There is little of interest to report. All our attention is absorbed by the war and local affairs seem insignificant by comparison. A few days since, three British residents sat down to dinner, each one of whom has a brother at the frout—one besieged in Mafeking. Hence, having had no war news for nearly "month, the three clubbed together to send a telegram to Shanghai and learn whether, by this time, Mafeking was relieved or not. The reply came in the negative and we are all wondering how the Boers should still be strong ws to prevent its relief. Apropos of our dearth of news, due to the cost of telegraphing, can nothing be done to improve the Imperial telegraph service and reduce the present exorbitant charges We have written to Peking stating the average time of 48 hows taken by the telegrams of one year between Chungking and Shanghai, But we would not mind the 48 hours if we could afford to send telegrams on any but the most important business matter. The cost is 44 cents a word which, over land lines a distance of about 1,000 miles, is ten times what it ought to be, One of the consequences is that the telegraph clerks have little or nothing to do. These are mostly exceptionally bright and pleasant young men with an English education, always glad to ome the foreign traveller at their ions along the Great River, and to sco many of them taking to opium smoking out of pure ennui. One poor fellow whom T unearthed in an upper room up " Judder, in a back slum in one of the dirty Hupeh riverside towns, was quite alarmed at the idea of my wanting to send a telegram, and it tuck him fully an hour tu make a' clearance of the om eel, tox-cuss, face-cloths, ant water-pipes with which his signalling instrument was garnish ed, and to wake up from his opium d and dispatch my message. All the same, he was frankly pleased to see me and Jamented his isolation (being a Cantonese) amongst the barbarous people of Hupeh. He was truly pathetic over his loss of English, through want of practico—1,500 words which he had bought in Canton, and conce could both write and read thoroughly, at a cost of three dollars per hundred, now, as Hans Breitmann sings, all gone in die Ewigkeit. We hive petitioned the Chinese Manayers; we have petitioned our Ministers in Peking who "sit beside their nectar" careless of outport grievances; and we now humbly petition the mighty influence of the fourth estate, to see if some influence can be brought to bear. The reform we pray for but do not know how to set moving would, like so many other much-needed reforms in this distressful country, be a far greater boon to the Chinese themselves than to the rapacious and interfering barbuian who dares to ask for it.
We are moving, notwithstanding, and I have to chronicle
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.