By Rose Allen, Shanghai, April, 1922. Kirry Dear:
I'm thinking of writing a book House-boating Through China" "Towed-A-Ways" or something of the sort for I've spent two Gays and three nights on one and if that doesn't qualify one as an authority then most of China's chroniclers haven't understood the rules of the game. Besides, the hour between six and seven a.m. was long enough to justify me—Einsteinly speaking—in saying that I had spent years on China's waterways.
You see it was this way—I'm not so much of a snoozer any way, and although we sure did sit up late enough nights swapping ghost stories and singing the choruses from the musical comedies which were current when we left the good old U.S.A. (you can date a man's length of residence in the Orient by the tunes he whistles) the morning sun-beams, not to mention the cheery prattle of our laodah, would bring me back to consciousness at a fiendishly early hour.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.