By Rose Allen, Shanghai, March 1922, Dear Kirry,—We are still determined to find a home for ourselves, but thus far we haven't had tremendous success and I can hardly say that a procession from the Landlords' Association has come riding up to us on milk white pal-treys imploring us to rent their houses. Still, with so many leaving Shanghai and the multitude of houses which are springing up all over town it does seem as if there ought to be plenty of room for us. Won't it be fun to select our furniture and dishes? We've not decided yet whether we'll be Early Colonial, Louis Quinze or Nineteen Twenty-two Wicker. Anyway we won't be Mid-Victorian. Neither of us know what it is, but it sure has got in bad somehow.
We went roaming round some of the streets which cut Nanking Loo the other day, trying to see what we could find in the way of native products when we started to keep house. I'm afraid the things we discovered won't grace our menus until we get a little more accustomed to Chinese chow, but it has given me the idea for a beautiful new collection which I flatter myself will show the world something unique in the line of souvenirs.
Larest 1x CouLecrions, You remember Miss Bates, our sentimental Lit. teacher, with her album of pressed flowers picked at the grave of some celebrity or commemorating some other spot famous in song or story? Well, instead of toting around a faded daffodil plucked near Wordsworth's cottage in the Lake Region, or a flower in the crannied wall of What's-his-name, I shall procure from the million and one provision shops of this city some less romantic products such as the festive pressed duck and frog, which dangle in dusty profusion in all the native food stalls. They are a little startling till you get used to them, specially the sprawling frogs, but T think they would mount beautifully, and then if I should ever be shipwrecked on a desert island they would be far more popular than a post card collection.
Of course these will take up a good deal of room, but not so much as you'd think for they are squeezed out to wafer-like proportions. Then there are all manner of sea foods dried and ghost-like, the shrivelled remains of al] kinds of fish with evaporated devil fish one of the chief staples, Apparently Mr. Hoover taught the Chinese how to dry vegetables if they didn't teach him and they certainly conserve every stray shred. I've seen the green vegetables drying on window Tedees, roofs or hung on lines in Chinese homes, but I didn't realize till recently that they were a marketable commodity. One thing is sure, China's famine isn't due to any waste of food. They tell me that it is regarded as @ sin to throw away a grain of rice because
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.