A welk in the city reveals the pre-Parations of Mienchow to keep the New Year which are being made by the soldiers, who are vigorously upholding January 1. It is rather funny. At New Year, the real, proper New Year—(jo fi) not January 1, there is always a sort of atmosphere as of the unusual that makes itself felt: the psychological result of general agrevment. It reveals itself in all sorts of ways. There is the man on his way home with his new cap wrapped up in paper but worn over his old one: numberless people are on their way home carrying numerous different articles, and everybody in gait and face proclaims "We are going to celebrate the New Year." But to-day—the absolute nonchalance of everybody is manifest.
A crowd of the soldiers were going round with the dragon; and trying to get up some excitement, but somehow, such things seem out of place on January 1. They belong to the old time, the time that had so much to fascinate and amuse one, aS well as to Cause one to admire.
The bulk of the people here seem to think so anyway, for they seem not in the least moved by decorations or dragons, and in fact they seem bent on making the soldiers lose face when they proclaim as! they do on one doorway, that all the world is rejoicing together, That doorway, by the way, is the headquarters (or perhaps more correctly was) of the Social Service League. I wonder whether to add insult to injury the soldiers had used the tree to decorate it which I am told they stole from the Mission premises, where the Blind School is now located!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.