Identifier: aroundworldwith02youn (find matches)
Title: Around the world with General Grant: a narrative of the visit of General U.S. Grant, ex-president of the United States, to various countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in 1877, 1878, 1879. To which are added certain conversations with General Grant on questions connected with American politics and history
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: Young, John Russell, 1841-1899
Subjects: Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 Voyages around the world
Publisher: New York : The American News Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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others into kindred subjects, result fromthe Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, whose head-quarters are in Singapore, and whose studies are among theinhabitants of the Malay peninsula. The society issues semi-annually a report of its transactions ; and although but twonumbers have been issued, the field of the society seems to befull of interest and value. Societies like these study the re-sources of the countries, and in that direct private and publicenterprise. Their real value is in science, history, religion,customs, and more than all in comparative philology. TheMalay language is terse ; and the genius of the people, saysMr. Maxwell, runs to neat, pithy sentences. A Malay clinchesan argument with a proverb. Some of these are very curious,not alone as showing a resemblance to proverbs in our ownand other languages, but as an expression of the peculiar geniusof the people. If you have rice, put it away under the un-husked grain. This is an injunction to secrecy. Now it is
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THE SACRED JUMNA. MALAYSIAN PROVERBS. 2Q^ wet, now it is fine, is the Malay way for intimating that a dayof revenge will come. When a Malay wishes to intimate hisidea of throwing pearls before swine, he asks, What is the useof the peacock strutting in the jungle? When he wishes tosay that an offer will not be refused, he asks, Will the croco-dile reject the carcass ? I suppose every language has a prov-erb about the impossibility of changing human nature. TheBible asks if the leopard can change his spots; the Malaysays : Though you may feed a jungle-fowl out of a gold plateit will make for the jungle nevertheless. Here is a more am-bitious expression of a similar idea : You may plant the bit-ter cucumber in a bed of sago, and manure it with honey, andwater it with molasses, and train it over sugar-canes, but whenit is cooked it will still be bitter. Fate is recognized as sternlyas by the Greek : Even the fish which inhabit the seventhdepth of the sea come into the net sooner or later.

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