Oct. 16.
Waarever faults the Far East may have,-it could never be charged with want of warmheartedness. We come back from Home leave and are greeted with a cordiality which elsewhere would probably be regarded as preluding an attempt to borrow money. We go Home, and invitations to "'eat our way out'' rain: in from all quarters.
It may be that the feeling does not go very deep. For the Far East, though almost proverbially hospitable, is also very busy, and when a man goes the niche he made is quickly filled and the place thereof knows him no more. It is, however, none the less very pleasant, and if having "retired,'' we change our minds and wander back to China, the old friends are waiting for us and there is never any difficulty in picking up the threads of past concerns and intimacies.
But to-day we are saying goodbye to two people who, though they may never again be seen east of Suez, will not pass from our memories. Mr. and Mrs. H. G. Simms made for themselves a special place in the hearts of the Shanghai community and they will bs sincerely missed. Apart from personal popularity, Mr. Sinms has made his mark in the Jife of the community. It is a common saying that Shanghai has outgrown the system of government under which it wag founded and developed; and sooner or.later, one supposes, a change is bound to come. But while it is possible to obtain such men as Mr. Simms for the chairmanship, the community at large will not be conscious of any need for alteration, Elsewhere We give an account of the important movements connected with hig administration. Of these it is possible that the reorganization of the municipal departmental system is not the least. important, although least visible to the public. But it needs no inside knowledge to understand that machinery so great as the Council service has become requires the most harm-onions. coordination, and the rearrangements which Mr, Simms has effected may indeed go far to put off the evil day of those: greater changes mentioned above. The duel between Council and Tram Ca. has been watched with all the interest it
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.