Stung again!" exclaimed the woman who never misses a lecture as she plumped down next me on the front row.
"How's that?" 1 queried, "Speaker ill?"
"Not as much excuse as that," she protested indignantly, "Just the customary Shanghai reluctance to beginning anything on time. Here it is 15 minutes after the) right time amd not even the glass of water on the speaker's table! It's punctuality that's the thief of time in the Orient, not procrastination. If I had % cash for every minute I've waited for people be wearing sables instead of. rabbit j skins."* While we waited some 10 minutes for the speaker and his sponsors to appear we discussed the dishonesty of those. who ruthlessly filch from us portions of that precious 24 hours a day which is our only working capital.
"qt wouldn't be so bad if there were only some kind of code we might observe among the initiated, such as that a 5.30 lecture means 6 and that an eight o'clock dinner wouldn't come on till nine. As it is," she continued plaintively, "I hardly know whether it's worse to arrive at dinner half an hour after every one or get there on time and wait 15 minutes in an empty drawing-room while your hostess finishes dressing."
What's to become of us when we get back to places where there is some time sense and where punctuality is not the earmark of social ineptitude, I look forward to a dreary vista of trains missed, appointments muffed, irreconcilably offended unless I can get in some practice in promptness before TI forget what the word means. Think of the example we set our innocent, children! For their sakes as well as our own can't we start an 'On the Dot' club?"
Exizasern Pepys.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.