A sort of pride must now fill the breast of an absentee as he beholds this new Shanghai with its clanking tram-cars, service trucks and hundreds of motor-cars. Those little rankling cankers must be fast disappearing and as though finally to free him of their irritating influence he beholds a relic of ancient days, the oblong-shaped, wooden, yulowed cargo-boat drift helplessly with the flood tide towards the trim white launches of the Customs moored against their jetty. Shouts are hurled across the rapidly closing breach, bamboo boat-hooks are frantically produced, buffers quickly placed in position to meet the bump. She draws closer, an irate Iaodah appears and in choice Ningpo harshly flings this explo tive, ''Gar-nar-mor-por-shee-laympor' at the offending boatmen, and then the bump with no damage, the quiet, orderly withdrawal of the craft accompanied by angry gut-furals from disturbed laodah and the scene is closed, but it is old Shanghai and the absentee must experience a certain degree of pleasure to find the Past still repeating itself.
At Pootung is an improved Signal station and a new stone bunding. The old River-Police hulk reminds of bygone days, the water between it; and the shore affording, in those times, a clear smooth stretch of a little distance for an ''Eight" or a "Four" after a hazardous and unpleasant pull across the Chow-chow'' water. No doubt it does the same now.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.