Peking, Aug. 6.
There is much comment here this year among all classes of Chinese upon the insufferable character of the summer heat. The temperature has been lower than is usual at this season, but with the heavy rainfall the air has a decidedly tropical feel and smell] which the native northerners find almost unbearable. The streets of an evening are littered with thousands of half-clad natives trying to get a little air, and scores sleep out in every alley way. Tables at the restaurants on the Shih Cha Hai in the North city where convivial parties may overlook a mow or so of lotus lilies and imagine that the swamp air is wholesome, now cost $12 an evening, while the mat shed tea youses along the canals do a thriving business up to the unprecedented hour of midnight. One bright idea that has taken hold of the community is that China's climate has been undergoing a radical change since the opening of the Panama canal. They say that the south gets colder winters and the north hotter summers because of this.
As am: example of the seriocomic incidents to which the midsummer heat leads, the Chinese papers have quoted the sad case of one Wang Chi-hsiang, a copper smith outside the Ch'ien Men, who has involved himself in a lawsuit because, while recovering from a heat stroke, he married a girl betrothed to his nephew, while his fiancee was wedded to the nephew. Worse than this is likely to happen, with the Tientsin party fretting about in its cul de sac, if the weather does not improve according to traditional schedule towards the end of August. sidential] fiasco. We have been fooled more than once here in Mukden and it will be our clear policy to develop the resources of the Three Eastern Provinces industrially and agricujtucally and we will not worry more about politics. We have been planting trees' and the others have been gathering the fruits. We intend to work out_an autonomous government and follow the principle of each province for itself until one man who has sufficient mental grasp and spiritual power to coalesce the peoples of China into a unit comes forward and accomplishes that purpose.'?
A last question was "What is the Shanghai Parliament doing?" He said, '"'The Shanghai Parliament is a failure, it is merely: m attempt to bluff the country."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.