the Editor of the "Norts-Cuina Dairy News."
Sin,—I am afraid you will think Iam transgressing the editorial mandate apropos the closing of a certain discussion, but I think it rather strange no one has considered it worth while to solve two rather important questions at the sonic time, namely, the question of reduction of hotel charges and that of the lack of really entertaining winter pastimes in Shanghai.
Tt seems to me that if one pauses to consider, it will be seen at once that if people will persist in their demand for the hotel the dansant and dinner dance six days in the week, this extra drain on the resources of the poor impecunious merchants (alias hotel proprietors) must result in additional overhead (and underfoot) expenses—expenses which are met by increased rates.
The indulgence in exercise, if the restricted movements in modern dancing can be so termed, in hot and stuffy rooms can hardly tend to improve. one physically and I have never heard the most ardent devotee of the fox-trot and one step suggest that it was intellectually uplifting!' Why has not some bright and influential sportsman suggested, a winter skating rink?
Of course one knows that such more or less, strenuous exercise would hardly appeal' to many of those pale youths one sees gracing (2) the floors in Shanghai, but there must be hundreds who would welcome the opportunity of the bracing joy of the ice rink!
Perhaps one's critical faculties would sul for it is rather fun to sit and watch the gyrations of quite impossible people, yet I venture to think neither Shanghai nor its dwellers would lose were provision made to pass the winter days in a way a little less likely to degenerate physically and mentally.
I an, etc., Shanghai, Jan. 13.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.