ie Works Department, nicipal Council, Sirs,—It has ever been my wont to regard your department as a fellow worker, you as the housekeeper for the for settlement, myself as the housekeeper for one home therein. As a collaborator of yours I can sympathize with the cares of another housekeeper, knowing that the perplexities of one small house are wearisome and pitying those who have had theirs increased a thousand-fold.
When I have heard you criticize: I have winced for you and hastened to take your side, as I trust you would do for me should ever u hear that I set a poor table or that my servants are improperly trained. The general, not to say perpetual, upset of the road beds about Shanghai I have always attributed to extra housekeeping zeal, to a house cleaning fervour, unappreciated by all save the meticulously scrupulous.
But there are days, perhaps when the wind is in the wrong direction, when I should be glad to see cleaning restricted to its proper bounds, when your zeal for road repairing looks to me more like a passion for mud pies. There are other days when I would fain go direct to my destination and not circle round roads closed to' traffic and bridges which end in the middle. Our car tracks seem to be in a state of flux, which may be good for unemployment, but bad for speedy transport service.
I feel for you, sadly I feel for you, dear Department, working day jand night on these never-ending, tasks; but sometimes I lapse into a most unorthodox frame of mind {for a confirmed housekeeper and think tenderly of the mere man who declared that sooner than have his house cleaned so constantly and uncomfortably he would live in the woods. Must you always tear up j everywhere?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.