13th December.
Tue wheelbarrow man pushing panfally along before him " load of half-a-ton or more, which capsizes at touch and has to be righted after much objurgation by a proud native policeman or a sarcastic Sikh, with the aid of sympathetic bystanders, is un object of pity to the gentle globe trotter, who feels a thrill of admiration for the jaunty jinrieshaman trolling gaily along and thinking only of how much. excess fare he can squeeze out of his passenger. But the globe-trotter's pity and admiration are alike misplaced. The wheel-barrowman, an immigrant into Shanghai from Kiangpeh, north of the Yangtze, has no pity for himself, bnt adeep contempt for the jinricshaman, for the former pushes his vehicle before him like a man, while the latter drags his after him like an al. And' the wheelbarrow man ano her reason for pride if he 1 y_knew it, for is he not eanonised for all time by Milton in the greatest poem in the English language, "Paradise Lost"?
When the Rev. Mr. Gable, "half-cobbler and_half-missionary -|as Chamberlain calls him, invented the jinricsha some thirty or more Years ago, he little realised what a boon he was conferring on the carriageless world in Asia and Africa. From Japan where it flourishes in its tens of thousands, it has spread to China, Indo-China, the grent Asiatic Islands, the Straits Settlements, Burma, Cylon, India, and South Africa: and sanguine people have proposed to introduce it into Europe. OurTokiocorrespondent in a recent letter tells us that Japan is now getting ashamed of the invention which has added s> much to her claims on the world's regard. Our correspondent says that a proposal was made to send a number of jinricshas with their pullers to the World's Fair at St. Louis, but that great objection was made by Javanese already settled in the United States, on the ground that their status in society would he injured in the eyes of Amevicans when the latter saw the countrymen of the former undertaking cheerful: y such debasing work.
We sympathise with the Japanese already settled in the United States
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.