A few years ago the Toast of " Absent Friends" was generally given in China, No gathering of friends ever assembled round the well-covered board without the host enunciating these two suggestive and thought-awakening words in acleer and emphatic tone, directly the wine was circulated. To have omitted this magical sentence would have been a social solecism, and an unpardonable offence. The claret would have tasted all the worse for the omission, and a sense of something needful left undone, would have marred the general festivity. We observe, amongst the minor social changes that are taking place in the Settlement, a growing tendency to omit this time honoured practise. The alteration is not without significance. It indicates, if we are not mistaken, a wish to "make believe" that we are perfectly at Home in China—to banish the idea from our own minds and those of our friends, that we are at all anxious to reach England, and to let it be thought that this is our Home. We might decidedly do worse than adopt this view, as the date of our return is in most cases very uncertain, and it is well to be armed against either fortune, "Another and quite opposite considera. tion may come in here. That is to, say, the frequent trips that business compels us to take, seem to lessen the space that divides us from friends and relations, and to prevent our regarding them 2s "absent" in the old. sense. When Chaaszes can run home every year he. tween the seasons, and spend a month or two among familiar faces, the rigours of exile are certainly mitigated to those gentlemen, At present, when we do hear the toast, the tone in which it is proposed varies. An' old resident' who has resided in Canton, and recollects the days when Sir Harry Parkes was an Interpreter, and when. Peking was un. blessed (?) by the presence of Foreign Legations, the patriarch who lived in the days when there was one mail a month and but one, and only two Great Firms in China, this venerable host; says "Absent Friends" in a genial warmhearted way, not without a' flavour of feeling"in the voice that imparts to it a kind of pathos. Many Tecollections grave and gay crowd in upon him, as he says the two words, and for one transient moment, sadden ith a shadow the smile upon his hospitable face.
The new man, who has no China memories before Shanghai was. opened, does not utter the sentiment. with the same kindness and sympathy. 'The words are a signal to begin drinking, and nothing more. They are jerked ont.in'a way which shows that' there is no distant recollection evoked by their repetition. ° It is a regulation toast ind nothing' more., Of "course Bi 'Troops are' "always effervétcing' with loyalty, but for all' that, it" acknowledged that the way in' whic the Queen's health i8 proposed at Mess, is not very fervid. "The " Absent Friends" of the present' Shanghai generation, resembles this routine' commemoration of Majesty very closely. Still, perhaps one would be sorry to lose the old observance which has' beea kept up for so many years, and has formed the prelude to so many' pleasant nights.
For our part, as we raise the glass to our lips, and utter the two talismanic words, throngs of social pictures present themselves to our minds. We recall of course those Home scenes which were intertwined with the early. years of life; and the affectionate faces that gathered round us when we first left the shelter of the Roof Tree, re-appear through an uncertain haze that may be the mist.of time, or the result of. film gathering over our own eyes. We see, besides, the many friends "made in China—than whom no true or more loyal ones can be found, and we have an instantaneous picture, rapid as a pistolgram, of the men who have succeeded and the men who have failed, of poor old. A who went home in feeble health and is now lingering at his watering place,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.