at Lafa yesterday caused great excitement in the port as the first tidings that came in were greatly exaggerated, and gave it that the train had dropped through a bridge and that thirty-five Chinese had been killed and two foreigners dangerously wounded. This was later on modified into the truthful version that the train had got badly derailed by an accumulation sand (dust, caused by wind) just at the head of the bridge. The locomotive capsized, and with four trucks left the line on the' bridge, badly damaging the structure. Ten passengers in the trucks were killed and twenty-eight wounded, of whom five died on the way down. Two U.S. soldiers, one named Kennedy, also hurt; communication will be restored to-day.
SOCTAL, Never since Tientsin has been a community have we had such a plethora of amusements. Concerts and theatricals have been going on in confusing sequence. The fine band of the Third Asiatic Infantry (German) gave a series of five concerts in Gordon Hall, in which they discoursed with i n nnd feeling the very best at one of these they kindly had the floor cleared after the concert and asked the ladies to stay and dance to their strains. Th laos uesepted the courtesy and assuredly never did Tientsin more finely illustrate the mirth of feet. Then Madame Tissot gave one of her refined pianoforte recitals, and was followed by the TAYLOR-CARRINGTON COMPANY, who during the week mounted six plays, Dhe troupe is after all a very one-horse-shay affair. Mr. Taylor, Senr. is an admirable comedian with " wide range, versatile and with an admirable command of the whole gamut of human emotional portrayal: he 18 moreover gifted with a beautifully flexible and sympathetic voice, and is a master of dialects. Of the rest of the company, Miss Roberts alone impressed us as the sole possessor of much ability in the mimic art, Their choice of plays was on the whole uncommonly bad, patting us off as they did with therubbish of 'Frolicsome Faust,' a musical extravaganza with an utter absence of frolic, and abominably dressed moreover; a bowdlerised edition of 'Charley's Aunt,' in which the whole action of the play was stopped to introduce some poor singing, and a feeble melodrama called *Barnes of New York.' On the other hand when the troupe gave comedy pure and simple, they came off really admirably. Tientsin really found great pleasure in 'Cross Purposes' and in 'A Husband's Night Out," two dainty comediettas in which good fun was combined with capital acting all round.
The worst of these travelling companies is the low estimate the management holds of the calibre of their audiences. We outport folk are in chronic artistic starvation, and long to be en rapport with the recent novelties of the great world; along come these people who might do' something to meet our case, and lo! they put off with some twopenny-h'peany rubbish which is not in the same street with our own local amateur efforts.
Tientsin, 29th April.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.