Lena residence in Shanghai is said by some to deprive us of health; by others, who spank from experience, to deprive us of money; by all, to ruin the temper. It is' a phenomenon which we universally deplore, but which we are compelled by facts to acknowledge, that, after a certain period spent in the East, men, and perhaps women (but her we are conscious of treading upon delicate ground), find themselves unable to bear with tolerable equanimity the minor vexations and irritations of our routine life. Now, as a German would say, the subject may be treated from an' objective and from a subjective point of view.
Objectively, or with regard to the outward worries, nuisances, and annoyances of every day, what is to be said We should have much to fret us if we wore at Home. Is there any special circumstance surrounding life in China, and, indeed, life in the East generally, which renders it peculiarly hard to: practice self-government? was in England that a Indy was declared to deserve the highest encomiurus if she was "mistress of herself when China fall," and we are wrong if we conceive Home life to be a paradise. There are heavy taxes, ill-mannered servants, late trains, different cooks, and alrundred other trials of the minor sort at Home, as the China hands who seek the old country are never tired of telling us. But whenever this plea is put in in mitigation, we are told that it is in some inexplicable way harassing to have to do with the Chinese. They strike the casual observer as a singularly patient and docile race, but we admit that their calmness and nonchalance are really very often enough to drive the ordinary Englishman well nigh out of his senses. The composed air, the imper-tarpable self-possession are very maddening to a man who is suffering from liver, conscious of losses in silk, tea, and produce, not to say shares, and who is covered with prickly heat and plagued with mosquitoes. An Englishman is a being with a chronic grudge against the weather, and when the fluctuations of rain and fog which meet him in his own island are intensified into a climate that he was apparently not intended to be subjected to, we can account for the outbursts that have made the name of a nabob a proverb of irascibility for a hundred years. Besides the outside circumstances, if in addition to languor caused by heat, disappointments in business and unintelligent domestics, he is aware that his life has been a failure, we may, pardon him for the occasional unreal sonableness of his outbursts. There is no doubt that a tendency to use strong expletives, and to threaten servants, and to rail at others who are more lucky than ourselves, and to snatch at scandals, is developed and strengthened by residing long in the gorgeous but unsatisfactory East, There is an often told and probably authentic story of the late William Wilberforce, to the effect thata friend once found him in the greatest agitation, looking for a dispatch he had mis laid, for which one of the Reval Family was waiting. At the moment, us if to make it still more trying to his temper, a disturbance was heard in the nursery overhead. "Now," thought the friend, "surely for once his temper will give way." The thought had hardly passed through his mind, when Wilberforce turned to him and said, " What a blessing it is to hear those dear children. Only think what a relief among other burries, to hear their voices, and to know they are well." We are not quite certain whether Wilberforce could have preserved his equanimity so steadily, had he beard the screams and pattering of a club footed Amah scolding a set of unruly olive branches in the dialect of Canton, and if we had known that her charges were probably fresh from the commission of some mischievous act of destruction.
On all grounds of reason and common sense, however, we recommend the example of Wilberforce to our readers. An ancient physician, ina rare work entitled a "Discourse of the whole Art of Chyrurgerie," 1634, assures us that "there are four humours, the blood, the flegm, the choller, and melancholy the blood reigning from 3 to 9 am, the choller from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the flegm from 3 pam. to 9 p.m. and the melancholicke from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m." It will be seen that according to this respectable authority, "the choller" lasts during that period of the day when our work is mostly done. From 9 o'clock in the morning to 8 in the afternoon we receive visits from brokers, take our house-boy's accounts, buy tea and silk, and generally meet with temptations to give way. It is well to make an effort to check temper, and if we cannet do readily, it is a sign that we are out of health, and bad better go to Chefoo or Pootoo, where the fresh air and the change of scene will soon dissipate the "humours" generated by " home ing swamp and disastrous commercial telegrams.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.