In the absence of news in the ordinary acceptation of the term, your correspondent ought perhaps to keep silent and thus save your valuable space, but he must beg leave to record a tit-bit of native gossip in reference to international polities that for downright idiocy surpasses any such effort of the native mind that has met his notice, and that is saying a great deal. One of our Mandarin " teachers," & man who has been in contact with foreign thought and life for years, announced the other day, with the accent of conviction, the arrival of word from some quarter not specified, that foreign nations" had become convinced that "there is not a single good man in China." They have, therefore, in an access of virtuous indignation, determined to partition China (along usually accepted lines) and to destroy the entire population! They naturally shrink from the wholesale slaughter which this somewhat drastic programme would render logical and have concluded to gain their end by the effective method of prohibiting marriage unti] the Chinese race goes the way of the Pliocene horse and the dodo! Sometimes the foreign resident in China feels as though he were unwittingly playing a part in a huge stage farce. Howa people so sensible in ordinary life can be guilty of the whimsical absurdities that we hear and see every day, isa problem beyond the amateur psychologist.
The Steam-Engine Arrives, So far as the writer knows, the first steam-engine that ever turned a wheel in this vicinity is at work at the native coal-mine eight often miles south-west of the city. There is good coal down there, but the inrush of water renders mining dangerous and unprofitable. Several of the more enlightened and progressive men interested formed a joint-stock company and purchased from an abandoned mine south of Weihsienan old engine of obsolete pattern. The boiler had been offered to the Germans at Fangtze and, after due inspection, declined with thanks. The purchasers, nothing daunted, mounted the boiler on ¢wo pairs of native cart wheels, and with the aid of many horses and more men, started it on its journey of one hundred and fifty miles to the Ichonfa coal-field.
It was seen by your correspondent abandoned some forty miles south of Weihsien, with other parts of the ponderous machinery la similar plight at other points by the roadside. But by the expenditure of much cash and muscle and patience, the feat was ultimately accomplished. It is said that the cost of transportation amounted to over one thousand Mexican dollars, a figure by the side of which even the freight tariff on the German railroad must take a back seat. Thus it comes to pass that the old engine is puffing away, hauling up the primitive buckets of raw-hide ata rate which enables the owners to get out some coal at intervals. Perseveratio amnia vincit," as the copy-book of our adolescence used to say. With iron-ore and coal and limestone lying within a radius of five or ten miles, why should not Ichoufu become a Chinese Birmingham, if the right men get hold of it Our Prefect (Sung} has exchanged places with the Yenchonfu prefect (Wu), and the new incumbent arrived this morning to take over the seals.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.