It is our fortune or misfortune to live in an age of the world when intercommunication between individuals, between nations, and between races has reached a point never before dreamed of, in the longand sleepy days of the past. That this circumstance has some very interesting and valuable aspects we are not about to deny. Our object at the present time to call attention to at least one aspect, which is less pleasing than some others, and to raise a cry Of distress, hoping for some relief. Although we live in the Far East" itis as true of us, as of our friends at home, that we receive a great many circulars, reports, papers of all varieties, with which we have no particular concern, and which we do not know what te do with, After each mail, and as we all know tut is often enough, any individual may be heard remarking to his neighbor, Did you get one?" To whom he replies, Oh, yes, we all got one. I wonder who sent then? "What are they for? Well got up, too, but what shall we do with them?" The mails of any one who receives any mail matter at all are thus loaded down with material that must come from somebody, and from somebody who seems to know who the person is to whom he sends his contribution, or else why should he send it at all? There are advertising circulars, of all kinds and types imaginable, papers, magazines, and even books, with which it seems to be supposed that the recipient has some concern, und in consequence Of the receipt of which he is apparently expected to have some further duties. An incidental result of this deluge of matter, is that in this last quarter of the nineteenth century will be found in the studies of all literary men waste-paper baskets of a portentous size, and we do not remember to have seen une within the last ten years which did not seem to be overflowingly full. A certain popular novelist, has made the hero of one of his stories get a good start in life solely by devoting himself to the collection of that portion of this floating material which happened to come in his way, which no one cared to hinder him from taking, or rather which they were glad to have him carry off. In course of time he accumulated a handsome sum, simply by selling as paper rags' the matter which he could not help collecting, and which had a commercial value as raw material', Now here in the remote East, friendly paper mills are scarce, and they are besides accessible to but a few of us. What are we to do with our accumulations? 'Burn them up,' says the practical and unsympathetic man of business, who will never honour with more than one brief glance the thing which he knows he does not want. good friend, not so fast. Some of these accumulations can not be disposed of in such a summary style. Of course the ordinary business circulars, notifications of the receipt of a particularly choice lot of something ex' steamer so-and-so, announcements of meetings, and the like may be dropped into the basket at once. But here for example are about twenty handsomely engraved wedding invitations that have reached us within the past few months, all of them relating to people that we know, and of some of whom we are inordinately fond. What shall we do with these! Sentiment forbids our tossing them into the waste-basket, though we must admit that they are of no use. File them away, do you say? But of what possible use is that, when you know that we shall never want to look at them again? But stay, perhaps we may want to know when these people were married. 'Then keep the invitations, for how else will it be possible to recollect? Then what shall we do with our letters, of which we have so many more than if we lived at home'? "Keep them," says some one, and to this sentiment inclines. But when this has been tried for a long series of years, the result is trunks full of missives which it would require the services of a clerk for six months to put in order, and so to file as to be accessible. Why do you not file them as you get them asks sume painfully prim person, who has no toleration for the weaknesses of mankind, Friend, we tell you that for ordinary human nature this is moral impossibility. In spite of all can do, we run behind, the piles get disarranged, the rubber straps melt in the hot weather or snap in the cold season, and thus are the results of hours of sorting reduced to chaos and old night Furthermore, the accumulation is at such a fearful rate that in no long time one is positival whelmed by the mass. We are as dismayed by the mere thought of trying to verify a fact or a date by an examination of these nal documents as we should be at the prospect of studying a Chinese Cyclopedia toget ata crumb of ancient history. Learning is dearly purchased at such a price, and we greatly prefer our ignorance to the labour required to overcome it. Then, too, when we come to leave for home, which sooner or later happens to almost all of us, what is to. be done with our letters If we have been over-conscientious during reasonably Tong term of residence, our minds are harrowed at the harsh choice thrust upon us—we ast either destroy at one fell swoop the accumu lations of 0 may years, an act of vandalism to which most of us are totally unequal, we must store these doubtful treasures somewhere, with a very uncertain future before them and the risk that they will be eventually read by the critical and the unsympathising eye of a stranger, or we must take them with us. If there are any Indies in the party, we need not say that the last horn of the trilemma is certain not to be the one chosen, for reasons which they will have no difficulty in comprehending. The same embarrassment we all find to prevail in regard to the brit matter which comes to our address sporadically, but regularly. We have lived in so many' places, we have connections with so many people, we feel that we ought to keep track of so many varieties of interests that the result is a steady flow of papers, magazines, reviews, Sunday and other periodicals issued still more frequently, which when dammed up for a month or so threatens to inundate the surrounding; country. What shall we do with them The Saturday Review, the Pall Mall Gazette, the Athenwum, the Nation, Scribner's and. the Century, all have much'that we like to look at again. This is particularly true of the illustrated papers, the Graphic, Harper's the rest. Also Priuch. What shall we do with them all? The difficulty of keeping, abreast even of the outlines of these multi= tudinous publicati-us is 20 exasperatingly great that we regret at times that they are all so good, and have so much that, if only in a general way, we ought tu know. But the difficulty of overtaking them, great enough at the best, is intensified if we happen to live—as some of our poor readers are
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.