Sept.
Decidedly the last two or three nights have been cooler, We must not boast yet. "End of Great Heat" was announced by the Chinese calendar on August 23, but there are still five days togo before we get to "Beginning of Autumn"; and although the Chinese calendar is uncanuily accurate, one can remember terrible patches of heat even in late September. But the nights have lost their hot wool-lines, Denizens of the wilds of Hungjao report having slept under blankets. Even fu the Settlement one has pulled up the sheet and spread a kimono on top. Breakfast regains its attraction, and fried bacon. Snipes are seen about Shanghai, particularly in one district which enough young birds, fresh from the tundras and' rejoicing in the excitement of the journey south.
What is the peculiar charm of autumn, which makes it for some people the loveliest season fof the year? Perhaps they are those who, having been born in July, first began "to take noric when leaves were turiiing. The richly hued woods, the pale blue sky, the smoke ascending so straight from cottage chimneys in the crisp and motionless air, the cock pheasant strutting before his wives in the afternoon sunlight, the light mists of evening, these would be peopled and surrounded with a thousand fairies and kindly attendants isible only to baby eyes, but of which some faint unseizable memory lasts on through life. Poets traditionally are supposed to prefer the spring. Yet some of the finest and most suggestive poetry seems to have been writ ten under the influence of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.