On Wednesday members of the Ninon Church Literary and Social Guild held their annual meeting. Dr. A. Stanley presided. The at-tendones was not large, and only formal business was transacted, the report and accounts for the year being adopted.
At the conclusion of the busine: meeting, Dr. John Darroch ly interested members with a description of various phases of life in a Chinese city, drawing on a fund of anecdote and incident gleaned in a long experience of life among the Chinese. The place he described is in the province of Anhui about 100. miles north of Nanking, and, on the authority of the District Magistrate himself, it was one of the poorest magistracies in China—and in "the good old days" too! the Taiping scourge. Of the sean The place still bears the marks of stories told by Dr. Darroch one must suffice. It relates to the art and craft of jerry-building, in which apparently the ingenuity of the Chinese expert puts that of his western brother entirely in the Shade.
Once in a fit of exuberance, the lecturer threw a stone at the wall of a house and saw the missile penetrate the structure as though it were made of paper.
Whereby hangs the following tale. A wealthy farmer in the district had a spell of bad luck and much sickness in his home. He consulted a fortune teller and the magician attributed all the ill-fortune to the fact that a wide, open space in front of the farmer's door gave free access to evil spirits. To keep the spirits out it would be necessary to build a wall loft. high, 10ft. long, and 10ft. before the door. A builder was called in, and set his men to work. The job having been finished and contract money duly paid, the workmen sat down' to a feast prior to their departure. In the middle of the festivities an apprentice, speaking in a scared aside to the foreman, conveyed the intelligence that the wall showed signs of cracking. "It looks as though the wall is going to fall down!" The feast was finished in discreet haste. and the workmen departed. They had scarcely gone a mile down the village road when the farmer went bellowing after them, crying out: "The wall has tumbled down. The wall has tumbled down!"—''Nonsense," said the foreman, when the matter came to be argued. "But it has tumbled down," said the farmer. "Then you must have driven a cart against it, or rested some very heavy weight against it." "No, declared the farmer, emphatically. "Nothing heavier than my umbrella (which I placed there mysel has touched the wall? "Hi cried the foreman. trumphantl: "An umbrella! Now we are coming it. Whoever heard of anyone placing an umbrella against a newly built wall! No wonder the wall fell down
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.