4th May. Most of our readers will remember the enthusiastic description of a first view of Shanghai from: the river as written by Mr. Henry Norman in his book on the Far East. It is a great come-down for us to be told a few lines further on that our beauty is but skin-deep. A great come-down, because true. It is not necessary to xo far from the Band to be reminded that there are many parts of our Model Settlement which have no beauty that we should desire them, except. perhaps it be the sweet simplicity of a ten per cent return year in year out. Shanghai never was laid out: like Topsy it "growed", and as it "growed "it absorbed, Within very recent times it lias absorbed Bamboo ''own and Lo-Hongkew, districts unknown even by name probably to the majority of uew-comers, But being absorbed with all their native horrors intensified they remain a source of danger physically and morally, From a sanitary point of view it is probable nothing can be done more than is being already accomplished, und we must wait until time and circumstances may render it more profitable for the owners to clear the ground and make room for something in closer consonance with the dignity and well-being of these Settlements. As it is, such' crowded districts must ever be instinct with a spirit of evil, a menace of poison and death, Deprivation of light, want of air, dampness, and dirt combine in; their insanitary hold upon the filthy Iwhen having like charity covered 'a [multitude of sins and other things, there is no longer strength enough left for one fibre to hold to another, and the concentrated collection of germs and rags that once made a garment must perforce find their way into the hands of the rag-dealer. Often through the medium of children, and often in exchange for sweet stuff, which horrible dictu is wade and exposed in all its sticky receptiveness in the same room and at the same time as the pile of the filthy rags is being shaken about and sorted. Again we wonder why nature takes no vengeance for such things as these; and again we are thrown buck on the assumption that these people are protected so that ordinary dirt: diseases have no hold upon them.
By and by probably with increased municipal powers, and possibly after some sharp and bitter experience, we may set about putting an end to these tions so far as may be. We may insist on an adequate supply of pure water, a terribly scarce article at present, in some parts of the settlement, Wo may by virtue of the power invested in us deny the right to owners of land to crowd buildings together to such an extent that health is problematical and decency un impossibility. We may, by-and-by, overcome the objections of the native to vaccination, and elevate his taste in the matter of street clennines. In fact we may do much in the near future to make -our settlement cleaner, healthier, and therefore happier than it is at present, But wa should be giving only a one-sided view of this question were we to confine our remarks entirely to the low-class Chinese. There are enough of het thas gets helped on from port to port until possibly he is swamped in the overwhelming tide of London or New York.
In these hard times too there are many impecunious though highly respec table residents who have to reside in one or other of the several little nests of foreign or semi-foreign homes long since swallowed up in the mass of native jerry-building, Existence for them is not all beer and skittles either. In some cases their approach is through dirty chip-paved streets than which, with the ordinary foreign fuct-covering, there is no crueller torture. Witness for example some of the new paving put down lately in the district north and west from the Honan Road Bridge. 'I'his is 'a misery the whole year through, but the hot mouths bring their own especial torment. There is no such thing as quiet in a Chinese quarter from the fifteenth of June to the beginning of October. If the noisy native ever sleeps, it must be by relays, for there are always enough awake to pre-j vent Morpheus himself from nodding. Then comes the time when the long-suffering foreigner wants to air his grievances in the public Press, and that doing no good, betakes himself to artificial sources of somnolence which not only do no good, but are the cause of very much harm. Our charitable institutions could if they did not, very properly, hide their good deeds in every possible way, tell many a sad, sad story of struggle and suffering in places such jas we have described. It is no use for us to shut our eyes to these facts, They exist." In some cases they are the simple results of outraged nature, and as such admit of no cure and little dens and filthier denizens of some these. Everyone knows that. But there amelioration, In others they spring of these wretched Innes. How they likewise a none too small section of from ill-luck, and misfortune beyond live at all is the constant marvel pour foreigners, and now and again the ordinary binman control, But what-of the western scientist. But the ex-murmurs from mean streets are heard ever and however private aid or public planation is really simple. hey live in European tongues, frequently inj regulation can suggest a remedy, that by death. In other words their in-Portuguese, occasionally in French, and remedy it should be our duty to apply fant mortality is so high—that now and then in German, or in Buglish, as far as our powers permit, none are left but those rendered im-Poverty is no respecter of nations, The june by survival after inoculation with submerged tenth can curse in many every pestilential poison their surround-tongues, not loud as yet, but deep; ings can produce. Even then, such is enough. The never-do-well, the scape-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.