Aug. 11, 'The guests of the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company on Saturday evening" at Woosung must have found it difficult to believe that they were at sea. 'Had Mrs, Wilfer been travelling with them—and' "Mr. George Sampson—on the homely but serviceable tender which carried hem down the moonlit and almost transfigured =Whangpoo, phe would have rightly and majestically informed them that were on their way "to a Fesidence which may be termed palatial." Although she would certainly have added "I may be mistaken—nothing is more like-cly," they would with equal certainty have discovered that her pessimism regarding her pwn perspicacity was again at fault, After gazing up at the prilliantly,-lit white walls of the palace to which they were Invited, they entered what peared to be—and was—a magnificent banqueting hall of shimmering mirrors, marble and parquetry. And they dined, they heard music and words of Wisdom and they took the Aforesaid water-cab back to the Bund and the after midnight liveliness of Shanghai, Even the disappearance of the moon for this return journey and the consequent exposure of the Whangpoo in all its dis the finer susceptibility human senses, were probably unable to banish from their minds the brief but, dazzling vision vouchsafed to them.
Yet landlubbering sybaritism Was not permitted to have undisputed sway. "Apart from the presence and personality of their chief host, the guests were reminded both by Mr, Perey Cox and by Mr.
Brenan of the]; Aignificance of the ceremony in which they were privileged to participate. The magnificent creature moored near the Fort
lonting palace, she was the vivid Woosung was not merely a expression of the cult.of th wea spirit. Mr, Cox, as proudly traced the development of the big company as a maker of ocean beauties, did not fail to impress on -his audience how much that endeavour meant to the encouragement of industries ju Canada and the Mother Country and how the keynote of Patriotic effort. was wel sustained by the splendid record of employees of the big firm in the Great War and by the practical manner in which the firm itself took care to see that the sacrifices made were recognized and rewarded, Thus the sea spirit once more proved its remarkable attunement to a plane on which human endeavour at its highest and its most strenuous is to be discerned, For, despite her heavy tra pings' of modern luxury in a dornment, the modern liner is atill, as Mr. Brenan aptly: reminded his fellow guests,.a ship charged with the duty of battling with the sea in all its moods and with carrying her freight safety to her allotted destination, Captain Robinson's brief statistical interlude: "nineteen days from Southampton to Hong-Kong and an average speed of 21 knots" laconically fitted the head to Mr. Brenan's shaft, It probably restored the mental balance of those who might have been led away by the static splendour of the saloon's setting. 'They realized that, sooner or Jater, the scene' of their entertainment would be libra' ing with the ecstasy which pervades every ship who is worth liber salt and her engines. There would be that exultant glide over calm untroubled waters and that fiercely confident furrowing through mountainous seas teeth of blustering—gales. YAnd, as they caught a last glint Empréss.of Japan" over
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.