Your correspondent may be suffering from _a cerebral breakdown induced by the weather or he may have been converted to a sound transcendental view of the situation in Paotingfu; but if this is all nonsense it is hopeful nonsense and anyone who has been in Peking recently and has seen the place being scorched to a crisp under a merciless, cloudless sky and the bare yellow landscape which ought to be green throwing off heat like a furnace so that a breeze only suffocates instead of giving relief, will admit that it is safer and saner to be hopeful. Tt would be too much for the ordinary intelligence to contemplate the weather and the character of the cabinet, Let us say, at the same time, Under more favourable weather conditions Dr. W. W. Yen and the circumstances under which he resumed the premiership, for instance, would give us material for some strenuous thinking and writ-in With the thermometer at 108 in the shade, however, the mind revolts from such topics. and finds cool and pleasant relief in the shade of Paotingfu''s optimism. It is easier now to be fair and tolerant than to be obdurate and recalcitrant. It is saner to be hopeful than to be gloomy. It is generally wholesomer now to be a transcendentalist in politics than a quibbler, whether one's transcendentalism is the effect. of the weather or the result of reason and sound conviction. If when the autumn comes and it develops that Wu Pei-fu and his people are right and that we are entering upon a season of peaceful evolution, we shall be glad that we did not rant and storm all through the hot weather. If there is no justification for Paotingfu's optimism, there will still be plenty time to rant and storm. The broader and more hopeful view of things offers an. intellectual summer vacation, therefore, and those who adopt it will probably be saner and healthier for i A LEVIATHAN, in the form of a sword fish, was discovered entangled in the fishing stakes off Kuala Kurau, the "Penang Gazette" says. The fish had apparently Leen drowned in its endeavours to escape from the maze into which had inadvertently wandered. The fishermen who made the discovery were amazed at the dimensions of the carcase, which had to be towed to Penang and transported to Chowrasta market in a bullock cart. The finny monster measured 15 feet from nose to tail, had a girth of seven feet, a sword four feet in length and owned the scale at five piculs! Easily the largest of its kind ever taken in these waters. The deep sea terror was disposed of to a Chinese for $85.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.