To the Editor of the "Norta-Cutna Dairy News."
Sir,—The weather is sultry, the nights are short and our tempers short. In fact it is extremely warm. We work because we have to, we patronize the bar freely, because we perspire freely: we turn in late because the bed-clothes are hot unto the skin. Between dinner and bed-time we have to do something—some of us stretch ourselves in long chairs cursing the heat and the mosquitoes, calling the boy betimes. Some of us return to the bar and some, mainly husbands on short leave, do the Western Patrol, retu.ning in the early hours, bedraggled, red-eyed and poorer than when we started out.
And why al' this? Simply_because these are the dog-days and we have to kill the weary hours somehow. On the 15th instant, being Saturday as ever was, I decided to make a distinct break from the usual routine. I rarely listen to that expensive Municipal asset, the Band: still more rarely do I visit Municipal Parks. What—then could be a more original tonic? I would hear the Band in Hongkew Par' (or should it be Parke or Pike?). The faithful retainer who presides over the destinies of my flivver seemed surprised, ever perturbed, for he loves mo and the brain is easily disrupted these hot da, s. However, I assumed a Hinderbergly mien and away we went. The park was duly reached; following the crowd along belanterned paths, I arrived at what T gathered to be the moon. Tt wasn't really. merely a platform with a semicircular proscenium, as I think my friend Mr. Wilkinson would call it, with cleverly concealed lighting. Still it looked like a rising moon, and the real Simon Pure moonrise looked distinctly pale, methought. 1 am assured that the first typhoon will lift and remove my moon to Woosung; be that how it may, it was quite delightful last night. Thirty Mexican cents (small money) secured me a long deck chair in the orchestra stalls. I settled me down to listen to the music if good or to sleep if not. Nothing happened for quite a long time so we clapped heartily to show that, if hot, we were not downhearted.
Meanwhile the cosmopolitan gentlemen who compose the orches stra smoked many cigarettes and chatted amicably. The conductor smoked a cigarette and chatted equally amicably. We clapped equally amicably. In fact everything in the park was amicable. And the moon shone, the. proscenium shone, all the breeze in Shanghai concentrated itself in the park and I felt, like the gentlemen in the Old Testament, that it was good for me to be there, Then the Band actually played! "Peer Gynt," "Madame Butterfly," "Aida"—exquisito music, exquisitely played. The Band, if expensive, is undoubtedly super-excellent and the conductor no less so. T lay back in my 30 cent: deck-chair, closed my eyes and gave my imagination full rein. But the music was all too short, the intervals for smoking all] too long. We had an-hour's music and spent nearly three getting it.
The two morals of my little story are:—(1) More music, punctual less preliminaries and shorter interludes: (2) The most delightful way of spending a summer evening that I've discovered, all at a cost of a few cents and a little effort. And of the hundreds of rapt listeners. probably not a dozen from the Central or Western districts. Why? T am, ete.,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.