China is still in need of reform—probably no one doubts it. A curious illustration of the need along the line of honesty—if I was rightly informed, and there is no reason to' doubt the correctness of the information—met my eyes as the train neared the station, in the way of a mat canopy erected by the side of the platform, in which to recei Prince Henry of the " mailed fist" on hi arrival at the capital. Nowa mat shed is all right and proper when all the conditions are harmonious, But what if some of these condit us violate the Doctrine of the and greeting will be a temporary affair—on and off again in a few minutes' time—and a temporary sua shed properly constructed for the occasion and the convenience of those attending, seems appropriate enough: but when a' temporary mat shed, costing Tls. 200, aspires to appearing in the Emperor's eyes, whose eyes will never see it, as. a noble structure involving an outlay of solid and beautiful architecture equivalent to the sum of Tls. 4,000, it does seem as if somehow the Doctrine had all vanished and only the Mean was left. Such I was told are the Jacts—it is written in Tls. 4.000: it cost Tls. 200! What China needs is a true, honest, moral heart, and these are what railroads, telegraphs, Western science and improvements alone are not able to give.
Just what stage the river problem has reached is not apparent as yet. One of the oldest captains in the northern service in a letter to a friend recently said: "I fear the Peiho has borne its last steamer to town, notwithstanding the attempts to be made to improve its conditions: those a tenipts are at: least twenty years too late. I remeniber writing a letter on the subject of river conservation twenty-eight years ago, in which I predicted this state of the Peiho unless a stop was put to the cutting of irrigating canals in such numbers. The gable only through its augmentation, it was imperative that no absorption of its waters should be permitted to retard the force of its downward current." This puts the whole case in a nutshell, and indicates the only possible remedy: the common-sense course of stopping up the mouths of those canals at once, all of which has frequently been set forth in your columns. This is a comparatively easy and inexpensive method, and later, if the need of any of those canals appears, as over and above their need thirty years ago, which is by no means certain, then Aoodgates could be put in as needed, by means of which water could be let in at proper times, not so as to interfere with navigation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.