from All Angles in Hankow: Opium Dens oont Ovn OWN ConnesronnEnT
Hankow, July 3.
An unexplained tragedy is agitat~ ing the dwellers in the huts beyond the railway at the back of the Japanese Concession. Hankow has been enduring a heat wave and the men and children have been sleeping out-of-doors as usual. The women, too, creep out after it is dark and slip indoors again before it is light, coolie went to sleep out of doors on a bamboo bed and his little girl of three followed -him and shared his couch. On his waking in the early morning, the child was not with him and was not with the mother inside the hut. Inquiries among the neighbours proving fruitless, the father commenced a search and in a field some little distance off found one of the child's shoes, Purther on he found a part of her garments stained with blood and near by one arm of the child. The only explanation seems to be that the body had been carried off by some animal, but beyond that all is, a mystery.
The Unknown God Following on the development of special powers by the little God of Riches up in the Chinese city, another shrine has come into prominence, This one has no previous history, but is a purely individualistic conception. Yellow paper not-fees have been pasted up stating. that a Spirit of Light has come to Hankow, The residence of the Spirit proves to be a small hut not far from the Goddess of Merey Corner. In it there are two rudely shaped mud idols, said to be the work of the Spirit. The charlatan in charge is a man who is described as being three-tenths human and seven-tenths beast. As the Hankowites are of the same spirit as the Athenians, this new shrine is gathering its devotees.
'A Comic Interlude The necessary comic interlude is provided by a garage proprietor in the ex-German concession. The policeman on duty near the garage evidently uses his eyes, for he noticed a somewhat™" strange phenomenon. A car came along to the garage' bearing the mystical number 13. Tt was duly taken inside, A little Inter a car different make came out, and it too bore the unluckly number. While the policeman watched this second car, which was still outside the garage, the original number thirteen came out again. Being unable to Delieve that he was seeing double, the policeman summoned help and the offending proprietor was. soon meditating over a fine of $40 imposed by' the authorities for his offence,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.