Many old friends were delighted recently to find in their midst once more Mr. G. W. Sheppard, who for so many years was one of the landmarks in Shanghai and before then so famous on the Yangtze that he became known to more people than he knew as "El Man River" Mr. Sheppard served for many years on the Shanghai Municipal Council and was Vice-Chairman at the time when he left Shanghai in 1932. He has confessed that his return here is due to an irresistible desire to see how his old haunts look, and even the sadness of finding the place so much under the weather has not been sufficient to damp his enjoyment in meeting old friends and discussing familiar topics. They in their turn have been delighted to find him in such good spirits and bearing the years of retirement so lightly on his shoulders. By a curious coincidence on the day of his arrival in Shanghai that part of the Yangtze which calls itself the Whangpoo elected to dash over the Bund almost into the sacred portals of the temple where he and his friends at the appointed hour are disposed to offer libations, Pilots the flooding was due to the boom, which disappeared seven days earlier; scientists and matter-of-fact people of that kind talk of the moon and the tide; but others are happy to think that it was merely a gesture designed to give an appropriate welcome to the return of "El' Man River.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.