Things are brightening up here with the close of this awful year, the else of the Nineteenth Century. May the new century, which opens to-morrow, bring in a new era! Yes, things have been looking lively during the last ten days! The two high military officials, Hu Chung-fu and Fan Tung-live, have been degraded. You will remember' these were the two officers who wanted to fire on any foreign gunboat that dared show face in the Wenchow River, and which they only missed carrying out—on H.B.M.'s gallant "Pigmy"—by the merest accident, in July last.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we will."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.