Unalterability of the Grandmother: Sincere Comment by an Old China Hand Somewhere Overseas, July 26, Two days ago the "Herald" for Suly 3 was handed to me by the postman at 11 am. I immediately 2|dropped into a chai and thought I would see who had been mar-fried and who had passed on, Mejchanically I sank into a chair, I began reading the leaders. I read them all. Without looking at the time, for I had appointments that afternoon, the first at, 2.15, I read on to,"News from the Outports" and, now quite absorbed in the Paper, passed {0 the share report (noticing that some of my shares had dropped,) and then read steadily on until they called me to come to tiffin, My reply was that I would be there as soon as I had finished reading an article on "Opium in the Making." My wife reminded me that the car was ready, and that, I had as much as I could do to drive the 30 miles or to to keep my 2.15 appointment. She had no time to wait, she said, so would Jeave me to tiffin alone, which she did, But somehow I was so interested in the Herald" that I did not notice how [the time flew, for when I looked at my watch it was 10 minutes to two, my tiffin was cold, and all that T could do was to grab the tele message regretting that I could not keep that first appointment, Then the idea came to me that I might as well put off all those Jappointments—they were un import. ant, anyway—and again and read the this. Forthwith taking up the Shanghai paper again, I threw myself into a chair age in, quite for= getting that I had not lunched, And there I set reading, I covered the week's business, correspondence, sports, law reports, personal items, the telegrams, that excellent show of foreign letters that jostle each other under the caption of "From the Four Winds," and ended up by wading through the passenger ists. only to find that it was 3 o'clock and that my wife had returned, What happened then is of merely personal import, but the fact that 1 wish to emphasize is that the "Herald" was so full of what interested me that all cle was forgotten.
The Well-Known Title All readers know that the "North China" has always been regarded as The Old Grandmother of the Bund, the title sometimes referring to her old-fashionedness, sometimes her stubbornness, sometimes her sound wisdom in giving advice to China, sometimes casting the innuendo that Ishe was growing into second childhood, sometimes (nearly always) inferring that her age commanded respect, sometimes passing her une der review as "standing a critic, hated yet caressed."
Personally T like-grandmothers; became an orphan and was brought up by a grandmother, and that, I suppose, is why I gravitate to men and institutions whose knowledge and power are the results of Jong experience. And as I read the "He. raid" the day before—yesterday, missing three appointments end a quite passable tiffin, I became so piqued with myself' for being 20 absent-minded.that I resolved to write this article on "The Influence of a Newspaper."
T remember once Jeaving a mon 'a book that I had just had published, and when he told me that he stayed up till three in the morning veading it, T could have kissed him, I mow that I liked him telling me this, however, and I fancy that not only the Editor of the "Herald" will be pierised to read that this paper held me absorbed for +50 long, but a good many readers, I feel sure, will grateful to me for expressing their personal sentiments. opinion the "Herald" is without question the best weekly in Asia, Tam familiar with all of them, T think—or all of the really established papers, from Bombay to Yoko—and I know of no others that ¢0 pare with the "Herald," as there is daily in the Far East that can compare with the "North China" as real newspaper. When the "EHnraid" changed -her dress, becoming
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.