Of these and many others of perhaps lesser importance I have made use and now and again drawn freely upon them. Otherwise the history is the result of personal study. The study of' Eastern peoples during my twenty-five years' sojourn in the Far East has always been a peculiarly delightful subject to me, but no Eastern folk have interested and fascinated me more than the J avans of the Dutch East Indies. Their daily tasks, their religion, their amusements, their customs, their feasts, their life, I have quite entered into and lived in thought as one of them. Sorrows they have none, at least not as we know them. The more I knew of them the more excitement was engendered to learn and study them further.