To the Editor of the "Norta-Cnina Dairy News."
S1r,—Perhaps the more observant of your readers will have noted the significance of the address on Mr. Coates' letter of lith instant. Mr, Coates is in Shanghai. Now T do not know what particular prophecy this dramatic flight of the Herald-in-Chief is intended to fulfil, but to the uninitiated it looks as though he has followed the Chin+ €se custom and "come home to die." have often wondered how he would face his much-advertised peril when the time came andi how many 11-hour converts he would be able to secure with hig frightful threats,. I imagined him! exhorting all the open-mouthed amahs to he saved while there was yet time, and a lump rose in myi throat as I pictured him working! by day and by night in order to bring solace to his much-perturbs ed satellites in the rice fields. But at the 59th minute, alas, the shepherd has forsaken his flock. At a moment when all his followers are working themselves up into a state of frenzy and rending their garments to pieces, the prophet leaves them to "stew in their own juice" and returnd to_civilization.
y? Ah, why? Is it in order that, at the, last, there may. be one good man in this City of Debauchery? Is it to carry on' his work of conversation among the heathen at the dancing halls? Is it, perchance, to borrow M: Lefert's aeroplane and fly to Jerusalem? Or has Mr, Coates come to his senses—and to Shanghai—just in time to escape the missiles of the irate coolies of Kiukiang?
T am, ete.,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.