are perpetually reminded of the gains which our Language receives from the United States. Every day we live in Shanghai, we hear some word or phrase which strikes home-bred Englishmen as novel and startling, but which is really an expression coined to meet a want, and is found practically to satisfy it in a-way that at once silences and surprises us. An addition recently made is the phrase "Globe Trotters." It is marvellously apt expression, covering all that is wanted in the connection to which it refers. The present day is obviously a period favouring long journeys. Travelling is the passion of the time. No man can be regarded as competent to express an opinion on any subject, unless he has voyaged to Peking or Pernambuco. Hence we seo every day new faces on our Bund, and now visitors at our Club and our Hotel. It is a very satisfactory thing that we have fresh blood thus infused into our body politic. A man recently arrived from Europe or the States is always worth listening to. We are sure to gain something from ® man who has seen Europe in its altered political aspect, visited Utah when the reign of Brigham is about to close, spent a few "Castilian Days" with John Hay, visited New York in the death throes of the Tammany, paid a visit to Italy in the resurrection mornitig of its liberty, and London in the dawn of its recovered loyalty."
The persons who bring us all this new information, and keep us most thoroughly conversant with the ideas and fluctuations of life in other countries, are undoubtedly the' globe trotters." They are to be divided into various classes; some are engaged in the pursuits of commerce and cultivate the worship of the Theine Fetish. These men are comparatively uninteresting; but the bond fide traveller, who comes to China because he likes to see a new place, and who has visited many continents and islands before, is sure to give us very valuable and interesting facts, and is a welcome addition to our Society. It is desirable therefore that we hail the advent of the class of "globe trotters" with a cordial welcome. We all know, by painful experience, that China life runs in a groove, and the sprinkling of the salt of wit on the victims who voluntarily offer themselves for sacrifice to the climate, isa grateful oblation. It is scarcely possible to come across a "globe trotter" of average intelligence without hearing many new stories—and a new story is worth its weight in silver. It is really a miracle if the man who has done" the States, or India, or Germanized Europe, has not picked up some stray notes and pencillings by the way that diversify the monotony of Shanghai life, as a tail diversified the monotony of the tossing in the farce of Box and Coz. We hold the "Globe Trotter" or G. T. to be avery pleasant link between us and the old half-forgotten home life. visitor will give us much that we wish to have, it is interesting to spscalate.upon the impression that we shall make upon him. According to his opportunities he will have formed s picture of Shanghai in his mind's eye more or leas (probably less) accurate, This impression is modified to a very great extent by the actual vision of mud and manliness that the Settlement presenta, He will be struck doubtless by the dismal monotony of the natural-features of Shanghai, but he will behold with pleasure the suocesses that have been achieved over various physical difficulties, and the solidity of the city community in which we dwell. ° Still, we must be prepared for a Inck of enthusiasm on these topics. Your Globe Trotter" is after all a superficial observer, and if he fails to be struck, with the magnificence of our architecture; or the perfection of our Municipal arrangements, we must recollect that he is imperfectly informed, aid has come from cities where what are wonders with us seem merely the commonplaces of civilized life.' "We probably marvel most at the traveller's interest in the native city, and in the manners and customs of the Chinese generally, for these things seem to us uninteresting and disagreeable in the extreme. There however we should be prepared to take hints from the " philosophic vagabond" as Goldsmith would have called him, and strive ourselves to keep our curiosity awake about subjects we are too apt to turn away from with contemptuous aversion.
The truth is that, every day we live in China, we lose more and more the faculty of observing. Things that struck us as replete with interest when we came, are mere commonplaces now. Yet they may be worth seeing, and it is the function of the fresh visitor to check our tendency to stagnate and to keep us up to observing mark, Now and then the energy and enquiring spirit of the indefatigable G. T. bore us, and we are disposed to pity him as a kind of animal who lives in a state of perpetual griffinhood; but this is unreasonable, and we should rather do well to envy the power which sustains his ardour and forbids his craving for novelty to be satisfied. In all intercourse we give and take, and the advantage to us from a chat with a sharp modern Ulysses, who has seen many men and many cities, is probably greater than the gain he derives from the rather cramped notions of the man who has pitched here for some years without once taking up his tent pegs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.