Memories of the Late Mr, and Mrs, Drummond An auction at 127 Avenue Haig!
most readers the announcement, lof Messrs L. Moore, Ltd., of the which they have just conin this great red brick house, set in its park-like grounds, meant just one more auction, Yet there twere many who recalled the days fellen this' same mansion was deigned Ly the architects, Messrs, davies & Thomas {now Davies Brooke) for W. V. Drummond and] ig wike, Christian' Mitchell Forbes.
To many the notice brought back the picture of Mrs. Drummond, fof Shanghs her China ponies and liveried mafoo. Almost up to the day of her death, Jon the 18th of last January, at the age of 84, Mrs, Drummond maintain. led this custom.
There were some, perhaps, who remembered Mrs. Drummond as a popular belle in the old days when [Shanghai's best people drove behind {their prancing pairs out to Bubbling Well Road as the fashionable pro-menado. So many dresses did this social leader posse: trunk after trun) frocks, most, of them hardly worn, iwas found in her attic after her And of course the thoughts of all the old China hands went back to the late Mr. Drummond who was for so many years a dominant figure in municipal altairs, the senior partner in the law firm of Messrs White-Cooper & Company, a man who, up to the time of, his death, some twelve years ago, was promin-Jent in all Shanghai activities, When the Drummonds built their house in Avenue Haig there was no reason to spare expense. Its rooms Jare large and high-ceiled and there are plenty of them—reception hall, drawing-rooms, living-rooms, dining-room, study and kitchens, all on the ground floor, with two more stories taken up with the morning-room, boudoirs and enclosed int bonus, Rasoline bonus, long-ce bonus, and good conduct payments. Their wages are creased at the rate of $2 per annum, The average total_monthly _ineome of drivers and conductors is $55. verandahs, to say nothing of the [green-houses and other out bu The house stretched itself out ina comfortable way, always expressing large and easy hospitality.
The grounds to-day ave so exten sive as to make the average person gasp at the thought of the labour required to keep them up. As one wanders over the lawn, past the ver-beds and the shrubbery, the wisterias and the flowering trees, the ornate brick house seems like a survival from the feudal ages, feepecially when one remembers that the houses of the Denart Estate are built on land once belonging to this same garden, One fancies one hears the gay voices of a house-party and mistakes the motors of the auction bargain-hunters for those of the guests, 'Then an April shower sends across' the sky, the trees weep for those who wilh never walk beneath their shade again, and the echoes of "Going, going, gone!" bring one sharply back to the present, Never again will such a house be erected in Shanghai for the for. eigner. Economic dictates and popular taste alike forbid. In thirty sars fashion has forsaken the mi sion for the apartment house. Even the Drummonds did not continue to live in the house until their deaths, and it was the manager of the Banque Franco-Chinoise whose household effects went under the auctioneer's hammer. The house, already out-moded in its three defeades of existence, is to be taken over by its present owners, the Belgian Fathers, as Headquarters for their Mission, It is an unusual lending for a house dedicated to do-mastic bliss, but it will certainly be a peaceful—we trust a happy and prosperous future which stretches out before it. order to facilitate the transmission of military reports, a short ave wireless station will be shortly stalled al the Woosung Forts, Ly the course of an order to the vari vineial governments, the Administrative Yuan says that, in fature, all orders of the National Government must be strictly obeyed and the local authorities must not act independently so far as the col-ection of taxes is concerned. All unlegal and obnoxious taxes, accord ing to the order, must be abolished
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.