October 10 passed without even 4 student assemblage in the Confucian Temple as in previous years here in Kiangchow. But your eorrespondent having just "returned from a protracted absence, his arrival was the signal for a burst of artistic activity and the city was adorned with many highly coloured pictorial posters in great variety. The rudeness of the sketching together with the attempted high Kiterary style of the writing rendered many of these productions quite intelligible to "the man inthe street."
A donkey with a human mask was the work of a budding artist, and seemed greatly to bewilder the Popuilnee, as to its purport and implication, Joining - with a group of "me quirers" attempting to educate this mystic symbolism, it was discovered that the useful burden-bearer wa: quite possibly the Britisher, and as the-mask was evidently not use, no great insult could be inferred.
"But am I like him?" I queried, "No, no, no!" replied the crowd.
The Yamen Apologizer But next morning the Chief Secretary of the yamen expressed hhis regret that the scholars were disrespectful to an old friend! The shopkeepers had reported the incident to the yamen. And the business people no longer take the schoolboys seriously. In fact expressions of friendship have never been more cordial on the street here. But in the midst of much good feeling, every now and then we encounter the sour-faced youth who assumes the air of heartbroken misery, that our presence fon his street should be still permitted.
What will these poor Inds say when "unequal treaties" are no more, and crowd of the "undesirable aliens" wander his streets like Chinese in Pennyfields Limehouse!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.