large family, where you walk into the house of your neighbour, smoke his cigars and drink his whisky, brought to you while reclining in a long chair on the verandah with the punkah swinging lazily over you, waiting for the master's return.
A sudden sense of suffocation dispelled the dream. He found himself breathless, in a bath of perspiration. The punkah had stopped dead. And one must have endured this trifling inconvenience to gauge the significance of those five words. Lenox straightened himself with an oath.
In a corner stands a cabinet of cutlery, china, and glass, all clean and in perfect order. The two bedrooms are provided with adjoining baths and a covered passageway connects the kitchen with the house. All is ready for the tired traveler, and a boy can be hired for a trifling sum to make the punkah "punk."
There was no punkah, the glare of the lamplight was blinding, and the food all of it coarse, greasy and cold. The soup which had been waiting was of the variety known as tinned, an old acquaintance which X. had hoped to have left in the jungle until his return.
The service was simple and the music very good, but in the Te Deum, just as the verse "Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ," I caught sight of the bronze faces of these "punkah- wallahs," mostly bigoted Mussulmen, and was overwhelmed by the realization of the small progress which Christianity has made upon the earth in nineteen centuries. A Singhalese D.D. preached an able sermon.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking