It is really high time that the Imperial Postal: Service was conducted with some regard to regularity and the convenience of the public. In Chungking not a few people are using, and have ground for using, strong language in regard to the capricious and _irritatingly unpunctual manuier in which the mails arrive. One that a public complaint should be drawn tleman was heard declaiming yesterday up, signed, and sent to headquarters. He himself is certain that no less than five home. mails are now overdue, and most of the. residents are aware that letters and papers innumerable are still somewhere on the road when. they ought to have been in our hands long ago. Some of us have from the date of the inauguration of the new system tried to. exercise patience with the vagaries and uncertainties incidental to a brand-new institution. But it must be confessed that: patience is now well-nigh exhausted in this region which, in conscience, possesses few of those civilised and complacent characteristics which help to make men amiable, especially in hot weather. To have our letters and papers delayed when there is really no sufficient reason for delay is just too trying an experience, and it may be taken for granted that if a dozen foreign merchants resided in the place, instead of only one or two, the outside public would hear more they do of what can only be described at Fike undertaking. It is. freely admitted resent a8 an ill-mant and unbusiness-
that the root of the mischief is not-in Chungking, where. the Postal officials do everything they can to facilitate and further the interests of the community; but the ame cannot be honestly ssid of. people Thowbire, to whose seltiiehdeg and' coe fears, even
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.