Some time ago the question was raised in the columns of the "North-China Daily News" of a new museum, with library, art gallery, and lecture hall combined, for Shanghai. A certain amount of interest was displayed at the time, but so far nothing has happened. There are those, however, who are interested in the future welfare of the Settlement and of the children that are doomed to spend their lives out here, with no chance of going to the homelands to be educated, with whom the idea of an adequate building in some pleasant part of the town that shall form the centre of intellectual: life has not died.
Shanghai is essentially a business town and a large proportion of her residents have but one aim in life, namely to make their pile and get back to their native land and spend the rest of their lives in enjoy all the amenities of life that such countries provide. One can easily understand this attitude in life out here and sympathize with it, for, after all, and even after due allowances have been made for the advantages that the East has to offer to the white man, there little enough to appeal to the mind of any thinking man or woman, to anyone whose mind rises higher than the mere amassing of wealth. But, alas, there are a great many people living in Shanghai whose circumstances in life make it impossible for them to look forward finally to settling in some pleasant part of their homeland, whose futures are inexorably mixed up with that of Shanghai, and whose children must depend for their education upon what this settlement has to offer. Even amongst those who can see their way ultimately to leaving the country for more genial climes there are many who must spend many more years out here, and who will only be in a position to retire when the hest of their years are gone.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.