To the Editor of the "Norr-Cama Datty News."
Sir,—For two good reasons I am seriously thinking of becoming a convict.
What a relief to have a doctor looking after one's health and supervising one's food, counting the number of calories, cockroaches, protoplasms or whatever the things are that I eat. At present the cook at.my boarding house gives me the food he thinks I should eat, and I eat it or not (generally the latter) as it pleases me without any expert advice. I never see a doctor except as he glides by in his car, on his way to make a fortune. Not that my health isn't bad enough, but simply that I haven't time to visit him.
But if I were a convict he would come to me, feel my pulse day by day, analyse my food, kill the germs in my milk, and when I felt below par, place me tenderly in a hospital.
Secondly. Think of the quiet re stfulness of a convict's cell after the 4 turmoil and rush of the remainder of Shanghai. Fancy never having to sprint to a tram-car and fight, hand to hand, with its invading hordes of Asiatics, never to be bruised and buffeted by the crowds in the nar-Yow, pavement less streets of—this city. "Oh, it is, it is a restful thing to live ina convict cell." There, one would have time to think, perhaps even (if one's sentence were long enough) to write a book like Bunyan and Coleridge (or whoever it was).
I have not yet decided on the crime 1 shall commit, whether I shall slay my washerman for spoiling my new silk blouse, send poisoned chocolates to the Manager of the Tramway Ca., or qn some dark night rob the Hongkong Shanghai Bank. T am open to suggestions.
I am, ete.,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.