One of the little annoyances of street travel in Shanghai is due to the iunste habit of many of our resident Chinese to walk straight at the pedestrians they weet and when almost in contact to step aside at right angles to their line of progress in order to allow them to piss. As there is never any certainty which side the native will take, there is not infrequently a bit of undignified dodging on the part of both native and foreigner, and this, together with the desire fur less hampered movement, generally induces the latter to take to the road and give up the pavement. We see here an inherited trait on the part of the native whose ancestors had never got so far on the path of civilisation as to have ample road space. In the streets of the Setilement he acts just ashe would do on a country path through the fields. And acting so he resents any attempts to hurry him. Two miles an hour he can do comfortably, and does, Why should anybody want to go faster, he would like to know.
It is easy to raise a smile over such question, but before we laugh 1 will perhaps be just as well to look into the history of our own complainings. There was a time when roads in England were few and far between. Goods were carried from place to place on pack-horses tied tail to tail and winding along, picking their way asthe went. When roads had improved sufficiently to allow of wheeled traffic, the ponderous waggon with wheels six or eight inches wide came into use. This lumbering vehicle offended none of the then accepted canons of taste with regard to speed. It is said that to be coram it was moving, if one
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.